1. 1.  We often (usually) don’t even know what we truly feel and want and need. We might know something doesn’t feel right or good or okay but we have our inner critic immediately judging our feelings and so we mistrust our emotions just as we mistrust our hunger and fullness cues.
2. We are scared crapless to piss people off! Let’s just admit it! We don’t want to upset anyone. We don’t want to be the bad guy. We don’t want anyone saying anything about us that isn’t nice and warm and fuzzy. And so we bail on ourselves.

And just in case you’re still wondering if this applies to you: If you have any food and body image stress, or if you binge, or struggle with restriction (dieting or anorexia or orthorexia (an obsession with eating “clean”), or purging (through exercise, laxatives, or vomiting) you can guarantee that you have a high dose of co-dependent training. 

Likewise, people who struggle with alcohol use, anger management, isolation and procrastination have had the same training. In other words, you’re in great company, only it’s like the plague – everyone’s got it but you really don’t want it!  Good news, there’s lots you can do to change that and to step free of that way of thinking completely and for good.

That’s what the CEDRIC Centre does for you. We help you to have greater clarity on what exactly is not working in your life and why and exactly what you can do about it to create lasting change in all areas of your life.

Simply Put:

• The number one thing that will make your healing journey take longer than it needs to, is your unwillingness to be honest with yourself.  
• The number two thing is your unwillingness/fear to be honest with others.

Both need to be addressed and overcome in order for you to have the self-esteem and self-respect that you need in order to feel safe and secure in the world and to trust yourself to have integrity regardless of where you are or whom you’re with.  And in case you’re wondering, it is impossible to get over your stressful relationship with food and feel comfortable in your own body without that.  This is because your current use of food to cope (as well as any problems with anxiety or depression, isolation or procrastination) stems from a lack of trust and confidence in yourself to take care of yourself first; a lack of trust that you will not compromise yourselves for others.

This has to change in order for you to feel peaceful enough and to feel good enough about yourself to only engage in behaviours that will enhance your life. It’s that simple.

So, if you’re ready to create lasting change let’s begin.

First know that it is always – and I mean always – easier than you think it will be to identify what you really think and feel and it always goes better than you think it will and produces greater results than you expect when you are respectfully and appropriately honest with others.

I have been working with clients directly around these issues for over 17 years and have seen this to be true time and time again for my clients as well as in my own personal life.

For this week, let’s start by exploring #1: Being honest with ourselves about what we truly feel and need.  This is easier than #2 and it naturally leads to greater comfort with being honest with others.

1. Notice when you want to eat and aren’t hungry or are telling yourself you can’t have what you want even if you are hungry. (You can also do this exercise by asking yourself to notice when you’re feeling anxious/insecure/embarrassed/ashamed if you find that easier to notice right now.)
2. Then ask yourself what you were just thinking. Don’t censor it. Allow yourself to be as petty and small as you can be; express your worst fears and criticisms to yourself honestly. No one else needs to know. And just so you know, allowing yourself to be honest about what you’re truly thinking and feeling in any situation doesn’t ‘attract more of it’ like the magical thinkers believe. You’re already thinking and feeling that way.

Whether you are honest with yourself or not you’re being impacted by those thoughts and feelings and the only way to completely step free of them is to:

• be honest that they are there, see why there are there and either see them as flawed and irrational, thereby immediately freeing yourself of them; or
• see them as having some basis in fact thereby creating an opportunity to for you consciously resolve the problem and never have to deal with it again. 

The ostrich approach (if I don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t happening) has never served you at all. In fact it’s why you are where you are.

The clients who move the fastest through this process are those who are willing to let themselves be honest with themselves about their true fears and feelings. Those who try to be politically correct or “good,” “nice,” “not attract bad ‘ju ju’ through thinking unkind/base thoughts,” stay stuck on the surface of their awareness, repeating old patterns, feeling more fake and phony and stuck every day.

Do your best to be honest and then, when you have written out what you really think/feel/fear/need in any situation, ask yourself:

“What am I telling myself about that, which makes me judge it as bad/wrong/petty/needy?”

And then ask,

“Where does that story come from?”

And,

“Why do I think they are right and my own needs, thoughts, and feelings are wrong?”

You will learn a great deal about yourself in this way.

And if you’d like to take this a step further and get some support to change this way of thinking and the way you relate to food and to others as well, please email or call. My team and I would be happy to help.

Love

Repeated patterns are a window to your needs. For every pattern you repeat, for example: overeating, purging, or restriction, there is a need which is being met within you. Your inability to change the undesirable pattern has nothing to do with lack of willpower or discipline. The pattern is merely a symptom of a deeper problem. If you direct your efforts only at attempting to eliminate the symptom without putting effort into understanding and dissolving its cause, you are setting yourself up for a very fatiguing and defeating battle.

Awareness is the first step in changing any behaviour. You must first become aware that you are doing something which is detrimental to your values and life plan. Resistance is often your immediate reaction to becoming aware of what you are doing and why. This makes perfect sense. You have lived your life with a certain set of behaviours and beliefs. Given this, change, even if desired on some level, often feels less like innovation and more like annihilation of your entire existence as you know it. You wonder what will be left of you, your relationships and the life you know, when you have made the changes necessary to free yourself of this debilitating behaviour. This really means: when you are fully aware of the underlying need that led you to execute this behaviour, will you still choose the people and things you have chosen thus far? From this perspective, change can look very scary and the outcome very lonely. This is why so many of us have to hit our own personal “rock bottom” before we are ready to challenge old, harmful patterns of thoughts and behaviours. You must reach a place where you say, “I don’t care what the outcome is. Just make it stop!”

And yet, questioning what life will look like when you are “done” is a wise and significant thing to do. It implies that you know you can change, and on some level you know that your current behaviour is providing you with a way of remaining in an uncomfortable situation without having to fully feel the discomfort being generated. In other words, you know you are numbing yourself to certain aspects of your life, and, because you have chosen this approach to problems for so many years, it is a little scary to imagine being fully present and aware. You are saying that you want your life to be different but are fearful of how this change might appear. This sounds reasonable, from the perspective of the person who has yet to experience the benefits of the change and can only imagine the void which will remain by the removal of the old behaviour. Until you have experienced the pleasure and freedom that is created by letting go of the old pattern, you are naturally going to have some discomfort and doubt about the change.

