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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
VI.
What's Keeping You from Getting Started?
Perhaps you are finding that
you are having a hard time getting started on the Balanced Lifestyles Program.
You have been attending the weekly meetings in a recovery program but have not found yourself
reading the material in the Lifestyles Manual nor in the other Tools for
Coping Series Books. You find yourself saying how excited and enthusiastic
you are about your new program and yet have not written anything in your
journal, nor written out or said any new positive self-affirmations for
yourself. You find yourself telling or explaining to others about what you are
doing, yet you are slow in implementing what you are telling others you are
doing or "supposed to do." You find it hard to get started on implementing an
exercise program for yourself. You find yourself saying you like the emphasis in
this program on living a guilt free life and yet you are hearing an inner mean
voice berating you for not putting more time or energy into the program. You
find that you like that this program does not require meal planning or a set
diet and yet you are not putting into practice any of the nutritional concepts
which you have already been exposed to in this program.
What is going on? Are you two different people? Are you a split
personality? Or are you simply a human being whose TEA system is out of whack?
The TEA System is
explained in Self-Esteem Seekers Anonymous. T is for Thoughts which need to be changed
before you can begin to initiate your recovery or balancing lifestyle
activities. E is for Emotions which you need to address and change
about the proposed recovery and balancing lifestyle activities before you can
successfully initiate such a program in your life. Finally A is for Actions
which will be initiated only after you have dealt with the way you think and
feel about your lifestyle and made the intellectual and emotional commitment to
proceed in implementing the changes needed to balance your lifestyle. The
sequence of TEA is important. You cannot successfully stick to a program of
lifestyle balancing if you just merely "wish" the change to occur. It
is unproductive to merely think it would be nice to put this new program into
action in your life unless you emotionally open yourself up to accept the need
for such change.
One reason why your TEA
System might not be in sync is that you have come to hate and despise yourself
for what your body has become. Your body image may be so poor that you have come
to feel disgust, loathing for and resentment against yourself. You on one hand
recognize the need to change the way you live your life so that you can get your
body into a healthier balance and yet on the other hand you hate yourself so
much that you do not believe that you deserve the time, effort or energy needed
to help you change. You on one hand want to feel better about yourself and your
body but on the other hand you have disliked, despised and hated yourself and
your body for so long that it is hard to break the habit in order to turn
yourself around to becoming self-loving, self-nurturing and self-encouraging.
You hear that there is probably anger which lies at the root of your life being
out of balance and yet the only one you can recognize any anger towards is
yourself. You want to rid yourself of this anger, but the more you get angry at
yourself, the more you are discouraged to begin to take the steps necessary to
change and recover from your unhealthy out of balanced eating and exercising
habits. You are so critical and judgmental of yourself that you find it hard to
practice the unconditional self-acceptance and self-love encouraged in this
program. You remind yourself of your past failures and lack of success in your
past when you practiced yo-yo dieting, starvation and fasting dieting or
compulsive exercising. You reason: "If I was a failure in the past why
should I expect myself to be any more successful now?" You are filled with
self-doubt and lack trust in yourself to follow through with what is needed to
be successful in turning your life into a balanced process. So although you say
you want to implement the Balanced Lifestyle Program in your life, your emotions
are not in a place where they are ready for you to commence on this project with
hope, excitement and enthusiasm. You are on a self-destructive course which
needs attention now.
What you need to overcome
your self-hatred and self-destructiveness is to not do ANGER workouts on
yourself but rather to work on self-forgiveness and letting go of shame and
guilt over your past. You need to get to work in the Growing Down: Tools for
Healing the Inner Child chapters on Letting Go of Shame and Guilt and
Self-Forgiveness . Also you need to look at Stop
Self-destructive Anger Responses in the Tools for Anger Work-Out. You need to begin to accept yourself as a
human being who is not perfect and is subject to making mistakes and
experiencing failures. You need to give yourself freedom to slip and regress at
times in your efforts to change your lifestyle. You need to work on giving
yourself permission to not "do it right" all of the time. You need to
set realistic expectations and standards for yourself in your goal to be
successful in this program. You need to give yourself plenty of time to
accomplish the goals of this program, considering that it will take the rest of
your life to accomplish the complete and successful balancing of your lifestyle.
