Posts Tagged drill sergeant
The Main Barrier to Freedom
Your rate of recovery from your stressful relationship with food depends on your readiness for change. For example, I have worked with many people who have struggled for years, even decades with overeating, restricting and/or purging, and within 5 or 6 sessions, they are transformed, feeling clear, purposeful and trusting in their ability to no longer use food to cope. Yet others may take a few months or a year or two to get to the same place. And that’s perfectly fine. There is no right or wrong way to move through the healing process. It’s a completely personal experience and the length of the healing journey depends on many factors but the most important thing for us all is this: (more…)My Wedding and My Drill Sergeant
(Nadine) Women want to look their best every day, and I think most would agree that your wedding day is the one day you would want to look your very, very best – and your slimmest! However, every wedding magazine and website is plastered with tall, slim women who look fresh, ethereal, and sensuous all at once, like they come from some secret fairy world only to model wedding dresses and accessories. How can a normal, average woman possibly live up to those ideals? How can a plus-size woman possibly manage to look fresh, ethereal, and sensuous? It’s easy to understand the boot camp crash diets brides go through when faced with such unrealistic images. Dealing with these issues myself, pending my upcoming elopement to Tofino mid-September, I began to dig deeper. What else is really going on here? My past experiences at the CEDRIC Centre have taught me that when my Drill Sergeant starts badgering me about my image, it’s a smokescreen that covers a deeper and possibly more painful issue. After a little bit of reflection, I decided to question my Drill Sergeant about what IT thought about marriage and weddings, and here is what it said:- Look at all those beautiful brides, you’re not going to look like that – you can’t possibly get married at the size you are at – you should wait until you lose weight to get married! (“Why?” I asked)
- You need to look beautiful and perfect on your wedding day! (“Why?”)
- If you don’t look perfect on your wedding day your fiancé will regret marrying you. (“Why?”)
- You have to be perfect or your marriage won’t last and your fiance will figure out that you are flawed and unlovable!
My Wedding and My Drill Sergeant
AHA! I uncovered a core belief! My Drill Sergeant has been trying to protect me from this core belief so I wouldn’t get hurt. If I work on healing the faulty core belief, my Drill Sergeant will have nothing to protect me from and the badgering will stop. There are a few things I can do to heal that core belief – and just uncovering it and acknowledging it as faulty goes a long way! I can also try to love myself by listening to my fears, looking after myself physically and emotionally, and showing myself compassion. By healing the underlying core belief about how I’ll look on my wedding day, I can revel in the joy of the event. I can be excited about the exquisite dress I bought (ivory French lace over pale gold satin with clustered bursts of crystals) and I can be excited about all the other details like cupcakes, photographers, venues, flowers, and writing heartfelt vows. I can enjoy the process. I am more able to accept that my fiancé wants to marry me and (no surprise here) already knows that I am imperfect. We have been together for three years and he has seen me sick, seen me binge, seen me frustrated, and seen me freak out at him for something that has nothing to do with him. And he still loves me and wants to marry me. My goal for my wedding day is to be PRESENT. My goal is not to look perfect but to feel joyful, blessed, and authentic, and to remember my wedding day with more than just pictures.Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Self
Leave a Comment (1) →Thoughts on Natural Eating
Many people hear the term Natural Eating and immediately assume it’s about eating whole grains and non-processed foods or has something to do with organics or locally grown produce, etc. Well, those are all great ideas and your body will love you for eating as unprocessed as possible, but….that’s not what we mean when we say “natural eating.” Natural Eating, also more recently dubbed “Intuitive Eating,” refers to the simple process of eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. As a natural eater you are conscious of your body’s signals of hunger, fullness, lightness, energy, or bloating, lethargy, fatigue and heaviness. These are your cues about what your body likes and needs vs. what it doesn’t. In a natural eating approach, you honor those cues and are drawn to choose foods that allow you to feel light, full, and energized after eating rather than heavy, bloated, and pooped out. (more…)One of the Things I Know for Sure about Body Image
One of the things I know for sure about body image, from my own recovery experience and from hundreds of conversations with clients, is that your negative self-talk and feelings of loathing, disgust and heaviness in your body can change to peaceful acceptance in 24 hours, even when nothing has physically changed in your body.
Yuppers, that’s what I said, your Drill Sgt. can be happily on vacation in Mexico in 24 hours, leaving you at home to peacefully and contentedly practice life-enhancing coping strategies and self-care. And I’m not talking about trying to talk yourself into loving yourself as you are or about settling for being the weight and shape that you are now.
So, what am I talking about? I’m talking about integrity. Integrity means that your words and actions are in alignment. You want to know the secret to happiness? It’s integrity. You want to know the secret to feeling peaceful and content in your body; in your relationships; in your career; etc?
It’s integrity: Words and Actions Aligning.