It is human nature to seek familiarity and feel comforted by it. Often, even when the familiar behaviour is harmful to your essence and prevents you from fulfilling your dreams, you will cling to it because of the comfort provided by the familiar. This very tendency in all humans is why lasting change must happen gradually. When you demand immediate and complete change, you deny yourself time to learn the lessons that the problem or situation you have created is meant to teach. And you certainly don’t have a solid base or foundation in place to feel secure as you move into unfamiliar territory. This means you are likely to flounder and find yourself returning to your old familiar behaviour when things get a little challenging. This can leave you feeling defeated and hopeless.

Just think of any diet or “nutritional plan” you have tried. You no doubt discovered that your attempts to heal your relationship with food and body-image focus, prior to understanding the cause, set you up to have short-term success. Your success could last only for as long as you did not require those coping strategies, that is, as long as nothing in day-to-day life upset your apple cart! This is why, at the pinnacle of our Diet Mentality, many of us can stick to a diet or some form of restrictive behaviour for only about 12 hours! Max! You can be “good” during the day when you are busy, out and about or in front of others, but when you get home, or the chores of the day are mostly attended to, you decompress with food and the whole cycle repeats itself. If the underlying trigger that leads you to use food to cope is unattended, you will be in trouble when something happens that you hadn’t planned for, or didn’t happen the way you had hoped. The feelings and unmet needs, which naturally and appropriately get triggered in those life situations, currently drive you to restrict, binge or purge to cope.

To be successful in changing an old coping strategy, you must have the confidence of knowing that a nurturing force is standing by, ready to catch you when you start to naturally default into those old patterns. And this force must be predominantly found within. Building a solid, nurturing, supportive and understanding relationship with yourself can take some time as it would with others; however, you will begin to see the benefits of this stronger and more supportive internal relationship immediately, in your awareness of what you are thinking, feeling and needing in that moment and in your ability to respond to those thoughts, feelings and needs respectfully and appropriately.

With a greater sense of trust, security and awareness of yourself rather than the impatience your Drill Sgt. was throwing your way, you will feel a sense of relief which allows you to relax and trust yourself to make life-enhancing and dignified choices around food, yourself and others.

And know this as well: you own this process of change. It does not own you. You can take it as fast or as slow as you like and as you have time and space for. You can look at as much “stuff” and be as aware as you want at any given time, and you can make as many changes as you wish; furthermore, you can return to your previous comforting behaviour whenever you feel the need for the old numbing peace that it brings. Soon, you will naturally find that the old, comfortable coping behaviour no longer fits. It just doesn’t feel right any more. It is not who or where you want to be, nor will you really feel the need to find “security” this way. You will naturally choose not to use it, opting to engage in thoughts, feelings, and behaviours which you have had some practice with and that are coming to feel so much more respectful and natural, so much more “right” – on a gut level than that old coping strategy ever did or ever could. You have found yourself. You have found peace. 

Love

Travelling with an Eating Disorder – Part I

Travelling with an Eating Disorder – Part II

Travelling with an Eating Disorder – Part III

Part I

Traveling with an eating disorder packs a triple whammy for the already beleaguered spirit in desperate need of true rest and relaxation. Whether you struggle with dieting, overeating, purging or a general dissatisfaction with your physical form that prevents you from settling peacefully into the moment, a vacation can be a stress-filled experience that makes you want to just stay at home instead with the covers pulled high.

Travelling with an Eating Disorder – Part II

Travelling with an Eating Disorder – Part III

By Michelle Morand

This is Part III of an article on navigating travel and vacation time in the easiest most relaxed way when you’re still on the path to recovery from the use of food to cope (ie. overeating, restricting, purging, or that annoying diet mentality).

In a nutshell, if you’re not feeling compassion for yourself and the others that you’re interacting with in that moment (whether in your mind or in reality), you’re in all or nothing thinking. It’s that simple.

You may want to read that last statement a few times to make sure it sinks in.  Then read on.

You can test this theory for yourself over the next few days any time you notice that you’re feeling anything other than peaceful.

Whenever you notice you’re feeling anxious or unsettled; judgmental of yourself or others; blaming; resentful; impatient; etc., or using your food coping strategy (which is a clear indicator that you’re overwhelmed) simply stop and ask yourself:

“What am I telling myself about this situation or person that is creating this distress?”

Then stop and think, really think, about what you just told yourself.  Is it true?  Are you certain?

You will always identify that you have just been telling yourself an all or nothing story.

It could be that you’re telling yourself that something has to be done a certain way or by a certain time.  It could be that you’re telling yourself that someone should be doing something in a different way or conversely that they should not be doing something that they are doing.  And this story that you’re telling yourself could be about the past, the present or the future.  You could be engaged in telling yourself that something about the past should be different or that something about the future should not be as you imagine it will.  Either way, you’re in all or nothing thinking.

That may be hard to swallow. At first glance these stories may not seem like all or nothing thinking, they seem like absolute truths. Of course they do.  That’s the problem. You believe they are true and so you don’t even question whether the story you’re telling yourself might actually be the old all or nothing thinking.

The good news is that if you are at all open to the possibility that I might be right you can prove it to yourself very quickly.

First, consider for a moment what it means to be compassionate.  It means you are open; accepting; loving; understanding; strong; clear; direct; and peaceful.  In order to really live compassion you must have a solid and strong core of love, trust and respect for yourself.  In other words you have to have great self-esteem. You have to be solid enough in yourself that you don’t need things outside yourself to be a certain way in order for you to be grounded and happy.  Then you can be truly compassionate.

Conversely, if you’re in the all or nothing thinking pattern it implies that you are conditionally loving; rigid; fearful; and anxious.  It also means that in some areas you’re still seeking to meet your needs for security and for acceptance through people or situations outside of yourself. This is inherently dangerous and doomed to fail. You are dependent on the moods and behaviours of others, many of whom will be also looking for their security and approval through others.