Once you have succeeded in forgiving yourself and letting go of shame and guilt
over you past failures you then need to work on accepting and loving yourself
unconditionally as outlined in the Growing Down
Chapters on Unconditional
Self-Acceptance and Self-Love, Self-Affirmations, and
Mirror Work for Growing Down. As you begin to be
nicer and more accepting to yourself, you will grow in a sense of
self-deservedness and self-worth which helps you believe that you are worth your
time, effort, energy and resources in this program to be successful at gaining a
balance in your life. Only by doing this work will your TEA System be in sync to
overcome your current state of self-hatred and self-destructiveness.
Another reason why your TEA
System might not be in sync is that you cannot intellectually accept that many
of the procedures outlined in the Tools for Coping Series Books and the Tools
for a Balanced Lifestyle Program are reasonable and acceptable for you to do.
You might think that journal writing, visualizations, self-affirmation cards,
talking to yourself in front of a mirror, drawing pictures with crayons, playing
children's games, doing anger
release work, and letting go of control over other people, places, things,
situations and conditions is a bunch of crap. I fully understand this
intellectual resistance to the program, since only ten years ago I believed that
these types of behaviors were too "touchy feely," outlandish, silly,
stupid, a waste of time, ridiculous for an adult to engage in, unproductive and
not scientifically grounded for successful outcomes in clients. That is until I
allowed myself to experience them all in my personal life. I used them in my
recovery from low self-esteem and a life which was severely out of balance. I
now use these and the other techniques in the Tools for Coping Series Books to
keep me on target in my goal to love myself and keep my life in balance. I have
been able to feel better about myself and keep my exercise and food program in
balance for close to a decade now. I believe that this is because I was humbled
by the realization that things which looked to me as Kooky, unprofessional or
frivolous were needed in my life to heal my inner emotional turmoil. These
behaviors were things I had never been allowed to engage in as a child and as
such I was in desperate need to experience them. By doing them, my emotional
life could catch up with my intellectual life so that my TEA System could get
into sync and I could be successful in my recovery and change efforts. Give
yourself a break and give up your resistance to trying these
"non-orthodox" healing behaviors in your life. Try the tools offered
you in this program. Allow yourself to openly experience what might at first
glance appear to be foolish, silly or frivolous. Let your emotional life heal by
engaging in these activities. By getting your inner emotions in a healing way,
you will be able to experience your TEA System in sync as you progress deeper
into this program.
A final reason which could
explain why your TEA System is out of sync resulting in your slow rate of
initiation of change in your lifestyle, might be the pattern of behavior which
you learned in your family of origin as explained in Laying the Foundation.
If you possess a Looking
Good pattern, you deny the origins of your problem. You have a need to look
and act over-responsible with the veneer of high achievement. You find yourself
willing to take on challenges in your personal life, which you think you ought
to take on. Yet, you lack the emotional "togetherness" to tackle them
on your own due to your being out of touch with your true feelings about these
challenges. You "looked good" coming into the Balanced Lifestyle
Program and talked a good talk but your actions were out of sync with your
words. As a result you put yourself down inside as not being "good
enough" and being a failure in this pursuit. You feel guilt for your
perceived failings and find a pattern of procrastination takes over in your
initiating what is needed to begin the process of putting your lifestyle into
balance. Stop yourself from "looking good." Admit to others where you
are really at in this program. Admit to yourself and others, that this program
is a hard one for you to take on freely. Admit that you need support of others
to identify what emotions are blocking your willingness to implement this
program in your life. Admit to yourself and others that you are a human being
who is subject to mistakes and failures and that although you want badly to
implement this new way of living into your life you are too habituated into your
old unhealthy model. This might make you "look bad" to yourself or
others, but really we all know why you entered this program. You have a problem
taking good care of yourself. You are more responsible taking care of everyone
else and less responsible when it comes to taking care of yourself. It is ok to
admit that you have weaknesses and faults. Welcome to the human race! You have
tons of anger which you have stuffed down in your life. It is ok to admit this.
