From skwigg's journal:
Today, I was trying to think of something I'm still struggling with or working on. I think I'm always learning, evolving, and optimizing. I never feel like, "Ok, done now, will continue to eat/think exactly like this forever." Because THAT doesn't happen. I'm still peeling back layers and finding new ways of looking at things.
I'm not struggling though, with any of it. That's fascinating! Every thought or decision related to food was a struggle for most of my life. It's sure not that I'm eating so perfectly now. As I posted in Bake All the Things, today was all about making pizza and chocolate chip cookies. :-)
My working theory is that I don't struggle because I don't believe it's possible to do something wrong. I mean that was the stress, right? Food decisions are brutal if you believe they can ruin you, or that they define you. If the way you eat can make you wrong, bad, weak, worthless, hopeless, unlovable...no wonder we freak completely out! Every choice is a threat to our person.
I see each food decision as an opportunity. Either I will nail it and be very happy with myself, or I will learn something important and be very happy with myself.
In other words, peace was a brain thing and not a food/weight thing. I quit believing my catastrophic, all-or-nothing thoughts. "Is that true?" No, if a thought hurts, it means I'm choosing a painful take on things. I never used to question thoughts. My thoughts were me. Of course they're true! But once some space opened up between me and my thoughts, once I saw them as temporary visitors and not "me," I realized I could choose differently and feel differently. I don't ever choose to feel like crap anymore, generally. Those thoughts may still spring up, but I notice them and let them go.
Here's a great email on this topic from Dr Amy Johnson:
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You can feel things, without being things.
You can feel sad, angry, lonely, disordered or unwell without being sad, angry, lonely, disordered or unwell.
The truth is, you couldn’t be those things if you tried. What you are doesn’t change. What you are is the same one energy that is all things. The all-that-is-ness within which feelings arise and then fade.
When you think of yourself as “I’m depressed, nice to meet you”. Or “I’m anxious, how are you today?” Or “I have an eating disorder or I am a whatever-aholic”, you’re identifying with the moving, changing stuff passing through. You say that you are it, and so you experience being it.
Can you see what a huge impact that has on your current and future experiences? It’s ginormous.
As soon you decide that you are something, you identify with it.
And because you identify with it, you’re clingy. You attach to it. It looks like you or yours, so you innocently hold on.
Which means you keep it alive. Your focus fuels it. Because you mistakenly think it’s constant and significant, you expect it to stick around. You expect to see it again.
And so you do see it again. And that proves your point that this fleeting experience is you, so you dive head-first into being it even more.
You see where this is going.
The blank slate, fresh start, infinite potential that is our birthright is down the tubes because you think you already know what’s coming. Because you think you know who and what you are.
It’s a bit of a mess, really. We can all save ourselves a world of confusion and misunderstanding if we can just see this one thing: We can feel things, without being things.
Love is what you are. Everything else is just what you feel.
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What do you think?