If your compassion for someone or some situation falls apart as soon as they don’t comply, or things don’t happen the way you expect or want, you can bet you got sucked in to all or nothing thinking and telling yourself a story that things should be a certain way. That’s not compassion that’s conditional acceptance.  It will only lead to more anxiety and more use of food to cope (or whatever your primary coping strategy is).

If you really want to expose and shift this harmful pattern of thinking, and live more peacefully, commit to writing down your thoughts when you feel anxious or distressed. Try it at least once a day for the next week.  Seeing these thoughts on paper makes it so obvious that you’re in all or nothing and what you need to do to shift into a more peaceful, compassionate way of thinking.

And if you’re resistant to writing these thoughts out check to see if there is any all or nothing thinking in your resistance: EG. “I know that this is true, it’s not all or nothing, so I’m not going to write this one down.”  Or “I don’t want anyone to read my writing to I can’t write it down.” Or “I don’t have time.”

These are all all or nothing statements.

If you need a prompt once you’ve got your current thought down and are having a hard time seeing the all or nothing in it try this:

“What am I telling myself is absolutely going to happen?”  or “What am I telling myself should be a certain way right now?”

Then ask yourself: “What are some other possibilities?”  “Could I allow for the possibility that one of those scenarios is equally as likely as the first one?”

Inevitably you’ll be able to come up with a few other potential explanations or outcomes that feel more relaxed and open (compassionate).  Notice whether you reject those in favour of the old all or nothing story.  Notice if you would rather be anxious and distressed in your old story than open and peaceful in a new and unfamiliar one.

So, if this resonates with you and you want to do a piece of work on your old thought patterns, paste this statement on your fridge:

If I’m not peaceful I’m in all or nothing thinking.

And then prove it to yourself.

Love,

In order for you to completely understand why you do what you do and what you can do to begin to think, and therefore, behave, differently, I’ve put together a kind of step-by-step flow of logic that will help your brain shift out of confused, stuck thinking and into rational, reasonable thoughts that will influence you to behave in ways that will enhance all aspects of your life. ’Cause, let’s face it, you know that some of the things you do aren’t the best choices, you may even have tried to stop or cut back or make some big lifestyle changes. But if you haven’t understood what’s really driving you to do those things in the first place, you can’t be successful for long, and instead will likely feel more stuck and hopeless rather than inspired and confident.

If you’re at all a believer in the concept that your thoughts create your reality, the following logic flow will help you to feel more solid and grounded in clear thinking. This means you will be confidently more present in the world and able to enjoy your food, drink, exercise, free time, and socializing more while being less likely to use any of those substances and behaviours to cope with stress or emotions such as anxiety, anger, insecurity or sadness.

The following is a list of basic premises you must accept in order to heal from any stressful patterns of thinking and behaving and live life to the fullest. I encourage you to read this over on a daily basis for a week and you’ll be amazed at the shifts that occur in your relationship with yourself and with others, with little or no effort on your part.

Premise #1:

Every human being has needs.

Having needs doesn’t make you “needy,” it makes you human. Anyone who has ever implied otherwise to you is someone who is simply uncomfortable with the vulnerability and dependence that the meeting of needs naturally requires. The greatest sense of peace, trust, and safety that a human being can experience in their lives comes from being able to trust in your ability to meet the majority of your own needs and from feeling confident in your right and ability to ask for others to help you meet your needs too. You are entitled to take care of yourself. You are entitled to ask for help. If someone says “no,” it doesn’t mean you were wrong to ask or that that person doesn’t care. Nor does it mean you won’t get that need met. It simply means it doesn’t work for that person, at that time, to meet your need.

Premise #2:

All humans, (whether they like to admit it or not) have the same needs overall and they need to be met in ascending order of priority to our survival.

Our needs for food, air, water and rest come first innately. Without these for any length of time and we’re going to suffer grave consequences, likely death. So naturally, these are the first priority.

Then come our needs for physical safety and security. By this we mean a safe, consistent place to live (we don’t move around a lot); no real or threatened harm to our physical safety or that of anyone we care about; and financial security.

The next natural priority is our need for emotional safety in our bonds with key people (primary caregivers, extended family, peers, teachers, community at large). In order for us to come out of our family of origin feeling confident in ourselves as lovable, worthy, and deserving beings, we need to see that the key people in our lives speak and behave towards us in ways that demonstrate respect, caring, kindness, and acceptance.

Then comes our need for positive self-regard, a.k.a self-esteem. Self-Esteem naturally flows from feeling safe and secure in our world and in our bonds with others. The extent to which we felt that sense of safety and security emotionally and physically will be the extent to which we see ourselves as lovable, capable, worthy human beings who are equal to all others.

And lastly, our needs for self-actualization, the realization of our full potential as a human being, must be met. Whatever our gifts or natural abilities are, the meeting of our lower level needs for physical wellness, emotional and physical security and self-esteem ensures that we have the strength and support to achieve them.

Premise #3:

Given that all people have these needs, whether they acknowledge it or like it or not, it naturally follows that these needs are natural and appropriate.

This means that your needs are not right or wrong or too much – they just are. The way you attempt to meet those needs may be effective or ineffective; life-enhancing or harmful, but the needs themselves cannot be judged as right or wrong with any rational mind. They are a natural part of being human.

Premise #4:

Anxiety is a natural and appropriate signal from within that we have needs that are not being met.

Whenever any of our natural, basic human needs are not met, our senses send a chemical signal through our body to bring our attention to this need. We humans call this signal: Anxiety. Thus, when we feel anxious it is a statement from our instincts that some need is not being met. In our culture we have been taught to judge anxiety as bad or ourselves as “over-sensitive” or having an “anxiety disorder” when we are anxious often or when we are anxious in inconvenient circumstances. In truth, your anxiety is trying to get your attention and tell you that something isn’t feeling right.

