Archive for Relationship with Self
Posted by Cedric on July 3, 2011
Feeling Safe is The Key to Eating Disorder Recovery
It is a fact that feeling safe is the key to eating disorder recovery. And the key to feeling safe is to have a way of trusting that you are thinking clearly, seeing the situation / person at hand clearly; that you have a set of values that are reasonable and principles that make sense that guide your actions towards yourself and others and which you see yourself turning to whenever you feel anxious or unsettled or have sensitive decisions to make.
If you don’t have that package of trust in your clear thinking and values that ground you you will continue to feel insecure and anxious in the world and in your relationships with others and you will continue to lean on coping strategies – confused stress management tools like eating disorders, binging, dieting, drinking, isolating and procrastination to try to numb and soothe yourself.
Invite yourself, if you feel up to it to ask yourself what you remember about your younger years (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood). Who were your primary role models for relationships? What kinds of things did they do and say to you, themselves, or others when they were angry or sad or scared or wanted you or someone else to do something for them?
How respectful, direct and clear were they?
And how did they respond to requests from you? Did they shame you, berate you, judge you? Or did they acknowledge your need and discuss the different ways that they would be willing to meet your need, in a respectful, calm manner?
Verbal and physical abuses are traumas.
Most everyone has experienced the humiliation and damaging effects of verbal abuse.
If our ego strength and our sense of esteem are solid when these events occur (ie. we are an adult, solid in ourselves; or a teen with very good support and these events are an extreme exception and not the norm), we can slough it off or work through it with some help.
If we are already feeling a lack of security and acceptance in our world, every experience of verbal abuse, for example: Judgements, name-calling, put-downs, and yelling will constitute a drama.
Physical abuse; slapping, hitting, spanking and outright beatings, or threats of the same, regardless of their purpose in the eyes of the punisher, are traumatic events.
Neglect is trauma. The act of having your needs and your Self ignored or devalued is traumatic.
So, don’t tell yourself that you were never abused or traumatized. Sexual assault or beatings are just the most extreme forms of trauma we experience as young and powerless people. There are many forms of behaviour that will not meet our needs for safety and respect and which will lead us to feel hurt and traumatized.
The more dependent on the person we are, the greater the experience of the trauma and the more our mind will seek to both self-blame (make it about us) and to numb ourselves from the situation (through the use of coping strategies like binging, dieting, eating disorders, drinking etc.).
If you’re stuck still, feeling a lack of confidence in yourself or in relationships that trigger you to feel unsafe or insecure, let me help you step free of that pattern of thinking that is keeping you stuck.
Change can be fast and simple when you have simple tools that work and a skilled guide.
Reach out and let’s get started creating healthy relationships, solid self-esteem and get you trusting yourself to see the world clearly and handle things fairly.
Love Michelle
Posted by mmorand on June 18, 2011
If there’s one place, where, even more so than at insanely packed and over stimulating amusement parks like Disneyland, one will witness the entire spectrum of human emotions, it’s a large airport like good ol’ LAX.
As a counsellor and woman who has always been naturally predisposed to empathy and curiosity, perhaps it would even be more apt to say, hyper-vigilance, when it comes to the emotions of others (this I attribute to my years of trauma – vicarious and otherwise – as a child, where adeptly reading the emotional state of my father could often mean the difference between an evening without abuse and one with), I seem to be unable to be out and about anywhere without being acutely aware of the energy, emotions, and needs of the people around me.
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Posted by mmorand on April 2, 2011
Well hullooooo out there! It’s week 2 of our Natural Eating series and about time we fully looked at natural eating defined. Last week, we explored the antithesis or maybe we could even say, “the nemesis” of Natural eating…..(insert ominous theme music here….): The Diet Mentality. This nasty way of thinking turns you against your body and against yourself, and sets you on a vicious cycle of diminished self-esteem and increased self-harm and loathing. It’s got to go people!! But if you’re reading this then you’re already on it!
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Tags: anorexia, anxiety, body image, body/mind/spirit, bulimia, CEDRIC Centre, compulsive eating, core beliefs, diet mentality, eating disorders, natural eating, self care, self esteem, self love
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Natural Eating 101, Relationship with Self
Posted by Cedric on March 31, 2011
Building A Balanced Life is Key to Recovery
It’s possible that you are feeling anxious and insecure often in your life, or that you hear yourself say things about your frustrationg with certain situations and relationship(s) which are clear indicators of unmet needs, and yet you are still ignoring those emotional cues of unmet needs which leads you to feel overrun, unbalanced, and to use food or other substances to cope. If you’d like to stop binging or struggling with diets and weight loss, or drinking, or any other harmful coping strategy then it’s important that you know that building a balanced life is key to recovery.