You do what you say you will. And not just to others, but first and foremost to yourself. That’s where most of us who feel controlled by food and loathing of our bodies stumble; integrity with ourselves. We’re all over taking care of others and honoring our commitments outwardly at all costs. (more…)
Sap’s rising! Springtime internal cleaning ~ Sending the Drill Sergeant packing
The sap must be rising, because my eyes keep leaking. On the verge of tears these days, a commercial can set me off about some non-crying thing and away I go, boohooing again, with streaks on my cheeks. Also, I was so anxious yesterday as I performed tasks that I am competent at, although it involved dealing with strangers. I am always leery of random people, I have good reason, but that’s another story. But this is out of character for me. Its not like me to be timid, to trip over my tongue when talking to strangers or to feel so fragile.
I realize that in reading about how to cope with my issues, in the book that my boss, Michelle Morand wrote (Food is not the problem- Deal with What is!) I am learning things that are making my internal censor incensed. He’s kicked it up a notch and the infernal belabouring has increased to fever pitch. I notice that I over-analyze, read too much into things, second guess myself, talk myself out of things that I need like to go for a walk, before I’ve even solidified the thought. I seem to have a black cloud over me that makes me be a negative nelly about anything. And don’t let me hear that the bears are skinny in the Great Bear Rainforest. I carried THAT bit of grief around all week when I found out about it.
Normally I would note the ecological travesty and then get on with my life, but for some reason, these days, as I process the things from my misbegotten past that have given me enough grief to pad my self with this much excess, I am noticing that I not only have to deal with loose cannons in my physical world, but that I have a loose cannon in my own mind, as the Drill Sergeant has amplified his messages, deepened his nosiness and is acting like he’s on steroids. (more…)Opportunity Knocks by Michelle Morand
Hey, out there!
I was just getting ready for my day and my mind was reflecting on a few recent events in my life and noticing a commonality between them. So naturally I thought I’d share these reflections with you.
It seems that the overall lesson is that when life presents us with an opportunity to change a harmful pattern we have two choices (assuming we’re conscious enough of the pattern to see it in the first place):
1. We can see the opportunity to do things differently and choose to do things the same old way anyway. Usually we make this choice out of fear of change or fear of angering or disappointing someone if we were to behave differently than they “expect.”
Or…..
2. We can see the opportunity and choose to do things differently because we know what will happen if we do it the old way and we’re either sick and tired of the old way or we feel deserving of stepping free from the old, harmful pattern. Interestingly here, it doesn’t matter which it is that motivates the change, as long as we respond differently our perspective on ourselves and on any similar situations in the future will be forever changed. I find that truth very, very exciting!! I don’t have to do “it” perfectly I just have to do it differently! I can handle that, and, I’m willing to bet, so can you!
(more…)Lies that Encourage Procrastination: Don’t Delay, Read This Today!
By Tina Budeweit-Weeks
The CEDRIC theme for March is ‘Procrastination’ and how we deal with it as we journey towards wholeness and balance. When we chronically procrastinate, we are cheating ourselves and delaying the evolution that will contribute to the success of our efforts. The world around us lures us to stay in denial, but part of taking back the power of our success is to become more vigilant with the products that we use in our day to day process.
It might seem to be advantageous to blindly barrel on and start halfway through the process by letting our eating habits remain the same as we realize that ‘Food is not the problem’ but its still necessary to do the work needed that accompanies dealing with past issues, and that is to address the fact that the world around us is not as it would seem. (more…)The word for the day is ‘PERFECT’
You know how sometimes you think a word and the world around you echoes it in some way, such as on the radio in the car, in conversation with people, on tv, on the net? That just happened to me, I was home alone watching the sun crest over the distance and illuminating my deck and the two cats tussling by the window. I said ‘perfect’ softly and not a second later, there was the word again, this time out of the mouth of the tv announcer.
Simultaneously, there is an announcement on TV that interrupts regular programming. It is warning of high winds in the area. In the theme of perfection, that fits right in as I sit here watching the storm approach from the distance.
I am anticipating winds of change. I can see the pine cones on the fir just off our balcony getting big and fat and puffing up. They send their little seeds off into the warmer springlike wind which triggers the cones to open wider and release. (more…)Tina’s Journey- A New Horizon Slowly Coming Into View
I’m sitting in my car at the top of the Malahat (a local lookout) with a breath-taking view spread out in front of me. Below is a panorama that allows me an eagle eye view from the Gulf Islands on my left, to the US, way in the distance to the right. Behind me, as I write, hundreds of vehicles stream by, trucks with their brakes growling serenaded by the wind so that I can barely hear the slight whisper of a light rain on the sunroof. Clouds scud by overhead and the sun and rain compete with an incredible, fat, vivid rainbow for my attention.
Rather than distracting me, however, this vista and the solitude of my warm, protected perch reclined comfortably on leather seats are helping me to focus on the current task at hand. (more…)