If you do not now know what anger you have stuffed that is ok, but do the anger
workouts anyway. Remember, unless your emotions are in sync with your thoughts
you will never be successful in maintaining your balanced lifestyle actions for
the rest of your life. You do not need to be ashamed to cry or break down as you
face the reality of how tough it is to maintain a balanced lifestyle for the
rest of your life. Emotional
catharsis for a "looking good" behavioral pattern is freeing and
energizing since it allows you to shed that mask which you hide behind as you
face everyone on a daily basis.
If you possess the Acting
Out and/or Troubled Person behavioral patterns, you are probably
rebelling against the messages of the Balanced Lifestyles Program. You are
probably in this program because someone else has been on your back to "get
your weight off!" and to "get in shape!" You feel like you are
being pressured or pushed to perform in this program. You resent the messages
being given to you. You find the leader and other group members as irritating
and so you get angry at the meetings and at the discussions which take place.
You find yourself turning off. You
want to get out of the program and yet you know there will be hell to pay if you
fail at this program like you have all the others in your life. You find
yourself acting out in the classes and groups. Your behaviors are at times
disturbing to the others and you hope you will be kicked out so that you have an
excuse that "you were misunderstood and that no one gave you a
chance." You will blame everyone else but yourself if you are not
successful in this program. You need to give in and accept that your lifestyle
is out of balance and that you need help. You need to admit that you are just
like everyone else in the program and that you need it as bad as the others do.
You need to admit that you are as bad off as the next "gal or guy."
You need to get some humility and let go of your grandiosity that says:" I don't need anyone's help to change my life. I can do it on my own." You
need to drop your brick wall and other barriers to others so as to let them in
on who you are. You can realize the beauty of mutual support and caring if you
take the risk to be "real" in your class and group meetings. You need
to decide to do this program only for yourself and no one else. If you cannot
change your thinking around and let go of your intellectual resistance to this
program then you need to drop out of the program now before you go too far and
disable and disrupt the others so that their success in the program is
imperiled.
If you possess the Pulling
In and/or Nonfeeling behavioral patterns you are so out of touch with
your real feelings that you are having a difficult time understanding the
language of the program. You are probably afraid of being in the group meetings
for fear of being seen or heard. You would prefer to be invisible to everyone
else. You might even have made a vow never to talk in the group. You are used to
living in a world of fantasy and can visualize what it would be like if your
lifestyle should change and get into balance, and yet you are finding it
difficult to cope with the realities involved in getting such a change in your
life. You shy from asking questions or letting others know the difficulties you
are having in understanding just what is expected or wanted of you in this
program. You are finding it difficult to connect with the other members in this
program, believing that they are better, smarter, more together, richer,
happier, prettier, healthier, etc... than you. You need to take the risk to
become visible to the group members. You need to be open with your inability to
connect with the emotional messages in this program. You need to reach out to
the other members in this program to gain their support so as to reduce your
anxiety and fear which tend to paralyze you from taking any risk of change in
your life.
If you possess the Entertaining
behavioral pattern you want to joke and make light of the importance of the
messages contained in the Balanced Lifestyle Program. You do this because you
fear you would be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the change needing to be made
in your life. You would rather laugh than cry about the enormity of the
difficulties which lie ahead of you as you tackle the balancing of your
lifestyle. You always found that people would accept you and your weight if you
could make them laugh. But laughing about the problem is not tackling or solving
it. A sense of humor is important in a balanced life, but there needs to be a
balance of humor and seriousness as you initiate this program. Lightening the
stress, anxiety, fear and tension present in the meetings as serious issues are
being discussed is both distracting and disturbing to others. You would be best
served to be open with the group about the level of anxiety, fear, tension and
stress you are experiencing as you participate in this program. You need to open
yourself to your inner hurt and pain and begin to share it with your support
network in this program. You need to stop putting on the mask that "nothing
bothers you" and admit to others what you are really feeling inside.
"I'm laughing on the outside while crying on the inside," may be
lyrics to the Entertainer's Anthem but they are unproductive emotional means of
helping you get your recovery program into high gear.
