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 Tools for a
Balanced Lifestyle
A Program of Recovery from Weight Related Problems
Going for the 3 increases: Increase of Health; Increase of Happiness and
Increase of Energy
Chapter 1: Getting Started
on Your Balanced Lifestyle
III.
Ridding Yourself of Stuffed Anger
In developing your Balanced
Lifestyle you need to rid yourself of the anger, which you stuff on a daily
basis. This anger can come in many forms, which is explained in the Tools
for Anger Workout. Overeating, lack
of exercise, compulsive dieting, not taking care of your physical health are all
self-destructive activities which are
described in the Tools for Anger Workout. People
who do not live a balanced lifestyle are self-destructive and are stuffing down
their anger. Healthy ANGER workouts will
assist you to free your heart of destructive
negativity, hostility and pessimism. In freeing your heart of the
negative impact of anger, you will become free to experience the joy and fun of
living and the optimism of a renewed lease on life through a balanced lifestyle.
The ANGER System begins with
Accepting that you are angry. If you overeat or do not exercise enough
then you are angry at some level in your life, so admit it and get out of
denial. Let go of the old preconceived messages about anger which were that it
was wrong to be angry, that anger was unhealthy and that you are a bad person if
you get angry. Anger is a healthy emotion if it is expressed in a healthy way
and used in a healing way. The next
thing you need to do is to Name what you are angry at. This involves
being clear about what you really are angry about. This means you need to
identify what the trigger of your anger is bringing up for you. Is the trigger
about current anger issues or remote or past anger issues? Is your anger
disproportionate for the happening at hand, if so what is this current issue
triggering from your past? Often what you are really angry at is a person either
from your past or currently involved with you. However if the person you are
angry at is yourself, you need not to do an anger workout on yourself. If you
are angry at yourself, you need to use the Growing
Down: Tools for Healing the Inner Child and do work on letting go of
shame and guilt and increasing in self-forgiveness. It is not healthy to do an
anger workout on yourself. When this program talks about developing a new
relationship with food, increasing physical exercise and letting go of guilt and
shame about your body are there triggers of anger in these issues which might
explain some resistance or resentment about this program which keeps you from
getting started in it freely with great enthusiasm and excitement? The next
thing you need to do is to Get it Out in healthy ways which do not
include venting it on yourself or other people. The best way to get it out is to
use the variety of methods contained in the Tools
for Anger Workout. Yelling, hitting safe inanimate objects, writing it
out and other physical exertions are just a sample. This takes time and a good
plan is to set aside at least 5 to 10 minutes each day to get some anger out as
you initiate and maintain your new balanced lifestyle. Anger will be with you
for the rest of your life and no matter how much you expel and vent the anger
about an issue of great hurt and pain, you can never guarantee that something in
the future will not trigger it again to refuse the fire of pain and hurt in your
heart and gut. Once you get your anger out in a workout, you will feel Energized
and ready to Resume your efforts at a balanced lifestyle with a refreshed
and open outlook. Anger will be with you for the rest of your life. There will
always be things which will trigger your anger so bad that you might loose your
cool and relapse out of your balanced ways. For this reason you need to make
ANGER workouts a regular part of
your Balanced Lifestyle agenda.
A way to get the anger out
of your system not contained in any of the Tools for Coping Books is a
method known as READ, WRITE and BURN. To do this you need to set aside a period
of time in each day to do anger workout. The ideal is to set aside one(1) hour a
day. If you can't afford an hour at least spend the same amount each day be it
10, 20, 30 or 45 minutes.
On the first day your are to
WRITE for the one hour about an issue, topic, trigger, memory, person, place, or
situation which makes you angry. You need to spend the entire time writing on
this topic. Use loose leaf paper and write as much as you can. Use language
which gets the anger out. Use foul, gross, disgusting language. Be vile,
hateful, putrid, ugly and demeaning in your descriptions and statement. Don't
hold back. Let it all hang out. Write stuff, you have never said before in your
life, during this exercise. Vent, vent and vent some more. If you run out of
things to say then use one or all of the following sentence stems to open you up
more:
-
I hate it when ...
-
I despise ...
-
I loath people who ...
-
I wish that ...
-
I get so angry when ...
-
I hate ...
-
I will never again
allow...
-
I regret that I opened
myself up for ...
-
I don't like it when ...
-
I hope that the
following will happen to ... for doing ...
The beauty of writing down
your most vile angry thoughts is that no one except you will ever read what you
write so you don't have to feel guilty about what you are saying since no one
will be hurt by what you are writing or thinking.