Premise #5:

The appropriate human response to this sensation of anxiety is to stop and identify the situation that has triggered an unmet need then take appropriate action to meet that need. In so doing you will return, as quickly and effortlessly as possible to a state of peace.

This state of peace is your indicator that your needs are met in that moment. We could therefore say that anytime you are feeling anything other than peaceful, it is an indicator that you have unmet needs. This awareness of peace as an indicator of met needs and anxiety as an indicator of unmet needs makes it much easier for you to identify when things are going well and when you need to take some action to resolve some problem.

Premise #6:

Your naturally occurring unmet needs will trigger you to have a thought that will naturally trigger an emotional response which naturally triggers you to behave in some way that meets that need or that help you to tune out to the awareness that you have an unmet need.

Thus, it can be asserted that our needs naturally trigger a sensation within us, I call it ‘the niggle.’ This niggle can be a slight feeling that something is up, such as we might experience if we’re a little hungry or need to return a phone call sometime that evening. It can also feel like full blown panic if someone or something is cutting off our airway for example.

The key point here again is that if we are feeling anything other than peaceful it is an indicator that we have needs that aren’t being met. This niggle is meant to be instantly acknowledged by us and acted on so that our need gets met quickly and we feel peaceful again.

The triggering need and corresponding niggle will naturally trigger a thought (“Something is up”). The way we then assess (think about) the stressful situation and our ability to handle it well, becomes the story we tell ourselves about whether our need will get met or not and what we need to do to meet it.

This story about our ability to get that need met naturally triggers an emotion (anxiety, anger, sadness, joy), which naturally triggers a behavioural reaction: We, like all other humans on the planet, are meant to do something to meet that need.

Premise #7:

If the behavioural reaction we choose actually meets the need we feel peaceful and experienced an enhanced sense of trust in ourselves and heightened self-esteem. If the behavioural reaction we chose did not meet our need we will typically respond in one of two ways:

1. If we have high self-esteem we will naturally feel some frustration that our efforts were unsuccessful but we will trust that there is a solution and that we are capable of finding it. We will seek to understand what it was that didn’t work and find an alternative solution either on our own or with help from others. In other words, we don’t give up. We aren’t ashamed to admit we don’t know all the answers and we freely ask for help. We keep looking for a solution until we know we have exhausted all possibilities. Then we grieve, accept the situation and move on. It does not undermine our overall sense of ourselves as a good, worthwhile, competent human being.

1. If our self-confidence is lacking and we doubt our “okay-ness” we have less likelihood of seeking help outside ourselves and therefore, of finding the most effective and simple solution. In other words, we don’t want to admit we aren’t “perfect;” that we don’t know something or that we couldn’t figure it out and thus we make things 10 times harder than they need to be. This resistance to admitting our needs and to asking for help; to being vulnerable and dependent on another, leads to a greater level of anxiety and distress (often growing into depression) as our needs go unmet and our judgement of ourselves and our fears of being judged by others grow.

It is likely, in this fearful frame of mind, that we have told ourselves that there was only one solution to the meeting of our need, the one we tried first, and it didn’t work. Therefore, we will naturally feel increasingly anxious and frantic as not only do we still have the initial unmet need to contend with but now we have a story, repeating in our brain, that we “tried and failed,” “WE failed.” This story is naturally triggering increasing feelings of fear and sadness (which often manifest themselves as anger towards others or towards ourselves.)

If the need goes unmet for long enough, or is a lower level need for emotional or physical security, or food, air, water or rest, and thus imperative to our sense of overall security and well-being in the world, we will begin to feel overwhelmed by the chronic sensations of anxiety. We will get stuck in a loop of stories of impending doom and failure, triggering more anxiety (and, if longstanding, depression), which triggers increasingly ineffective behavioural responses to help us cope with the anxiety that we feel unable to relieve completely.

Recall that thoughts trigger emotions which trigger a behavioural response. These thoughts can be rational or irrational and our corresponding behavioural response can be helpful or harmful to our overall well-being.

Premise #8

When we feel fearful of asking for help and feel anxious because we feel stuck in our efforts to meet our needs, we begin to try to distance ourselves from our lives and from others who might judge or reject us “if they really knew us.” To do this we naturally engage in harmful coping strategies such as alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, binge eating, dieting, gambling, sex addiction, relationship addiction, raging, overspending, and physical abuse among others.

If we are thinking irrationally, we get stuck in a “learned helplessness loop” where we believe that: Because we were unsuccessful in our initial attempt(s) to solve our problem and meet our needs, there is no solution.

Therefore, we believe that we just have to try and cope with the situation and the feelings it triggers. We devise psychological, emotional and physical strategies to distract us from the situation and the anxiety it is naturally and appropriately distressing us.

We give up on any long term solution and settle for short term relief/preoccupation/distraction. The old problem remains and now we have a new one too which usually has ramifications on our physical, emotional and mental health as well as on our finances and relationships.

These harmful coping strategies trigger unmet needs of their own because of the harm we do to ourselves physically and emotionally, and often, to others through these behaviours. This triggers even more thoughts of helplessness and an even greater sense of distress and stuck-ness, triggering a faster and faster return to the harmful coping behaviour each time and creating greater and greater anxiety and unmet needs overall.

This explains why, whenever you’ve tried in the past to stop a certain behaviour that you know isn’t good for you, you end up doing it more! If you haven’t identified the underlying needs you were seeking to meet through that behaviour in the first place and they are still unmet and you’ll still need to use your coping behaviour, regardless of your best intentions. It’s just that simple.

You have got to have some solution in place to meet the original unmet needs before you can successfully take away the behaviour or substance that you’ve been using to cope with the stress that those needs create. You can’t just exchange one coping behaviour for another and expect to be successful in relieving your anxiety or depressed feelings.

Premise #9:

In contrast the assumption we live from when we think rationally is: There is a solution, and if I can’t find it, I simply need to find someone to help.

Regardless of how it may seem, it is true that there is a solution to your problem in all but the most dire situations (terminal illness for example) but even in this case, thinking rationally we can accept the reality of the circumstance, “I have a terminal illness,” and then set about finding solutions to enhance the quality of life we have left.

