Archive for CEDRIC Centre

Food Focus is Directly Related to Emotional Pain

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When we focus on calories and losing weight, we keep ourselves in a state of denial about painful experiences in our lives. We have a strong need for acceptance from others and will go out of our way to please others, even if it means sacrificing ourselves. This need for acceptance, coupled with feelings of low self-worth, keeps us stuck in a world of perfectionism, where our primary focus is on our body, how unacceptable we perceive it to be, and what life will be like when we finally have the body we desire.

As long as we believe that our body is the source of our unhappiness, we are able to stay in denial about the underlying causes of our distress with an eating disorder like anorexia nervosa. What we fail to understand is that we are capable human beings, who can safely be responsible for our emotions and experiences, and who can learn to show respect for ourselves and our needs, without losing the support and respect of others.


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Oneness and Peace

Posted by on If we’ve never felt the sense of peace and flow that comes from being completely in the moment through meditation, prayer, or some activity which has captured our full attention, it is likely that we will confuse the sense of connectedness and happiness that we can sometimes feel with friends, family and peers with the sense of oneness and peace that comes from a higher, spiritual connection. It is this confusion that inevitably leads us to believe that in order to be happy and to feel peaceful we need the approval of someone outside of ourselves. This mindset makes us exceptionally vulnerable. In order for us to feel truly happy and confident and secure in ourselves and in our world, we must come to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are capable of meeting our own needs for connectedness, peace and happiness.

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Reset Your Inner Alarm

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Reset Your Inner Alarm


Want to stop automatically reacting to stress by binging and feeling insecure and crappy about yourself. Then try the Reset Your Inner Alarm exercise.

What sense would it make if every time your alarm went off to wake you in the morning, you said “Oh, there’s my alarm. I guess that means I’ll go back to sleep?” Not much sense in that at all.

Well, every time you notice you’re feeling anxious or depressed or starting to think about using food to cope and then actually restrict, binge, or purge, you are doing exactly that.

You are, in essence, noticing the alarm (your anxiety, your depressed feelings, your thoughts of using a coping strategy) and then going back to sleep through numbing out and focusing on food.

That’s why, despite your strong desire for things to be different you find yourself staying stuck going round and round in circles with food and weight loss struggles.

How about you try this instead?

The next time you notice a. you’re hungry but aren’t letting yourself eat or b. you aren’t hungry but you’re wanting to eat or you’re binging and can’t stop, just ask yourself – 

a. What’s going to happen if I allow myself to eating something now? Is that the only thing that could happen? What else could possibly happen? What would I like to see happen?

b. What’s going to happen if I don’t have something now or if I stop eating now? Is that the only thing that could happen? What else could possibly happen? What would I like to see happen?

Take the time to start to notice the stories you are telling yourself about food and about you and to question them – that will make it almost effortless to side-step them and begin to relate normally to food. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, everything in moderation and handle stress from other aspects of life in rational, functional ways not by denying your body food or by force feeding yourself.

Make it safe to check in and try this experiment by reassuring yourself that no matter what the answers to your questions are you are not going to force yourself to do anything any differently. If you naturally want to eat or stop eating that’s fine, if you don’t that’s fine too. The key for now is to start to understand what is driving you to do what you say you don’t want to do.

The behavioural change will come naturally once you have developed a good understanding of yourself.

I’m here to help. Reach out for some individual sessions or for some information on our workshops and web program. Change is speedy and simple when you have a supportive, knowledgeable guide and simple tools to follow. And that’s what I will provide for you.

Love Michelle

mmorand@cedriccentre.com

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Unmet Needs Drive the Anxiety Train

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Folks, you are anxious for a reason. It’s not because you’re too sensitive. It’s not because you’re crazy or bi-polar or borderline or schizophrenic or suffering from “panic disorder.” Any of those clusters of symptoms are really just your best way of coping with the unmet needs in your life and the anxiety and grief they produced. The solution will never ever be found in judging yourself and masking or numbing your symptoms. But first, some part of you must be willing to acknowledge that perhaps, even if you’re not entirely sure how as you think about it now, you have or at least had as a child, a perfectly valid reason for feeling like some key needs weren’t met.

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Saying I Love You Part Deux

Posted by on Saying I Love YouWell! You guys/gals are totally awesome!!!! I have received such incredible sharing this week in regards to your efforts in the challenge I gave you in last week’s article about: Saying I love you, Thank you, and I’m Sorry. First off, I am so excited and touched and thrilled and happy for you that you accepted this challenge as you did. It takes a great deal of courage to be willing to look within at old patterns and to then take action to change what needs a tweak (or a major overhaul)! It takes great courage but it’s so incredibly worth it. The wonderful thing is that those of you who took the plunge and challenged yourself to say “Thank you” and “I’m Sorry” and “I love you” all learned such amazing things about yourself and gave yourself the gift of deeper connections with others. Woohoooo!!! (more…)

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Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, newsletter, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self

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Food Focus Hides the Real You

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Each of you has an amazing, talented, warm and loving presence inside of you. Perhaps you even let others see that side. If you’re using food to cope, you can bet that you’re not allowing yourself to really recognize and embrace that amazing person who is you. You’re stifling yourself for all you’re worth. It’s your desire to express yourself fully in the face of old beliefs you carry about your right to exist; to take up space; your deservedness of success and happiness and contentment; and of healthy, loving relationships, that makes you feel fragmented, fraudulent, inauthentic and anxious. And it is that anxiety that leads you to focus on food and body image in harmful ways and to miss out on all that you and life have to offer. What if you took a moment today and just got still and quiet and asked yourself, “What are the people/situations in my life currently where I feel I cannot be fully authentic – fully myself?”

