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Dear Michelle,
Well hello out there!
Those of you readers who live in the
Victoria area will have noted the crispness in the air of late. We've been
blessed with lovely sunny afternoons with that extra little snap of fall.
My son said yesterday on our way out the door, "Mom, it smells like
Christmas!"
I love this time of year myself. Partly because I too
love Christmas! And partly because of the crispness in the air and the
falling leaves, the colors, the smells. I love getting my big sweaters out
and turning on the furnace and getting nice and cozy.
I haven't
lit a fire yet but it's coming!
For those of you still wearing flip
flops and shorts I do hope I haven't offended! :)
I often used to resist the end of summer. I didn't want to put my
closed toed shoes on! I didn't want to have to remember to bring a sweater
with me! I wanted to go and play at the beach! I like the warmth in the
air and the longer days. And I often imagined that with fall I would feel
my energy draining a bit as the days get shorter, mornings are darker and
chillier, things are a bit greyer and wetter to say the least.
In
the past this would be when I would switch from "being good" with food to
"cocooning with food." The shorter days and colder weather would be my cue
and my excuse to do less and stay home and eat more.
I could count
on at least 10 pounds adding to my body weight by the time March brought
spring to my door.
Since I stopped using food to cope that has not been my pattern. Yes, I
do slow down a bit in terms of how much physical activity I do and just
how much I'm out of the house at this time of year. But the big difference
is that I am not turning to food to fill the space and entertain me or to
meet my needs for peace and relaxation.
Over the years I have
developed a number of self-care behaviours that are now just second nature
and I enjoy them so much I miss them when they are not a part of my daily
life. It is to these things that I turn when I am feeling housebound and
restless or need to diffuse some energy or emotion.
Where I used
to turn to food and then experience the guilt and anxiety that that coping
strategy would create, I now turn to things that fulfill me like playing
my guitar, writing, reading, yoga, meditation, corresponding with friends,
playing with my son, taking the time to make a nice meal, and believe it
or not: cleaning my house! Yes, even house cleaning feels good to me now
because it provides me with an aesthetically pleasing space and I get to
see immediate results for my work.
In the past the only thing that
soothed me at this time of year as I looked forward to the colder, darker
days, was food: What I was eating, or what I was going to eat later on.
That was the best I could do for myself then because I still didn't
understand that food was just a coping strategy. I sure didn't understand
what was triggering me to eat when I wasn't hungry. And I certainly didn't
have any idea what to do instead.
The pull to eat was so strong.
Even when I began this process of recovery and knew there was something
else I "could" do, I felt the need for food to cope so strongly that I
would offer myself the semi-conscious invitation to try a new tool and
quickly shut it down with a "next time" or "not right now, after I will!"
After the binge that is. But it took me quite some time to actually follow
through on that promise to myself. I needed to heal from my past trauma
and I needed to begin to create a life for myself in the present that felt
safe and nurturing. That takes a bit of time.
When I was ready I
let go of food and let some of the other behaviours I mentioned earlier
take its place. Instantly I felt more mature, respectful, responsible and
loving of myself. My trust in myself and my integrity grew with every
experience of witnessing myself turning to a new pattern of behaviour and
not defaulting to the old.
Fall used to symbolize darkness and isolation for me. It used to
guarantee me many episodes of overeating and a 10 pound weight gain.
Now it symbolizes rest and relaxation. A time to settle into the
home a bit more and put the pumpkin spice oil in the diffuser.
So,
whether you have always embraced fall with open arms or whether you have
felt some resistance to its coming, I wish you a wonderful fall and a cozy
and contented winter.
Michelle Morand, Founder and Director of The
CEDRIC Centre.
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Ask A Counsellor: Beth Burton-Krahn & Michelle
Morand |
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Question: How do I stop obsessing about weight and body issues?
Beth's Answer:
At the Cedric center we realize that our cultural
training has trained all of us in the "diet mentality" which basically
means that rather than look at the issues in our life, we would rather
deal with our weight and body image issues. It is the perfect distraction.
We are also a profoundly visual culture and the body is a wonderful place
to put all of our negativity and self-judgement. As in, if my body looks
good ( as defined by my culture) then I will give myself permission to be
happy.
Any slight deviation from the billboard model example of
beauty means we are destined to a life of harsh self-judgement and
punishment. So, we climb aboard the "body obsession" tread-mill, and it
isn't until we finally get sick and tired of the empty promises of fad
diets and quick fixes that we realize there is more to this whole picture
than just the body and what it looks like.
Just the fact that you are asking this question is a very positive
sign. You are beginning to realize that this weight and body issue
business is not bringing any piece of mind. You are starting to look
underneath the "distraction" to the needs and wants underneath.
Congratulations to you! This process of recovery from the diet mentality
is only achieved by going below the surface of your food/body issues to
the feelings/thoughts/behaviours underneath. In other words, you begin to
look at your life as a whole.