If we are thinking clearly, and we were unsuccessful in our attempt to meet a need, we naturally do one of 3 things:

Either reassess our initial strategy to see if it will work if implemented in a different way;

• Try a different approach altogether;
• Or ask for help/guidance.

One way or another, the problem gets solved. We do not undermine our self-esteem by telling ourselves WE are failures. This is a learning experience. We learn the lesson and move on. As long as we are learning from our life experiences, we are doing life right!

Premise #10:

Therefore, when you have been taught to think in a learned helplessness way and not in a confident, self-trusting way, you will naturally engage in harmful patterns of behaviour such as: overeating, dieting, overspending, procrastinating, isolation, and compromising yourself for others. These are some of the most common coping strategies that humans will turn to to help them numb out from stressful situations.

Because of our life experiences as young people when our needs for emotional or physical security weren’t met, rather than looking for helpful solutions when we have a problem, we kick in to learned helplessness thinking which triggers more stress and greater anxiety and ultimately an inappropriate/unsuccessful behavioural solution.

So, there you have it! A clear, step by step understanding of why you (and others) do what they do, even when they know they want to stop.

Reminding yourself of this as you go through your day to day life and see yourself engaging in any harmful behaviour, or feeling anything other than peaceful, is the first and most important step in creating deep and lasting change.

I am a firm believer in moderation. I know firsthand from my own binge eating disorder and use of other harmful coping strategies, that once you’re able to identify ways to meet your needs that truly solve the problem, you’ll be able to engage in eating any food, anywhere, anytime, or having some drinks, or going shopping, or having challenging conversations without losing your grip and slipping into old extremes. Instead you’ll be able to feel trusting of yourself to handle situations with respect and dignity for all parties, first and foremost, yourself.

There are some simple tools and strategies that you can add to this newfound understanding that will lead to significant change in longstanding problems within just a few weeks.

If you’re an individual client of The CEDRIC Centre or a member of our web based program you’re already learning what’s really triggering you and what you can do about it. If you’d like to learn more, please visit email me @ mmorand@cedriccentre.com.

Love

This article was originally published in the December 2011 edition of Encompass Magazine.

This question comes up often in my work with clients, and rightly so. There is much confusion about the distinction between co-dependency and the insecurity it fosters and healthy interdependence and the natural and appropriate concern and consideration of others that it contains.

Many spiritual teachers would say that no one can be truly upset with you. They would say that at best people can be upset by the stories they are telling themselves about you that are triggered by their assumptions and projections of who you are and who you should be and by their story that you are responsible for their needs in some way. Thus, when someone is “upset with you” they are merely upset that you are not living up to the projection and stories they have in their heads about what you should or shouldn’t do/say or be.

I will say that I find incredible peace and enjoyment in my relationships with others when, if I notice I’m starting to get angry, hurt or anxious, in relation to someone, I separate my “story” of what someone should or shouldn’t have done from the truth of what they actually did and seek to understand their motivation (ie. the needs they were seeking to meet); discuss with the situation with them from a place of seeking to understand and to be understood (rather than seeking to be ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’); and (in most cases) come to a solution that truly meets both parties needs. In other words, the less I take other people’s behaviour personally and simply see it as their best attempt to meet their own needs in that moment, the happier I am in my relationships and resentments just don’t accumulate.

And, if we find that we have too many differences in values or beliefs in our relationship with someone, we can detach from that person from a place of loving and respecting them for who they are while simultaneously recognizing that we are not a match for partnership/friendship/peer relationship, etc. We don’t have to “reject” or “ostracize” the other person simply because we are not a fit. It is not either or; all-or-nothing.

In my experience, that philosophy only works when you have a few key pieces beneath your belt.

1. You know what your values and principles are and you know that you are honoring them in your relationships with others (regardless of their perception or judgement of you).
2. You are conscious of your intention in your interaction with others and you know that it is/was in alignment with your values and principles. (This provides you with the powerful gift of integrity which provides a sense of solidity, strength and peace that is unparalleled in the human experience).
3. You have the courage and the skills to speak respectfully, clearly, and concisely about what you are feeling and about what you are witnessing in the other person, without taking it on (ie. are you mad at me?), and thus you trust yourself to seek to understand them first, and then to be understood by them (if necessary – I find that often when I truly understand someone else’s intent/thought process that is sufficient for me to let the situation rest).

Because you know what your values and principles are and because you know you acted from your best intention in your interactions with whomever you are relating to, you are not going to feel “bad” or “wrong” or immediately shameful when someone is upset or angry with you. Instead, you will feel a healthy concern for them and for the relationship between you two. You will communicate directly and clearly about what you’re witnessing, you’ll ask questions about what’s going on for the other person, and if you should discover that, unbeknownst to you, you did do something that did not honor your values and principles and did not meet needs for the other person, you’ll offer a full apology:

“I am sorry that I….. I understand how that impacted you (here you clearly state your understanding of the impact of your actions so the other person can hear that you really “get it” or so they can clarify if your understanding isn’t full)….I offer you my reassurance that I won’t do that again (if you can make that commitment – if not, be honest about what you can commit to and why)…Is there anything more that you need from me in order to completely step past this?”

We offer this apology only when we truly feel that we have compromised our own values and principles and acted from a place that is not our best self. We don’t offer this apology when we acted with integrity and it didn’t meet needs for the other person. In that case we offer a statement like this:

“I understand that what I did did not meet needs for X (trust, safety, reliability, friendship, etc.) for you and that you would like some reassurance that I will not do that again. I cannot commit to that. I would like to explain the reason that I did/said what I did/said and see if there is some way that we can both get what we need in ways that feel honoring to us both. Would you be willing to hear my perspective?”

What are we going to feel if the other person doesn’t say yes? Well, if we’re solid in our values and principles and the integrity of our actions, we’re going to feel acceptance, “Oh, well, let me know if you’d like to talk about this another time.”  We may feel some degree of sadness that the other is choosing to misunderstand us and that that means our relationship, at least for now, is compromised to some extent. This is not codependence. This is interdependence. If I were to panic, get hooked on having the other person’s approval and understanding, lose sight of my own values and principles and my own sense of the intention of my actions, in favor of this person’s judgement of me, that is co-dependence.

