Do you find yourself eating when you’re depressed or bored, and do you feel unable to change? Read on…
A Reader writes:
I am struggling. I wake up in the morning feeling bad in my body, bad about how I look, and swear to myself I won’t eat so much today. “I’ll be good.”
But then it gets dark early and I’m lonely and I start feeling like I need to give myself something right now. It’s usually Dorito chips. I’ve tried not buying them but then I end up going out at night to get them.
I’ve tried Focusing with this but I just feel kind of sick about how big my stomach is.
Dear Reader:
I’m sorry to hear about your struggle, which is actually very familiar to me. I know. I’ve been there.
So I know that there is a particular way to do Focusing with an issue like this. Just starting with the body feeling is unlikely to get us anywhere, because this issue is what Barbara McGavin and I call a “Tangle.”
In a Tangle, we’re taken over by parts successively. You have the one in the morning that swears to eat moderately today, and the one at night that drives you out to buy and eat Doritos. And then there’s the one that feels kind of sick about it all.
With a Tangle like this one, the real key is the part that “does it” — the one buying and eating the Doritos.
You’ll need to invite that part into awareness — under a flag of truce, as I like to say. You’re not going to scold it or shame it or tell it to change. You’re just going to listen. In other words, you’re going to be Self-in-Presence with this part.
It might not trust you at first. This type of part is so accustomed to being shamed and treated like the problem. But if you are consistent in just wanting to get to know it better, it will start to reveal itself to you.
That’s when you’ll start to find out what is really going on in those dark and lonely evenings when the only thing to do feels like reaching for the chips. You’ll hear what this part is trying to protect you from, and what it wants for you.
Very likely there are feelings there, emotions that something in you can hardly stand to feel. As you build your capacity to be Self-in-Presence, those emotions will no longer seem like too much for you.
And the places in you that have been longing for your company can finally come home to your gentle presence.