On the next day your are to
READ for one hour what you wrote on the day before. It is ideal that you are in
a private place where you can read it out loud with great expressiveness and
passion. Yell it out. Scream it out. Whisper it out. But use your verbal skills
to be complete in your interpretation of what you wrote. It will take about 7
to 10 minutes to completely read your writings of one hour. This means
you are to re-read what you wrote over and over again from 6 to 12 times during
that hour you set aside on this day. The more you read what you wrote, hopefully
the intensity and power of your anger will decrease or dissipate. At the end of
the hour, you are to BURN the papers. This releases the vileness, hostility and
rage. If after the burning you find that you still harbor anger about the issue
you just completed than on the next day for one hour return to the writing
followed by the next day's reading and burning until you can exhaust the
anger felt about that topic. Once you complete one topic then proceed the next
day to another topic. Continue this during your initiating of your balanced
lifestyle program to free yourself up
of the anger which might be keeping you from resisting to implement the changes
needed in your life.
As you do your anger
workouts to get you started on the healthy balanced lifestyle track you might
find the following list of issues as helpful to identify what triggers your
anger as you proceed in implementing the changes needed to get your life
balanced and on track:
Issues about food, diet,
exercise, body image which trigger anger
-
Thin people who worry
about their weight
-
Priority on being thin
as being more important than what a person is or can do
-
Parents who obsess about
food and/or diets and/or body image
-
Obsessive dieting in my
family of origin
-
Parents giving me double
messages about food
-
"Eat, but don't
gain weight"
-
"Eat, but don't eat
too much"
-
Food used as the only
form of love a parent could give me
-
"I love you so eat,
but don't eat too much or else you will get fat"
-
Anti-fat messages in the
print and electronic media, movies, shows etc.
-
Advertisements which say
I am not good enough
-
Advertisement which
promote thinness as the only way to be
-
I am fat so I must be:
jolly, happy, a joke teller, the clown
-
I am fat so I must be:
stupid, lazy, a loser
-
Jealous of thin people
who can eat all they want and never gain weight
-
Rejection for being
overweight
-
Ostracism from social
groups for being fat
-
Mirrors which remind me
of how my body looks
-
Shopping for clothes
-
Condescending attitudes
of clothing clerks about my size
-
"fat" jokes
-
Laughing on the outside
at fat jokes and crying on the inside
-
Unsolicited
recommendations by others as to how to lose weight
-
Unsolicited comments
about what I am eating
-
Unsolicited comments
about my exercise program
-
Being preached to about
my weight
-
Being told: " You
have such a pretty face"
-
Being told: " You
could be so handsome or beautiful if only if ...."
-
Being told: "You
used to be so pretty when you were thinner.."
-
You're thinner but not
ever thin enough to please others or yourself
-
I still feel fat even
after I have lost weight
-
I was told I was fat or
overweight even though I was at an ok weight
-
Being told: "Was
that really you when you were thinner?"
-
After losing weight
being told: "You have lost ok but it is not good enough, lose
more."
-
My weight being open to
public comment, opinion or criticism
-
People judging me by my
body size rather than by my accomplishments on the job
-
Condescending attitude
toward me about my size, weight or looks
-
Why are good foods I
enjoy so fattening?
-
My "okness" as
a human is dependent on my weight, size and looks
-
My capabilities are
judged by my size, weight and looks
-
It is not fair that a
balanced lifestyle requires a new relationship with food
-
It is not fair that I
have to exercise in order to have a balanced lifestyle
-
Exercise is punishment
-
Exercise is a waste of
time
-
Being told I must be
lazy and a good for nothing since I don't exercise
-
Being teased because I
am overweight
-
Members of my family
being teased because I am overweight
-
Society not accepting me
because I am overweight, too large or not cute enough
-
The lack of fairness
about body size, weight and looks in our society
-
The overemphasis on body
image and weight in our society
-
Looks count more than
anything else socially
-
My mom's attitude about
food, diets, exercise, or my weight, size or looks
-
My dad's attitude about
food, diets, exercise, or my weight, size or looks
-
My sibling's attitudes
about food, diets, exercise or my weight, size or looks
-
My grandparents'
attitudes about food, diets, exercise or my weight, size or looks
-
My relatives' attitudes
about food, diets, exercise or my weight, size or looks
-
My friends' attitudes
about food, diets, exercise or my weight, size or looks
-
Being made to feel
embarrassed about my weight, size or looks
-
Hesitation to being seen
in public
-
Hesitation to engaging
in social functions
-
Being ridiculed by
others for my weight, size or looks
-
Resenting the bodies of
others at the health spa
-
Embarrassed by my looks
when I enter a health club
Related Tools for Coping Readings:
1. Self-Esteem Seekers Anonymous
2. Tools for Anger
Workout
3. Tools for Handling
Loss
4. Growing Down: Tools
for Healing the Inner Child
Click below to get to the next section of
Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Getting Started on
Your Balanced Lifestyle
Click below to get back to Table of Contents
for Tools for Balanced Lifestyle
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