To be concerned about the quality of your bond with someone; to want to be understood; to desire to be given the benefit of the doubt; to want others to think fondly of you, is healthy, normal human behaviour. We are pack animals after all. We need each other for our survival, physically and emotionally (less and less intimately, as our society develops, but we need each other nonetheless).

Where it turns from healthy concern and interdependence to obsession and co-dependency is when you are willing to compromise your own values and principles and integrity to get someone to like you or to be “happy with you.” Here we have a problem, a big one. This is the place where we will feel anxious most of the time, where we will use food or alcohol or shopping or isolation or procrastination to cope with our feelings of insecurity/anxiety that are triggered by our unmet needs for acceptance and for self-esteem. You see, as long as I am even willing to consider compromising my values and principles (including my self-care) for someone else, I am diminishing my self-esteem, I am deepening my insecurity, and I am actually doing harm to any relationship in which I choose to do that. I am inviting abusive, dysfunctional people into my world.

We only feel uneasy or downright anxious/panicked within when we feel that we have needs that aren’t being met. So if we’re anxious about what’s happening in a relationship or what we think someone is thinking/feeling towards us, it is simply an indicator that we have needs in that situation that aren’t being met (they might be in our head or they might be real). We have to ask ourselves what we are telling ourselves about the needs we have that we believe must get met through this person. This is us putting our happiness and our power in someone else’s hands. We must remind ourselves immediately and frequently that there is never just one person who can meet certain needs for us. There is always an option for you to get needs met from more than one person.

Our responsibility in relationships with others is to honor our values and principles, and to communicate clearly and respectfully. If it seems someone is upset with us, our responsibility is to check in with ourselves as to whether we can identify something we did/said that compromised our values and principles in this relationship and if we can’t, identify any such action within 10 seconds of introspection, we must trust that our intention was good and that any action on our part that “hurt” someone else was either nothing to do with us at all or an unconscious oversight on our part, ie. an accident, a mistake, and we must forgive ourselves and are entitled to forgiveness from others. We let go any self-judgement and just ask the other person what’s up. (This is easy to do when we are clear in the integrity of our actions, less so when we know we have done something that compromised our values – in this latter situation we go to apology #1).

When you know that you honored, to the best of your ability, your values and principles in your actions; when you know that your intention was good and coming from your highest self, you have integrity, you have peace; you have strength within. From this place, you can hear that you inadvertently offended, hurt, angered, frightened someone and you can take full responsibility for that without feeling like you are a bad person, wrong or diminished in any way. Even if it turns out that, unconsciously, you did compromise your values in a certain action, you can take full responsibility and apologize for that without feeling at all diminished or bad. It was a mistake, you did not mean to do it or do it at all consciously. You acknowledge it, you learn from it, and you grow and move on.

A healthy interdependent person will offer empathy and compassion, trusting themselves to set clear boundaries about what they need and thus be able to communicate clearly and respectfully about what isn’t feeling okay to them without shame, blame, or rejection.  When you are clear on your values and principles and the intention behind your actions and you seek to understand the intention of others, you will find that any old co-dependent connections either quickly become interdependent ones or fall away and you are left with connections where people are more interested in taking responsibility for themselves and in having a warm and intimate connection with you than they are in controlling you and in being “right.”

Values, principles and best intention = Integrity = Peace

Have a great week!

Love

For this week +-

Last week we were noticing comparisons, and the week before we were observing the tone we used to speak in certain situations and what it means about how we’re feeling and perceiving ourselves.

I have yet to receive any direct feedback on the comparison recon and will follow up with you on how to make best use of this assignment when I do. So, if you tried the exercise and are just a bit too shy or self-critical to share what you learned, remember you can always share and ask for your personal information to be kept private.

This week I want you to pay special attention to:

1. Any time that you feel silly, small, stupid, or judged.
2. Any time you find yourself imagining a situation in the future where something will happen that you believe will trigger those feelings of insecurity.

When you notice one of those situations (or after the fact when you have time to reflect), ask yourself these questions and see what it is that you are thinking in the moment that is triggering that feeling of insecurity. It isn’t them. And that means you have the power to change it within yourself even if nothing about them changes one iota.

Trust me, just running through this series of questions for one life situation will be incredibly helpful and lead to lasting awareness and greater self-confidence. Do it a number of times for a few different situations and you’ll be amazed at what you discover about your thinking and how much easier it is for you to feel more confident in the world.

Here are the questions to ask:

a) What are you telling yourself that those people/that person think(s) about you?

b) What did they actually do or say? (Not what you interpreted it to mean or assume they mean, but what did they actually do or say? Ie. What would anyone else witnessing the scene agree happened?)

c) What other possible interpretation could there be for their words or actions other than the one you immediately seized upon?

d) What are you telling yourself about that person /those people that makes you give weight to their judgement/perspective? What makes their judgement valid/fair/reasonable/rational?

e) What makes them bigger/better/more right/more worthwhile than you? What makes you less right and less deserving than them?

f) What do they know that you don’t? Really? How do you know that they know that?  How do you think they came by that knowledge? Have you been given the same opportunity to have that knowledge?

g) What would it take for you to be able to perceive judgement from others and to not abandon yourself and side with them?

h) What would you need to know or trust about you, about them, about the world, in order for you to be comfortable putting yourself out there and sharing what you really think/feel and need with others?

Enjoy this exploration. Please do share your experience with me and I’ll offer you some thoughts and suggestions for how to get even more out of this awareness.

Also, if you discover some thoughts or behaviours that you’d like to change, that’s what we’re here for. Contact us for a few sessions and see how quickly things change in all areas of your life.

Love,

Just kidding! We all do it – even the healthiest of us fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others from time to time. If we’re using food to cope or any other harmful coping strategy, I guarantee you, you are spending far more time than is helpful or necessary comparing yourself to others. This exercise will help you notice when you’re getting caught in the comparison game and help you to understand why you do it and how to step free.