It’s a simple fact, like it or lump it, that as long as any aspect of your life remains unbalanced or your needs are unmet in certain areas, you will use your coping strategies.
For example. Those of you who have a disordered relationship with food, unconsciously use thoughts about eating or about what you weigh, and the act of eating or of restricting (and possibly purging through extreme diets, laxatives, exercise or vomiting) as a means of self-medicating and self-soothing. The chemistry you create in your body with the thoughts, sensations, and behaviours associated with your coping strategy of choice (drinking, binging, purging, drugs, t.v. etc.) raises your dopamine level artificially and temporarily triggers feelings of release, peace, nurturing and comfort.
Only problem is, as you know, that sensation is short-lived and soon you’re needing another fix to numb the negative chatter in your brain and the emotional sensations of anxiety and depression that accompany it.
The key to stepping free for good from any eating disorder or addictive behaviour is to have a 2 pronged approach which teaches you how to relate to your substance/coping strategy of choice is a natural, balanced way while also teaching you how to build solid self-trust and self-esteem.
The solution is simple and can be speedy when you have a skilled guide with simple tools. I can help you step free of the chaos and create balance and passion like you’ve never known.
Reach out and let’s discuss what’s going on in your life now that you’d like to change and how we can make that a reality.
Love Michelle
mmorand@cedriccentre.com
Posted by mmorand on March 26, 2011
Welcome. This is the first article in a series entitled Natural Eating 101 where we will focus on the diet mentality. Natural eating refers to an easy and peaceful relationship with food where you simply eat when you’re physically hungry, stop when you’re comfortably full, make honoring choices about what you eat overall, and have any food in moderation. No guilt. No shame. No sneaking, hiding, binging, restricting, purging. When you eat naturally, your body comes to its natural weight without rigorous exercise programs and without dieting or restricting. And it stays there.
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Tags: acceptance, all-or-nothing thinking, anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, body image, body/mind/spirit, compulsive eating, core beliefs, diet mentality, eating disorders, healing, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, triggers
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Natural Eating 101, newsletter, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self
Posted by Cedric on March 19, 2011
Body Focus Hides Emotional Pain
When we automatically focus on what we are eating or shouldn’t be eating, calorie counting, and losing weight, whenever we start to feel anxious or unsettled about anything we effectively keep ourselves in a state of denial about painful experiences in our lives. Your emphasis on body focus hides emotional pain that you don’t want to feel or aren’t sure how to manage. If you want to stop feeling so anxious, insecure and stressed about your body and food or any other harmful coping strategy like eating disorders, binging, drinking or drugs you’ve got to change the way you’re thinking about yourself and the world around you and not allow your instinctive brain to run free telling you stories of doom and gloom and of what’s wrong with you.
If you’re using any of those coping strategies I mentioned above it means you have a strong need for acceptance from others and will go out of your way to please others, even if it means sacrificing yourself.
This need for acceptance, coupled with feelings of low self-worth, keeps you stuck in a world of perfectionism, where your primary focus is on your body, how unacceptable you perceive it to be, and what life will be like when you finally have the body you desire.
As long as you believe that your body is the source of your unhappiness, you are able to stay in denial about the underlying causes of your distress.
What you fail to understand, because of past life events and your confused interpretation of them, is that you are a capable human being, who can safely be responsible for your emotions and experiences, and who can learn to feel confident and secure in yourself and to show respect for yourself and your needs, without losing the support and respect of others.
Trust this. Just because you haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that you can’t create it. You don’t really believe you know everything there is to know do you?
You may be afraid that you can’t change but that fear is very different from an absolute fact and I know from my own experience and 20+ years as a counselling specialist that if you just show up and you’re willing to try something new, you will be amazed with how quickly and simply patterns that may have plagued you for decades change for good.
Reach out and let me show you how.
Love Michelle
mmorand@cedriccentre.com
Posted by mmorand on March 5, 2011
“When I use my tools, they work! Things are easier, more peaceful. I just don’t feel the need to use food to cope when I use my tools.”
I hear this a lot from clients. And it’s true.
