Diet Survivors: June 2005 Archives

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Children who are raised in troubled homes sometimes bring a phenomenon
with them into adulthood. It's called "frozen feelings."

Often, when a home is just too troubled by abuse, addiction, or other problems, a child responds by shutting down. Usually, in these homes, there is no adult to notice or to model healthy identification of feelings, so shutting down of feelings happens very easily.

These children come into adulthood not knowing that anything is wrong. The insidious part is when your feelings are shut down, this doesn't mean you don't have any feelings. Instead, it means that your feelings sway your decisions more than they should becuase you're not aware of them to sufficiently analyze their worthiness in your decision-making. Often these adults don't find out anything is wrong until they're in some kind of crisis and they seek therapy or counsel.

The truth about feelings is that when we're aware of them, we gain control. For example, if you are about to start a new career, but you're terrified of your first interview, it's helpful to realize your fear so that you can decide to have courage in spite of the fear. In this case, you are deciding to override your feeling, rather than follow your feeling and cancel the interview.

But you could also decide that a feeling should influence a decision. Let's say that every time you're around a certain person, you end up feeling inadequate. If you can identify this feeling, you might realize there's something about that person, not you, that's causing this. As circumstances allow, you can then decide to avoid or limit your contact with this person.

Adults with frozen feelings are not able to do these things. They often make poor decisions. Does this describe you? It's helpful to recognize that when you were a child, you made the best decision you could at the time to protect yourself by shutting down feelings.

But now it's probably not working for you any more. It may be time to make a new decision--to become aware of various feelings, and learn to identify how you're feeling at any given time. It's hard work because it requires courage to feel yucky stuff like embarrassment or sadness.

Take heart--you don't have to wallow in those feelings. Just a general awareness of them can improve your quality of life. And remember--no feeling can kill you. You CAN, indeed, tolerate yucky feelings. And you DON'T have to numb the feeling with food. You are capable of feeling the feeling fully, and then letting it pass. Start believing that.

Here's a tip -- it's something I came up with, and I use it often. When a yucky feeling comes along, I identify it, I remind myself that I am still able to go about my day in spite of the feeling, and then I say, "And feelings have expiration dates. May this one have a very short expiration date." For those of you with a spiritual life, you can pray for short expiration dates, or meditate on the idea.

With love, Linda Moran

(Welcome to the non-diet weblog. This blog for non-dieters is a companion to the free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board and the free Diet Survivors newsletter. Subscribe now.)

I'm leaving in a little while for a day visit to New York City. We only live an hour away here in northern New Jersey. We'll be three adults and seven kids, oh my!

We'll visit some touristy sites, and will pay a somber visit to the site of the future Freedom Tower.

We'll chase after subways and pound the pavement. Now THAT'S my idea of fun exercise. I'm a woods hiker at heart, but the city will do nicely too!

Many dieters find the word "exercise" to be guilt-inducing, and that's why I play it down. You don't need it in order to control calorie intake, and I'd like to help all of you see that exercise, just like eating, was meant to be fun, and never guilt-inducing.

So meditate these days on what activity you really like. Notice I didn't say what activity you can tolerate. There's probably something you LIKE to do. Something that challenges your body a little bit. Something you get some joy out of. Tennis? Jumping rope? Walking? Dancing in your living room to good music?

Can you find a way to bring exercise-joy into your life? If not, then skip it for now. It's more important to catch on to hunger and fullness. You can find an activity later.

You may be so used to the idea that exercise is distasteful that it may take some time to figure out what you really like to do. So just let it simmer in your mind for a while. I'm real big on letting ideas simmer before they come to a boil.

With love, Linda Moran

(Welcome to the non-diet weblog. This blog for non-dieters is a companion to the free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board and the free Diet Survivors newsletter. Subscribe now.)

What is the ABCDEF method? It's a handy way to walk through your faulty beliefs and replace them. I have it memorized (but then I tend to be a little compulsive about stuff.)

Type Linda Moran ABCDEF into Google to find more information.

"I eat for emotional reasons." Have you heard people say this? Perhaps you have said it yourself.

You're an emotional eater. You try not to be, but sometimes you wonder how one goes about turning off one's emotions. Well... you don't have to. All humans are emotional, and what you're really doing by eating is trying to TURN OFF your emotions.

Read Do Social Blunders make you eat?.