Below are some suggestions of things to be noticing over the next week. Email me and tell me what you notice and we’ll have a dialogue about some simple things you can do to feel more confident in your own skin and less attached to what others have or do or think or feel.

We can’t be free of our use of food to cope with stress until we understand where our stress comes from and create effective, life-enhancing ways of thinking and behaving in stressful situations. So, let’s go!

For this week I encourage you to notice, in the moment or after the fact, when you’ve been comparing yourself to someone else in any way. Then take a few minutes to answer the following questions and see what you turn up.

1. What are you telling yourself it means about them that they have X or look like Y?
2. What are you telling yourself it means about you that they have X or look like Y?
3. What difference does it make to your life what someone else’s body looks like?
4. How does someone else’s intellect or (seemingly) natural ability in a certain area affect you? What are you telling yourself you can’t have do or be until you’re like that or have that?
5. How does their financial situation or their romantic situation impact you? What are you telling yourself about yourself and your future and past based on where they are at? How does it really affect your happiness? Your life?
6. Would you truly be happy if everyone on the planet were fatter than you? Uglier than you? Stupider than you? Less successful than you?
7. How does his/her body image or diet, or even what they are eating at this meal, impact your health and wellness?
8. What difference will their self-care or lack thereof make to your health and wellness? If you get diabetes, heart disease, cancer etc. is that in some way going to make them right or wrong or somehow be there fault? Will it make you feel better about your body/illness/longevity or lack thereof if someone else is also ill? Will it make you feel worse if you’re sick and they are not? What difference does it make to your life? How does their health has no ramification whatsoever on the health or longevity of your body? And do you want to continue to be motivated by those thoughts and stories?

Run through these questions at least once this week. You’ll learn a lot. And please do share the outcome and insights you gain with me. Let’s take the stigma out of being imperfect and acknowledge the reality of where we are in our healing and growth and let it be a springboard to learn and grow and heal together.

Love,

Last week I invited you to explore a key piece of reconnaissance. The assignment was as follows:

Notice the different tone in your voice at different times, with different people, and around different topics.

Please review last week’s article if you missed it and give it a try this week, it will help immensely in your recovery.

If you gave the homework a go you likely noticed that your tone and body language changed radically depending on who you were talking to and where and what topic you were covering.

Some adjustment of tone is appropriate given the topic and the location and the person.

Ie. It wouldn’t be appropriate to speak to the bank teller in the same intimate tone that we use for our partner in a tender moment. At least not in most cultures that I know of.

This of course is not to say that we can’t feel love in our heart for everyone we meet and be warm and caring towards them. It is stating though that our emotions naturally come through in our tone.

Time for Some Disordered Eating Recovery Review:

Before we get into looking at a few things that people noticed last week, and dive fully into the next few months of reconnaissance, let me just offer you a brief CEDRIC Philosophy Overview. If you’re new to CEDRIC or even if you’ve been around for a while, in my own recovery experience, you can never be reminded of the basics enough! Another way of saying that is, “If you’re still struggling with food you haven’t yet really got the basics.”

So, here we go!

Our emotions are triggered by our thoughts aka perceptions of:

1. The present situation; and
2. Our past experiences; and
3. Future worries/imaginings;

More specifically, our emotions are triggered by what we are telling ourselves that those past events meant:

• About Us;
• About our worth;
• About our deservedness;
• About our right to have needs;
• About our right to ask for our needs to be met;
• About our right to have and express our emotions; and
• About how we are telling ourselves that those past events are destined to be repeated in the future. I call this the: ‘Past-future loop.’

All of us who use food to cope were at some time in our past either:

• Shamed or berated for our natural expression of ourselves (too loud, too quiet, too emotional, too shy, drama queen, too sensitive, too moody, too angry, etc.); or
• Blamed for things that were either not of our doing (Ie. someone taking their bad mood or lack of planning or stress management skills out on us); or
• Shamed or berated or harmed for things that were purely part of natural learning and development (spilling a glass of juice, making the bed poorly, forgetting our homework etc.).

This sadly, is often a very common part of childhood and, regardless of how justified it may seem on the part of the adult or caregiver who is often the one dishing it out, this judgement and shaming, from the experience of the naturally dependent and powerless child, is truly traumatic.

It actually triggers the flight or fight part of our brain and puts us indefinitely on red-alert, which inside our little body’s and mind’s looks like this:

1. Hyper-vigilance;
2. Anxiety; and
3. The belief that we need to be prepared for that painful event to happen again, only this time, this time we’ll be ready! We’ll get it right and we’ll make them happy and we’ll avoid that pain and we’ll be good boys and girls and perfect and safe and loved, right?

Well…if the problem actually were about a true problem with us, and the person/people on the other end actually were willing to take their share of the responsibility for the relationship, that actually might be true.

Unfortunately, for the most part, it wasn’t really anything “wrong” with you; it wasn’t your fault or your problem and so, sadly, you can’t fix it. No stifling of your true Self is going to make it better because it’s not about you.

But we don’t know that as kids. No one tells us that, typically, at least not until this current generation of little people and balanced parenting styles*, but even then it’s hit and miss because the tools are reliant, not on the kids, but on the adults actually getting them and using them properly and consistently.

As such we get confused and we take it personally. We get so self-conscious, we don’t even know who we are and we get stuck in that past-future loop. The past-future loop naturally, creates a “duck and cover” mentality that means we miss out on many present day circumstances that fly in the face of that old story because we’re so busy expecting the bomb to drop and looking for the bunker in which to hide so that we can avoid the repeat of the old painful experience that our brain (assuming the past is bound to repeat itself) has assured us is bound to come at any moment.

Thus we live in a constant state of hyper-vigilance; the assumption of rejection or betrayal coloring our perception of everything and everyone.

This creates 2 very detrimental outcomes:

1. We miss out on life! It passes us by as we are furiously planning for what we’re going to do or not do in the future in our futile attempt to avoid the pain of the past. The reality is: The past has come and gone. What happens now is truly up to you. And if you’re an adult, the only way the past can be repeated is if you choose it, either through your “duck and cover” approach to life or through conscious choice.