However, from clients who are a little new with the process, there is usually a “…but” attached to the end of it and the rest of the statement sounds something like, “…it’s just so hard to use my tools.” Or “….it takes too long and I don’t have the time or energy to do anything other than eat.” Or even “….what if they stop working? I need to hang on to my use of food to cope, just in case my new tools stop working.”
This is such an important topic, that we did an audio podcast on the subject as well.
Read the original When I Use My Tools, They Work! article here.
Listen to the When I Use My Tools, They Work! audio podcast here.
Posted by mmorand on February 26, 2011
This article is part of a series: Relationships 101: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4.
This week in our Relationships 101 series, I want to chat a bit about flags in a relationship.
If I do say so myself, I wrote a pretty smokin’ section on this in my book so if you’ve got access to “Food is not the Problem: Deal With What Is!“ I encourage you to check out Chapter 23. It’s got lots of good education and tools on communication in relationships.
I’m going to present an abridged and updated version of the section on flags here so you can get a good feel for the concept and begin to experiment with it yourself.
The Flag System
I am about to share with you a concept that is not in and of itself a communication tool. However, it is a fundamental tool for assessing the information you are receiving verbally and non-verbally from people in your life. Once you have assessed this information, you will be in a stronger and clearer place to determine for yourself how you want and need to proceed. By that, I mean whether or not you need to speak to the other person, and if so, what you need to say. (We’ll address the what to say and how to say it in the next 2 weeks of this series of articles).
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Tags: all-or-nothing thinking, binge eating, co-dependence, co-dependency, co-dependent, compulsive eating, eating disorders, overeating, purging, relationships, self confidence
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, newsletter, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101
Posted by Cedric on February 19, 2011
Boundary Setting
In exploring your feelings about boundary setting and why you might feel resistant to it, it can be helpful to explore your beliefs too.
Think about a current relationship in your life where you often find yourself feeling anxious, insecure, overrun or resentful and then take a moment to consider your answer to the following questions:
What is it about this person or the relationship you have with them that triggers these feelings?
What would you like to see happening in this relationship that would reduce the anxiety and insecurity etc. that you feel with them?
What commitments would you need to make with yourself about what you will or won’t do in order to lessen those feelings of being overrun or of resentment?
What would you need to ask them for or tell them you will or won’t do in order to make that happen?
What thoughts and feelings surface when you consider setting those boundaries with that person?
Are you fearing judgement, anger, labeling as needy or high maintenance; or maybe you fear that they would reject you?
Why are you settling for patterns in your relationships that don’t feel good to you?
Where did you get the idea that you are not worthy of being treated with dignity and respect? That you are not worthy of getting what you need and desire in your relationships?
And then considering whomever gave you those ideas or treated you that way in your past ask yourself this:
Why am I willing to believe that they were healthy, functional, ‘right’ people?
What do you know now about them and their lives that could, if you allowed it, change the way you interpreted those events? Maybe they were struggling with their own depression and self-esteem. Maybe they were abused as children and lacked the ability to be nurturing and considerate of your feelings.
Allow yourself to see the truth of these relationships. And then think about the present and ask yourself:
If those people who taught me to feel so worthless and afraid we not 100% well or secure in themselves, why am I continuing to live my life as though they were right to treat me badly and as though there really is something wrong with me?
Stop living in the past. Let yourself see the reality of the present and find relationships that will mirror what is true about you – you are worthy of love and acceptance and of peaceful, loving, fun relationships. You are worthy of asking for what you need.
Let’s get started!!!
I’m here to help.
Love Michelle
mmorand@cedriccentre.com
Posted by mmorand on February 19, 2011
This article is part of a series: Relationships 101: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4.
Okay folks, we’re at Week 3 of what could (but won’t) be a 52-week series! We’re going to tackle the key bits of any relationship and how to make yours hum in 6 weeks (or so). This week we’re specifically going to explore flags in a relationship.
If you’re not into this series as it’s just not where you’re at or what you’re needing at this time, I highly recommend you spend the next few weeks reviewing the “Complete Recovery Series.” This is a series I wrote that lays out the key tools you need to begin to experience healing in your relationship with food. You’ll find a listing of all the articles on the left hand side of the blog.
If you’re following along with this series however, you’ll have experimented a bit last week with providing for others and for yourself that which you have been expecting or looking for from them. I’ll bet you learned a great deal and that already you have greater empathy for yourself and for others.
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Tags: all-or-nothing thinking, binge eating, co-dependence, co-dependency, co-dependent, compulsive eating, eating disorders, overeating, purging, relationships, self confidence
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, newsletter, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101
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