Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much (19 page)

Maybe you decide to ask why this person seems to resent your request. Notice how I said
seems
to resent it. You might be misreading her hesitation or her frown. You may be intuitive, but you're not necessarily right all the time about others' subtle feelings! Be open to the possibility that you're wrong.

If you're not misreading, then breathe deeply and slowly while the other person is talking. You can handle this temporary discomfort and use your cleaning techniques afterward to shed any emotional weight of hers that you take on.

Let's say the person isn't interested in finding common ground and in resolving the conflict, but just starts to dump his garbage on you. Saying “I'm sorry you feel that way” acknowledges and honors his feelings without taking responsibility for them. “I'm sorry” doesn't mean, “I'm sorry, it's all my fault, you should be angry with me! How horrible I am! Oh, I feel like dirt!” It just means, “I feel compassion for you because you are upset and I'd like to express that to you.”

Once you've expressed “I'm sorry you feel that way,” then you can make your decision. Are you going to remain in place, being dumped on? Are you going to politely excuse yourself or change the subject? It's okay to cut him off. He can come back to you and talk to you again at some point when he's dumped his garbage and ready to be sensitive to your feelings. The choice of what to do when someone is being cruel to you is yours now. You're no longer going to be automatically sucked into the vortex of other people's strong emotions. There is a breath, a moment, in which you access your neutrality, observe what's happening, and make a nonreactive choice about going to the landscape that person is creating. Maybe the stormy fields where he is raging is
his
landscape to visit and learn from, not yours. You do not have to be in his emotional space.

What if you confront someone and the other person denies there is anything wrong and pouts? Again, you can try to get more information—maybe she is afraid to tell you why she is upset—or you can ignore it. It's up to you to decide what to do. You're not responsible for passive-aggressive behavior. For instance, the response, “Oh, I'm not upset. Why would I be upset?” delivered with teeth clenched and a glare is passive aggressive. If you want to be assertive, you might say, “Then why are your teeth clenched and why are you looking at me like that?”

Sometimes, it feels good to shine a big light on the social lie. Other times, it feels good to let it go and let that person figure out how she wants to handle her emotional response. You are not a garbage dump anymore, and you don't get paid to be everyone's personal psychologist and social worker. Let her work through her tangle of emotions on her own. Then you can step back and cleanse your emotional field.

Do you get the picture? Do you want to step into it? It's possible, but be patient with yourself during this awkward stage. Just as there is no quick-fix diet, there's no quick fix to your habit of bending over backward for people and forgetting where you end and they begin. You are creating a new relationship with yourself and with food at the same time you are creating new relationships with people. Evolution is messy and happens unevenly. Some days, you will have breakthroughs that astound you, and other days you will think, “I'm never going to get this!” You will. Change happens, just not as smoothly and as quickly as you would like it to.

In the meantime, keep planning the new life you are creating for yourself. What would you like to bring into it? Here's another exercise to help you get some ideas.

SHOPPING LIST FOR YOUR NEW LIFE

Start a shopping list for your new life, as if you could simply pop over to the store and pick up what you would like, with someone else covering the bill. If you weren't thinking about all the obstacles between you and the life you'd like for yourself, what would you “pick up”?

Would you want to bring in more time with friends? What would you do with them? Would you talk over lunch or drinks, or while walking your dogs to the dog run together?

What opportunities would you slip into your cart, for use when you are ready? Would you want an opportunity to exercise socially without feeling that everyone is staring at you or judging you? What would that opportunity look like?

What kind of food would you pick up? What cooking skills would you simply purchase and start using?

What clothes will you wear? What will they say about you?

What job or jobs will you have? What responsibilities will you take on? Will the work you do be fulfilling? Will the people you work with be flexible and respectful of your needs? What will that look like? Will you collaborate with them or compete with them?

As you draw up your list, if you feel hesitation about acknowledging what you want for yourself, stop. Get in touch with why you feel that situation is off limits to you. Use the IN-Vizion process to learn more about why you don't believe you can have what you desire.

DON'T FILL UP THE CART WITH DRAMA

Have you ever been to one of those big warehouse clubs or bargain stores and found yourself dumping into the cart anything that catches your eye because, hey, it's a bargain? Then you get to the cash register, hear the total, and fall over in shock.

We do this metaphorically when we let go of what we no longer want to hold on to, but we don't do the work of planning what to bring in instead. When the kids leave for college, or an aging and needy parent dies, it would make sense to regroup and start thinking about the next chapter of life; but too often, people who feel too much can't bear the uncertainty of not knowing what comes next. Rather than enjoying the process of planning for something new, and trying out new activities, and simply resting, we tend to rush out and find drama and stimulation to fill the void. Whatever caregiving opportunity catches our eye, we grab it and throw it in the cart. In this way, we detour away from our grief over the end of an important part of our lives, and the feelings we pushed aside for months or years while tending to the business at hand. There's a certain comfort in knowing that we can handle whatever comes our way, multitasking and staying completely focused on the latest crisis. Quiet and stillness make us want to scream.

In the void, difficult feelings come up. Maybe this happens because we sense we are finally safe enough to face the anger, sadness, or fear that we've stuffed into the back closet of our minds in order to avoid the discomfort. A few years back, I had a client who had lost her husband of thirty years, and she was shocked at how much anger was coming up for her from who knows where. What was she so furious about? She said her husband was loving, supportive, a good provider—and yet, all those years he was alive, she never confronted him about her needs, and conformed to all his wishes and quirks. The amount of anger that was bubbling up to the surface scared her. Who knew that garbage was rotting away inside her? Much as she was tempted to distract herself with some dramas involving her adult children, what she most needed to do is accept that she was in transition and needed to work through her anger. She had to dump the garbage, sort through it for any gems of insight, and begin planning the next stage of her life.