1. We live in a heightened state of anxiety where regular events of the day are enough to send us over the edge into an emotional overreaction (Please know that our reaction is always appropriate for what we’re thinking about the situation but remember, what we’re thinking isn’t entirely about what’s happening now, and therefore it’s not entirely rational, as people in our lives have likely pointed out, perhaps not so respectfully).  This heightened state of anxiety and expectation of betrayal or abandonment is bloomin’ exhausting! You know it! You live it! As did I. And it is, without exception, this heightened stress and the “combat fatigue” that it generates in our daily lives that triggers our need to numb out by whatever source necessary regardless of how rational or effective those strategies might be.

Here’s where it can seem to make sense to handle the stress of that exam tomorrow by:

• Eating a ton of junk food and throwing it up; or
• By pigging out on the whole bucket of ice cream and then spending hours feeling gross and beating the crap out of ourselves mentally;
• By telling ourselves we don’t deserve to eat and getting pissed off at our body for being hungry and keeping us up with “its” hunger pangs;
• Getting drunk;
• Spending money we don’t have; or
• Calling that ex we know isn’t good for us….

In case you’ve forgotten, which if you’re using food to cope, you have:

You are your body, your body is you. You are not disconnected from it, nor can you be except emotionally and psychologically and even then through great energetic effort and at great cost to you.

When you’re using food to cope you’re harming yourself. You’re doing to yourself what was done to you in some way shape and form in the past, and in so doing, you’re keeping that anxiety and stress and that lack of safety alive, even if those people or circumstances are no longer present in your life.

So, we say it “seems to make sense” to binge, purge or restrict, but, well… of course, it doesn’t really make sense when you look at it in the light of day, with a rational mind.

It’s not rational to think stuffing yourself with food will solve the problem we’re having with our partner, our studies, our career or our children, and that’s clear.

But if we’re still doing it that means that at this point, it’s still the best immediate distraction tool we’ve got. And that’s why we’re in the pickle we’re in. We need to check out now, dammit! Fast! And, aside from drugs, alcohol, food addiction, gambling, sex and relationship addiction, extreme sports, and TV (even this needs a little extra something often), what is there that checks us out so quickly?

Not much.

So if I need to check out now because I’m feeling exhausted and overwhelmed from my hyper-vigilance and “duck and cover” approach to life, and the self-judgement that I am heaping on myself 24/7 what am I supposed to do!!!?

Well, in the moment, all you can do is hang on and enjoy the ride. Or hate it. But hang on, either way. And then, when you’re done binging, purging or restricting try something different.

After the numbing/soothing behavior you can begin to use some new tools for thinking about life and about yourself in a rational, true, reality based way so that your stress level naturally dissipates and life becomes not just manageable but safe and pleasurable.

The main point here is that: It`s why you`re eating that`s important, not what you`re eating.

About the Tone:

One of the coping strategies we develop to manage stressful situations or unstable people in our lives is to become little chameleons; modifying our look, our likes and dislikes and even the tone with which we speak, so as to create the greatest likelihood of acceptance and minimize the risk of criticism or abandonment/rejection.

Therefore, as an adult, the tone that you use to speak with certain people and in certain situations tells you a great deal about the stories you’re telling yourself about them vs. you.

A baby tone says “if I ask directly for this you will refuse me, but you won’t be as likely to refuse me if I am a poor, defenseless, child, right?”  I don’t know, what was your lived experience? Who else spoke that way and what did they get away with? How do you feel when people approach you that way? Do you feel respected or manipulated? Does it make you think more or less highly of them? How do you feel in yourself when you do that and what do you think it does to your relationship with that person? Does it engender trust and respect? Or does it create dysfunction and co-dependence (obligation rather than choice) or distance?

A meek/quiet tone says “I don’t want to be held accountable for what I say” and/or “I think you’re going to be mad so I’m going to say this in a way that leaves me room to say ‘I didn’t say that!’  or ‘You didn’t hear me correctly,’ or that demonstrates deference so you are not threatened by me.”

In this mindset, the belief I’m carrying is that if I try to communicate in a meek tone and you respond in anger or annoyance, that tells me it’s not safe to be more honest about what I think, feel and need right now.  At least that’s the old co-dependent training.

The truth is, it is always the safest to be honest! In fact it’s your obligation to yourself and to everyone else that you relate to. No exceptions.

For starters, as an adult you have power you didn’t have as a child. As an adult you can leave, right!? You can walk away, end the conversation, go sleep at a friend’s or in the car for that matter! And if it’s a choice between having someone yell at you or harm you, any of those choices should come before staying or meeting the other person’s needs for dominance and dysfunctional connection.

It is safest to be honest regardless of the situation when you really take a realistic look at the consequences of dishonesty.

For starters you greatly diminish your self-esteem and your sense of trust in yourself to take care of yourself in the world. This only serves to maintain that sense of chronic anxiety and the need for harmful coping strategies to numb out fast!

You also create dishonesty between you and someone else, and regardless of whether they know it or not, the relationship is compromised, resentment and walls start to build and before long you’re so closed off that the relationship is done, when often, a simple direct, boundary setting conversation could have solved the problem completely.

There are many other tones we use to avoid being direct and honest and just asking for what we need. Let me know what you noticed and I’ll offer you a thought or two if you like.

Next week, more reconnaissance, so stay tuned.

And if you’re ready to find an answer to the question “Why am I doing this?”; I encourage you to take the plunge, contact us, and find out.

Love,

*My favorite parenting educator is Barbara Colorosso. I encourage you to read her book “Kids are Worth It!” if you’re the slightest bit interested in being the best parent you can be or if you just want to find out what the heck happens in a normal, functional family. It was sure enlightening and very transformative for me and the more I have, and continue to, practice her gentle but boundaried approach with my kids the more I see what healthy relationships and healthy boundaries are all about (and how sorely lacking them I was!). Thank you, Barbara!