If you possess the Enabler,
People Pleaser and/or Rescuing behavioral pattern you may be feeling
guilty, selfish, stupid, self-centered or egotistical for spending so much time
focused on yourself, your needs and your goals. You feel embarrassed that so
much attention is being paid to your problems. You would rather listen to the
problems of the other group members and keep the focus off of your own. You feel
that the messages in the Balanced Lifestyle Program are geared to making you so
self preoccupied that you will not have enough time for others. You are afraid
that if you fully implement all of the activities and actions in this program
that the significant people in your life will be jealous of the time you are
focusing on yourself instead of on them. You are afraid that significant people
will reject and disapprove of you if you no longer take care of them or fix
their problems. You are used to being a controller in other's lives and you
resent the efforts being made in this program to "control" you.
You are used to being the "helper" and not the "helpee."
You get embarrassed when group members are interested in your personal well
being as you progress in this program. You need to let go of the need to be the
rescuer, fixer, caretaker, helper and savior of others in and out of this
program. You need to focus on fixing and taking care of yourself. You need to
accept that you deserve the time, energy and resources you are spending on
yourself so that your life can get into balance. You need to let go of your
irrational thoughts about feeling guilty or being selfish for focusing on
yourself in this program. You need to overcome your intellectual resistance to
the messages about the need for "taking care of your own health and
emotional stability before you will be any good for others." You need to
accept that it is healthy and rational to no longer place yourself last in the
pecking order for your time, assistance, energy and resources.
The behavioral patterns of
low self-esteem are based on unhealthy, irrational and unrealistic Thoughts,
Emotions and Actions which are deeply ingrained from birth in you
as negative self-scripts. You most probably have more than one of these patterns
of thoughts, emotions and actions operating in your external behaviors. To
understand how to overcome these patterns of low-self esteem read An
Overview of Self-Esteem in Self-Esteem
Seekers Anonymous. A
description of how to rewrite these unhealthy behavioral scripts is contained in
Responding to Old Behavioral Scripts in Laying the Foundation.
It is any wonder that you
have not been able to get deeper into initiating the Balanced Lifestyle Program
by now. You have too many opposing forces inside of yourself to address before
you can successfully implement this program. You have a lifetime of work ahead
of you to overcome the negative self-scripts of your behavioral patterns of low
self-esteem.
As you begin to get your TEA
System in a rational, realistic and healthy perspective you will be better
prepared to start this program. You need to develop new skills and use new tools
in order to accomplish the goals of this program. You need to learn to crawl
before you walk in this program. You will need to learn to walk before you can
run in this program. No one is pushing, rushing or judging you in this program.
The goal of this program is that every member is accepted unconditionally for
who she or he is rather than what she or he accomplishes or does in this
program.
You hopefully have
recognized the sources of resistance inside of you which have made it difficult
for you to get started in implementing the Balanced Lifestyle Program in your
life. What is needed now is your commitment to use the ALERT, ANGER, CHILD and
LET GO Systems over the next few weeks, months and years so as to help you
overcome your behavioral patterns of low self-esteem so that you can get your
TEA System into sync and put your balanced lifestyle program into full and
successful implementation. Be kind and gentle on yourself for not starting this
program more aggressively than you initially promised yourself you would.
Remember you are fighting against a life time of old habits which are hard to
break. You have been given some new tools in this start up Chapter of your
Balanced Lifestyle Program. Use these tools over and over and over again. Do not
hesitate to seek assistance from your recovery program facilitator or counselor to help
you better understand how these tools work and how they apply to your specific
circumstance. Best of luck as you begin your journey to wellness on the path of
a balanced lifestyle. It is well worth the time, effort and energy you will put
into it.
Related Tools for Coping
Readings:
1. Self-Esteem Seekers
Anonymous
2. Laying the Foundation
All Chapters, it is important to
read the 9 Behavioral Patterns of Low Self-Esteem:
3. Tools for Personal
Growth
All Chapters especially:
4. Tools for Anger
Work-Out
5. Growing Down: Tools
for Healing the Inner Child
All Chapters especially:
Click below to get to the next section of
Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Getting Started on
Your Balanced Lifestyle
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