You begin to ask yourself questions: "What do I care about" "What
brings me joy", " What matters to me?", "Who do I want to spend my time
with?" "What type of work do I want to do?" "How do I want to spend my
time?" And on and on. You begin to form a relationship with yourself. You
cultivate compassion and acceptance towards yourself so that you can begin
to carve out the type of life you want to live. A life based on conscious
choice. Not someone elses' idea of what your life should look like, but
YOUR life.
It is by doing this work that the stranglehold of the "diet mentality"
loosens and you will then see your body as something you want to treat
with respect. You will see yourself from a perspective of being healthy,
rather than looking a certain way. This is a radical shift. I wish you
well on your journey.
Michelle's response:
The answer to how to stop obsessing about
weight and body issues is to begin to acknowledge to yourself any time you
notice those thoughts coming up, that they are simply coping strategies.
Those negative thoughts are triggered by something else in your world,
past, present or future that you just experienced or thought of. I
guarantee it.
As long as you are giving any energy to those
negative food and body thoughts you will continue to focus on the symptom
of your problem and your underlying, triggering problem will never be
solved. Not only that but your obsessive thoughts of food and body will
soon become their own problem and they take over your consciousness.
Unchecked, those thoughts will come to feel like absolute truths and like
who you are rather than simply something you have learned to tell yourself
or to focus on when you feel overwhelmed.
If you are using food and body image focus to cope it means that you
must first have taught yourself to tune out to what you are feeling
through the coping strategies of alexithymia (disconnect from your
emotions) and depression and that all that you are left with in the way of
emotions (for the most part) is that niggling discomfort that I call "the
permeating level of anxiety." And nothing leads us to use food to cope
more than knowing that we are feeling anxious but not knowing why! Our all
or nothing thinking kicks in and tells us that it must be something big
and bad and that we are responsible. If we don't feel capable of handling
whatever "it" is, we leave ourselves no choice but to numb out with our
primary coping strategy: Food and body focus.
Your all or nothing
thinking, and your disconnect from your feelings must be attended to in
order for you to be in the present moment and feel grounded and safe; not
needing food and body image focus to cope.
The solution is to notice when you are focusing negatively on food and
body and to ask yourself what else is going on in my world right now; what
past event or future event might I just have thought of that would trigger
me to feel overwhelmed and to need my food and body focus coping strategy?
Ask that question and you will come to see that when you are focusing on
food and body negatively there is always something underneath that needs
your attention.
You will also come to see that when you attend to
those underlying things you feel more grounded and solid in you and less
overwhelmed on the whole. You'll also notice that your focus on food and
body diminishes in direct proportion to the amount of energy you put into
healing those past painful experiences and in creating a life in this
moment that is filled with love and compassion.
Food is not the
problem. And the more that you remind yourself of that fact any time you
start to have restrictive or judgmental thoughts of food and of your body
the faster you will make it through the recovery process and to the other
side where freedom and peace are waiting for you.
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Quotes for your reflection |
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I am changing up our "Quotes" section a bit this week to speak to a
great movie that you must see: The Secret.
The Secret is available
on line for purchase or you can download it and view it on your computer.
The web address is www.thesecret.com
The message of the secret is very powerful. It speaks to the power of
intention and the power of thought. The concepts of quantum physics,
energy, and attraction are covered so completely and so clearly that you
will begin to see many things very differently and to feel more empowered
in your life than ever before.
A few great quotes from the movie that resonate deeply with me
are:
"Do not focus on what you don't want, put your focus on what
you do want."
"What is it that you wish to create in your life?"
"The
experience of imagining yourself already having that which you desire
brings your energy and thoughts into alignment and creates the space for
that which you desire to manifest itself now."
"Let go of needing to know how things will manifest in your
life. Instead just know that they will manifest and let your thoughts be
thoughts of gratitude for those things that are coming to you."
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Yoga is here! |
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I know this article was in last week's newsletter, and I'm inlcuding it
again for those of you who didn't see it so you'll know about our great
new yoga classes. Do drop in for the free, check out Deb session on the
19th.
The CEDRIC Centre is so pleased, at long last, to be offering weekly
yoga classes in our very own movement space with our very special
colleague, Deb Moncur.
Below is a little write up that Deb prepared to
let you know a bit about her and about the classes. If you are at all
interested in trying one out or in signing up for the whole set please
e-mail us or phone and we'll get you registered.
Hello Cedric Center Newsletter Readers, I have been teaching yoga in
workshops and privately with Cedric Center clients for the past few years.
Michelle has invited me to begin to do regular classes in the new yoga
space beginning this September, so we plan to have a Tuesday evening class
5:30-7pm (or 6-730pm) whichever time is most popular and a Wednesday
morning class 11:00 am - 12:30 pm each week.
We plan to keep the class
sizes small and intimate, with lots of personal attention. We would like
to offer 12 weeks of classes in the fall, broken into two 6 weeks sets.