We live in such a fast-paced world that most of us have become used to running nonstop, from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep at night. Transition, uncertainty, and contemplation all make us itch. At these times, it's helpful to work with a coach or therapist to help avoid the detour of stimulation and stay focused on resolving the past and imagining what we'd like to experience in the future. We can't let the uneasy feelings we have during transitions make us reactive to noisy foods and situations that aren't ours to take on.

KEEPING IT LIGHT

You know it feels good to laugh, but did you also know it's good for your health? Laughing is stimulating, but it also relaxes you and relieves tension and stress. It opens your blood vessels, increasing circulation and possibly preventing heart attacks. Laughter seems to boost your immune system and even ease physical pain. So embrace your inner clown. Choose to laugh, to lighten up and to see the humor in situations.

People who feel too much often have a habit of letting their perfectionism and fear of being seen as inadequate or foolish keep them tightly wound and afraid of laughing and joking around. Start imagining ways you might bring laughter into your life. What would it look like to be “silly” or “goofy” and not take in anyone's disapproval or negative judgment?

Humor is honest—the court jester was the one fellow who could tell the king what was really going on, and he was funny because he was willing to say what no one else would. When you laugh at your weaknesses and failings, though, it's empowering. You tell the truth and it doesn't devastate you after all.

It's wonderful to be able to laugh at yourself, and it may take you some time to develop the confidence to do so. Find the part of you that can let out a big belly laugh and guffaw until your eyes water and you gasp for breath. You can start by watching a funny movie, television show, or video, or reading something that makes you laugh out loud. Pay attention to how good it feels to cut loose and laugh, and how much lighter you feel afterward; then journal about it. What emotions come up after you laugh? Do you feel guilty or ashamed? What thoughts come up for you? Are there thoughts or beliefs that would better serve you? Think about turning those new thoughts into affirmations and add them to the affirmations you use during your 4:00
P
.
M
. salt baths.

Bring more laughter into your life. And the next time you feel anxious and upset, roar “Grrrr!” and pretend to tear your hair out or cross your eyes and make a face. It's hard to hold on to anger and fear when you are being ridiculous.

THE DETOUR OF CARETAKING

As I said earlier in the book, because you're so tuned in to others' emotions, you have a natural talent as a healer, caretaker, or nurturer and can help others who are distressed; besides, you feel driven to help them. We people who feel too much can't stand to see other people in pain. It makes us deeply uncomfortable, so we feel we have to assist them and help them in their situations—right now before we go crazy. That desire to help someone else is really a way to protect ourselves from pain, too. We can get into big trouble owing to this urge to save the world from suffering; we take care of people in order to ground ourselves, and we can overstep their boundaries, become codependent, and burn ourselves out in the caretaking.

When the desire to help crosses into codependency, when you're actually taking responsibility for other people's emotions and protecting the person from the consequences of her choices, you may unconsciously have too much of a stake in being needed. You might be holding on tenaciously to an identity of the dutiful child, the good girl, the one who can always be counted on, the one whose is endlessly giving, and so on. I have a client who prides herself in being there for everyone all the time, regularly complains about how she has no time for herself, but balks when it's suggested that not setting healthier boundaries with others may be contributing to her being overweight. Surely the metaphoric weight of the world that she has taken on might very well be showing up on her hips?

For people who feel too much, detouring into über-caretaking mode the question is why we do it. My client was agitated and fearful with the thought of not taking care of others. She wondered aloud,
Who will I be if I'm not the one to solve everything for everyone? Why would people want me around? What would my place be?
Her radically honest questions about what it would mean to change were particularly painful for her to ask since no one wants to admit he or she might not have intrinsic value, that it's enough just to be who we are, without endlessly giving and giving. And it's so much easier to consider someone else's plight, worrying and talking about the person, than being in your own skin. Perhaps our greatest asset as people who feel too much is that we pride ourselves in caring for others; but when we detour into caretaking, our sensitivity, empathy, and intuition can cause us heartache.

I can't stress enough the power of the subconscious mind in determining our feelings and behaviors. The subconscious influences your choices far more than you think. It may be pushy and even obnoxious, dominating you so often, but at least the subconscious also knows what's going on! What do you do in a pinch to remind yourself that you have the power of choice, you are not engulfed by agitation, and you are in control? Is it really possible to be neutral and nonreactive, to not become overwhelmed by or obsessed with your emotional response to something that's happening? Yes!

The IN-Vizion Process allows you to disengage from your emotions by turning them into a landscape that you can observe and, maybe more important,
exit
at any time. It may be uncomfortable in those stormy fields, but if you know you have the power to survey them and make your escape whenever you choose, your fear and anger won't engulf you. Remember, when you're in a primitive panic response, and you feel as if there's a rhinoceros charging at you, you've got very little blood flow to the front of your brain where you can tolerate your difficult feelings and quiet them enough to plan your next move and make a good decision. You have to calm your fight-or-flight response, and the IN-Vizion Process can help with that. Then, you won't feel the need to detour to disordered eating and ground yourself with food, or manage your emotions by becoming overly involved in someone else's life.

The IN-Vizion Process will help you shift out of reactivity at any time, but if you keep practicing with it, you'll start to see that you're not as quick to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by someone else. Instead, you may feel rising irritation or frustration, but you'll know that you have a choice not to become immersed in those emotions—or anyone else's emotions. I think we often don't realize how much practice it takes to establish new habits, and then we get down on ourselves and give up. You're not going to be the Zen Buddha when someone hurts your feelings or treats you badly, but you're not going to spin out of control instantly, either. It will take practice to automatically remember in those moments of extreme agitation that you can shift gears and awaken your observing self and your power of choice.