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Moving Forward One Step at a time

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There is an incredible sense of peace and freedom that comes over you when you see yourself consistently taking steps towards your goals and honoring your values and principles more and more in everyday life. You can call it self-respect. You can call it maturity. You can call it balance and groundedness. Whatever you call it, it is a noticeable shift from within and, rather than feeling frightened and battered by the ebb and flow of life, you feel open, aware, ready, and the best one of all….happy. You don’t even have to have realized your goals to experience this amazing state of peace and groundedness. You simply need to see yourself moving forward. I’ve done this piece of work with many clients over the years and, without exception, they find this sense of peace and this distance from anxiety and from the Drill Sgt. instantly, within the first week. It’s amazing.

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4 Steps to Freedom From Addictions and Eating Disorders

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4 Steps to Freedom From Addictions and Eating Disorders


There are 4 Steps to Freedom From Addictions and Eating Disorders. For complete and lasting recovery you need:
  • New information on why you do what you do (Your brain can’t provide this or else you’d already be there – someone needs to present you with information that makes sense and that feels safe to explore.);
  • A reasonable timeline and plan for you to achieve your goals of self-care, balance, self-respect and life-enhancing coping strategies (You need a solid, skilled guide to help you create a reasonable time-line otherwise you’ll do what you’ve always done and set unrealistic goals that don’t consider balance and lasting change.);
  • New tools and the support to put them in to action effectively (We all need a mentor/guide to teach us what will work to create the change we seek. This guide must be knowledgeable and compassionate and teach us in a way that feels safe and supportive not punitive and judgemental.) ;
  • Gentle and loving reminders from a supportive presence in your life to help you to see more clearly when you’ve been unwittingly sucked back into old ways of thinking and behaving and why (friends and family can provide this for you as well as your support person/mentor for the journey).
The process of achieving any goal is simple and straightforward. And regardless of how long you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to change, once you put yourself in a situation where you can gain new tools that are simple and clear, and the support and education to use them effectively so you don’t waste your time and so you can create the change you seek asap, you have given yourself everything you need to achieve your goals.

Think about the past and the way you’ve tried to change your relationship with food and your weight and even your self-talk and self-esteem. If you didn’t have these 4 steps as a part of that process it is to be expected that your efforts didn’t pay off in a lasting way.

Make this time different. Don’t waste your time or money or effort. Let us support you to learn what you need to learn to change the things that are keeping you stuck binging, dieting, struggling with weight loss or body image or any other harmful coping strategy like alcoholism or isolation.

Reach out and let us help you step free for good.

Love Michelle
mmorand@cedriccentre.com

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Don’t Give Your Power Away

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Don’t Give Your Power Away

It’s easy to say ‘don’t give your power away.’  But if you’ve never really felt entitled to asking for what you need; if no one taught you to value yourself you wouldn’t feel you have any power to begin with. So, let’s me explain a bit more and then maybe the statement  -Don’t Give Your Power Away – will make more sense.

Who wouldn’t struggle to feel confident if the key people in their lives didn’t model and reinforce good communication, self-respect, solid boundaries , and good self-care?

Who on earth wouldn’t feel increasingly anxious when their approach to the world is to tune out automatically to their feelings; to numb themselves from their awareness of stress and insecurity and confusion with food, drinking, drugs, t.v., internet etc.?

You’re not broken, simply misinformed and under-educated in the basic life skills we all need to feel solid and confident in ourselves. And judging from the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who struggle with addictions and dysfunctional relationships you’re not alone.

If you just bury your head and hope for the best because you’ve told yourself there’s nothing you can do – or because perhaps others have told you you’re not worthy or capable of the things you most desire you are allowing yourself to stay stuck in irrational thinking that has nothing at all to do with the present day and what you could truly achieve. 

Your life is out of control when you live from this mindset.

You’re putting your happiness and joy and peace and fulfillment in the hands of everyone you come into contact with, which, inadvertently, is the reason that those who use food to cope also often use the coping strategy of isolation and avoidance.  It’s easier to not have to deal with people if you don’t trust yourself to take care of yourself when you feel the niggle arise.

I want to encourage you to stop at least twice a day and just ask yourself:
  • “Am I feeling at all unsettled (or thinking of using my coping strategy or actually using it right now)?”
  • “What might be triggering that feeling or the need to check out?”
  • “What am I telling myself about that situation or about me?”

And if you’d like to get help and support and good solid simple tools to change the answers let me know.

Love Michelle
mmorand@cedriccentre.com

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Posted in: All-or-Nothing Thinking, CEDRIC Centre

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Saying Thank You, I’m Sorry, and I Love You

Posted by on Saying Thank YouThis week I thought I’d give you a little communication assignment and ask you to provide me some feedback on what you discover by saying thank you, I’m sorry, and I love you. Your feedback and my knowledge on the subject will form the body of next week’s Tools For Recovery article. One of the hardest things that we who use food to cope have to learn to do is to find true peace and comfort with being honest about our imperfection. Yes, folks, we are imperfect. We screw up, we stick our foot in our mouths, we forget birthdays, forget to return calls, inadvertently (and perhaps sometimes intentionally) say things that hurt people’s feelings. We sometimes run late, we make errors when we text or email people, we don’t always follow through on our commitments to ourselves or others. We err. It’s human. (more…)

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