Posts Tagged nurturing

Why is it so hard to be honest??

Why is it so Hard to be Honest?


One of the hardest things for people to do, especially people who have received any co-dependent training, is to hold themselves to the core value of honesty.  But it doesn’t have to be that way. Read on to find out why honesty is so challenging some times and what you can do to start feeling more confident in your ability to be honest with everyone, all the time.

The answer to the question ‘Why is it so hard to be honest’ is twofold:

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)  or with drinking, drugs, too much t.v. or internet; feeling overrun by your relationships or frustrated in your career, you can guarantee that you have a high dose of co-dependent training.

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    Posted in: 2012, All-or-Nothing Thinking, CEDRIC Centre, Natural Eating 101, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating

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    The Process of Lasting Change

    Process of Lasting Change

    Repeated patterns are a window to your needs and the process of lasting change will help you address those 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.

    Understanding the Process of Lasting Change

    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!”

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    Posted in: 2012, CEDRIC Centre, newsletter, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating

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    The Secret to Making Your Dreams Come True

    Making Your Dreams Come TrueToday, (11/21/11) for me, was one of those days that we might dream about for years and years, hoping it will come true but truly wondering if it ever would. Perhaps from our little girl selves at the age of 8 or 10, and then again, with greater emphasis and clarity in our teens, and then early 20’s and maybe during some dark times too, that dream would keep us plugging along, one seemingly cement-laden foot in front of the other. Today I had the experience of educating a group of 160 nursing students on The CEDRIC Method. Now, that in and of itself is rather frickin’ cool! Getting to educate up-and-coming front line health care providers on a respectful, simple, effective way of perceiving and supporting their clients who may struggle with eating disorders or substance abuse issues is an incredible honour. Period. That’s a pretty cool day. But, it gets better! It was at a college that I went to many years ago. At that time I was a grade 10 drop out. A pot smoking, binging, isolating, depressed, anxious, insecure, totally – and I mean to-ta-leee – codependent young woman who couldn’t make eye contact with anyone without breaking out in hives! I used to literally slink onto campus, keep my head down in class and try not to interact any more than necessary with any other students. I could relate to the teachers amazingly well – even was asked and agreed to attend staff functions (aka pub crawls!) from time to time. But I felt so totally fat, gross, and just plain geeky with my peers (aka the cool people), that I didn’t make one friend in 4 years. Not one. (more…)

    Posted in: newsletter, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, The Law of Attraction

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    Making sure your basic needs are met – Review

    Making sure your basic needs are met The only reason you ever use food to cope, no exceptions, is because you have needs (See Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Basic Needs Chart on the left) that aren’t being met in some area of your life and you’ve told yourself that you’re not allowed, not deserving, or just not capable of getting them met, no matter what you do. These stories you’re telling yourself lead you to feel depressed and anxious, lethargic and frantic, in other words, they overwhelm you. And when you’re feeling overwhelmed about something you believe you can’t do anything to change or resolve, the only thing to do is to find a way to diminish or discount the impact of that thing: to numb out.   In comes your primary coping strategy. Is it binging?
    • Is it restricting calories, certain kinds of foods, or times of eating regardless of whether you’re hungry or not?
    • Is it purging (through an hour or two of exercise, through laxatives, or vomiting)?
    • Is it an attachment to a certain weight or way of looking?
    • Is it drinking?
    • What about drugs; shopping; gambling; the pursuit of that perfect relationship?
    • Do you take responsibility for what others feel, or what others need?
    • Do you procrastinate to cope with overwhelming things?
    • Do you isolate yourself?
    • Do you avoid certain people or places?
    • Do you resist downtime?
    • Do you resist going to bed at a reasonable hour?
    • Are you a clean freak? Or just the opposite?
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    Posted in: newsletter, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101, Tips for Natural Eating