The cost of each set will be $72.00
First set:
Tuesday pm September 26 - October 31 6
weeks
Wednesday am September 27 - November 1 6 weeks
Second
set:
Tuesday pm November 7- December 12 6 weeks
Wednesday am
November 8 - December 13 6 weeks
I would like to have a open house on Tuesday September 19 at 7pm so
that anyone interested could come and see the new yoga space, meet me, and
do a short ½ hour yoga class. To get a taste.
In my classes, I love to teach about "undoing" because in our
culture so much is about "doing", striving and fitting into a structure.
WE will be easing and stretching muscle, breathing and opening joints,
allowing our spines to find their length.
Yoga is about balance so
there will be a variety of experience, moving our bodies in an extensive
range of motion, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting or lying down.
Everyone can practice at their own pace. This is a gentle restorative
practice, very much about moving in mindfulness. And there will be time
for relaxation, where we can heal at deep levels.
I think that the way
I teach yoga is very much in line with the philosophy of the Cedric
Center. So I hope you will join me! Namaste Deborah
Doesn't that sound GREAT!?
If you'd like to sign up for the
sessions or reserve a spot for the introductory evening on the 19th let us
know, we'd love to have you take part.
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Tools for Recovery |
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Hello, this week I want to pick up where we left off a month ago with
the Drill Sgt. and that anxious feeling. We were talking about core
beliefs; what yours are and where they came from. For homework I had asked
you to pay attention to times when you felt that permeating level of
anxiety or noticed the drill sgt. chiming in with one of those nasty old
core beliefs.
I asked you to pay attention to that because it is
important to see what people or situations trigger your negative self-talk
and anxiety. You see, the more aware you are of those pieces the more
clear it becomes to you that your negative self-talk is a coping strategy.
It is simply a tool that you use to try to create a sense of control and
security in a situation which triggers you to feel unsettled.
It might be that the person is critical or judgmental of you or that
their energy is often depressed or negative. It might be that the
situation or the relationship is new and you are still finding your
footing in it and therefore, naturally feeling a little insecure. Or, it
could be that you entered into that situation or relationship with
negative thoughts in your head from an event earlier that day, week, year,
lifetime; or you are thinking of something coming up in the future and it
is a little overwhelming so you feel naturally anxious and uncertain.
At the start of your recovery process and while you are learning
to be connected to your feelings and needs in the present, there are lots
of reasons for you to be feeling anxious or using your harmful coping
strategies of food and body focus and of old core beliefs. The sooner you
begin to see the correlation between the unsettling present moment
experience, future thought, or memory and your negative self-talk,
feelings of anxiety and use of food and body focus, the sooner you will
catch yourself heading down any of those old harmful paths and redirect
your course to what is really going on.
So for this week, if you are ready to let go of using food to cope and
you are ready to stop having the 24/7 negative chatter from the Drill Sgt.
I challenge you to commit yourself to noticing when you are feeling
unsettled or anxious and instead of letting the Drill Sgt. attach that
feeling to an old core belief about how unlovable, how unacceptable or how
unintelligent you are, ask yourself what just happened in your present, or
what you just imagined from the past or future that might have left you
feeling a little unsettled or uncertain.
Ask that question of
yourself every time you notice you are feeling anxious or having bad body
thoughts or wanting to use food to cope and you will begin to prove to
yourself in a very short period of time that those thoughts and behaviours
truly are just coping strategies. There is always something underlying
that triggers them and the sooner you set about the task of identifying
those underlying triggers and healing them the sooner you'll be free from
the Drill Sgt., the old core beliefs, and the use of food to cope.
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CEDRIC's New Web Page |
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I am very pleased to announce that the CEDRIC Centre's new web page
will be on line as of Friday the 22nd of September.
Our new web
page will feature new pages on a variety of topics related to healing your
use of food to cope. It will also contain new pages on our yoga,
mindfulness, homeopathy, specialized fitness and our intensive healing
retreats.
Our new products will be featured as well. You will be able to read
lots of information about each of our DVD's, CD's, Workbooks and our book
Food is not the Problem: Deal With What is, which will all be available
for purchase on-line.
Our goal is to provide you with as many
options as possible to explore your healing journey. We know that
individual counseling or group counseling is not right for everyone or
that perhaps starting with those pieces can feel a bit daunting. It is our
hope that those of you who would like to receive support from us at this
time will find a blend of these products and services that works for your
specific needs.
Please let us know what you think of our new web
page in terms of content and ease of navigation. We welcome your feedback.
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B.C. Women's Show |
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Just a reminder, that CEDRIC will have a booth at the BC Women's show
on the 23rd and 24th of September.
We will have copies of our
DVD's and CD's there for you to sit and watch or listen to. Take a load
off and visit with us for a while.
Also, I'll be giving a
presentation called "Freedom From Food" at noon on Sunday.
We look
forward to seeing some familiar faces next weekend so do pay us a call if
you're at the show. And if you're a reader of our newsletter whom we
haven't yet met in person, do stop by and introduce yourself to Karen and
I. We'd love to meet you.
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