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    Mastering The Green-Eyed Monster

    how to overcome jealousyI am a specialist who works with those who are frustrated with their bodies and their relationship with food (those who binge or restrict or purge in any way). As you can imagine, in my conversations with clients, the topic of feeling envious of the seeming ease and comfort that others feel in their bodies and with food and then consequently feeling guilty/shameful for feeling envious, comes up daily. As such, I have, from my own recovery process and countless hours with clients, devised a quick little tool to shift those icky, jealous feelings and the underlying needs that triggered them. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you’ll never, ever again start to feel those stirrings of “Why them and not me!?” around those people/places/things that we would like for ourselves or conversely, “Why me and not them!!!?” around those things that we’d really have preferred not to have experienced in our brief but action-packed lives. (more…)

    Posted in: CEDRIC Centre

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    Establishing a Normal Relationship with Food

    This week, I’m writing in response to a question from a web program participant as part of a web program forum discussion about establishing a normal relationship with food. Since my answer to her question was rather lengthy and detailed and, I believe, relevant to you all, I thought I’d share the question and answer here for this week’s “Tools for Recovery” article. Question: If we’ve spent years using food to cope and stuck in the Diet Mentality, how the hell do we have a clue what is normal around what to eat and how much? Michelle’s Answer: In my own personal recovery and my 17 years as a specialist in this field, if there’s one thing I have learned, it is this: In the early stages of recovery, it is not helpful to focus on food in a structured way or to get caught up in some external meter of what to eat, when or how much. (more…)

    Posted in: CEDRIC Centre

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    What if I Want to Eat Now Without Checking In?! Natural Eating 101 Q&A

    We are continuing our Natural Eating Q&A session with a question that comes up with each and every client I’ve ever supported through this process. It goes something like this: “What if I try to check in but the voice in my head just says: “Who cares about checking in?! I just want food now!!!” Well, this is a pretty simple one. If you’re hearing that dialogue in your head when you realize you’re wanting to use food to cope, it absolutely, no exceptions, means that you’re feeling overwhelmed and you are afraid that if you don’t use food to cope in that moment, you’ll get consumed by the thoughts and feelings you’re trying to keep at bay through the act of eating (and then maybe purging or beating yourself up). (more…)

    Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Natural Eating 101

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    How Do I Let Go of the Guilt for Eating That?! Natural Eating 101 Q&A

    This week we’re continuing our fantabulous exploration of Natural Eating troubleshooting with an answer to the question: “How do I “not feel guilty” for eating something when I’ve been telling myself/or others have been telling me for years that certain foods are just plain bad or that they’ll make me fat?” First of all, when it comes to food, the most important thing we can do is to come back to Natural Eating basics whenever we feel anxious or unsettled around food, or feel drawn to eat when we aren’t hungry. (more…)

    Posted in: Natural Eating 101

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    Natural Eating 101: Q&A: How Do I Know When I Am Full?

    How do I know when I am fullI hope you enjoyed the first instalment of the Natural Eating Q&A last week. As I mentioned in that article, I’m going to spend the next few weeks answering some questions that I often hear clients asking regarding natural eating. Continuing on with the list of common questions that I posted in last week’s article, this week I’m going to address the question: How do I know when I’m full? For those of you who have been overeating to cope with stressful life situations and anxious thinking or depressed moods, it is quite possible that you have come to associate a feeling of over-full, or absolutely stuffed, with being full. It is important to learn to discern the difference between comfortable, appropriate levels of fullness and downright stuffed. (more…)

    Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Natural Eating 101

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    Natural Eating 101 Week 4: The True Culprit: Learned Helplessness

    learned helplessnessIt’s funny how much correspondence I will get about a general discussion topic but how little I will get from an email article that has anything whatsoever to do with topics like goal setting or learned helplessness. You know what I mean. It’s great to read and get ideas and to feel like someone else knows where you’re at and that there is hope for you to heal and be completely free of food and body image stress; the coping strategies of emotional eating, restriction (anorexia), or binging (binge eating disorder), or purging (bulimia) and the underlying co-dependent training and all-or-nothing thinking that trigger you to feel the need to do those things. That’s what we all want: a life that is free from self-harm and self-loathing and chronic anxiety and insecurity. And that’s what you can get from The CEDRIC Method and from working through these articles. (more…)

    Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Natural Eating 101

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