Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: Saying YES to Life in the New Year!

“Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful” is the opening line to a popular Christmas carol.

2009 has been a very rough year for a lot of us in an assortment of ways – financially, emotionally, physically….we have all been affected by the unavoidable shifts and changes in the world around us.

So as we meet here together for the last Monday in 2009, we may be tempted to carry that perspective into 2010. It is frightful outside, and it is easier, safer, better, unavoidable, to stay inside by the warm fire – instead of fighting for change. Well, yes it is. But does it work – and will it help us to say no to the fears and doubts that keep us feeling small and stuck and instead say YES to the life we really want and dream of living in 2010?

Don’t get me wrong – there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying a cozy warm fire, especially if you are surrounded by supportive loved ones and some hot eggnog or spiced cider. But we can’t make it into a lifestyle. There is always something that we can do now to change our circumstances and move in the direction of our dreams. We may not have power we might wish for to transform our outer environment, but we always retain the power to change the world within ourselves for the better.

To help us remember this as the New Year draws closer, we need to acknowledge now that 2010 will have its frightful days too. Some days we will be very tempted to stoke the fire, crawl back onto the couch, put off until tomorrow what we should have dealt with yesterday and still could today.

Acknowledging this, we may even now be considering what New Year’s Resolutions we want to make on January 1, 2010. But this may not be the approach that serves us best in saying “no” to what didn’t work for us in 2009 and YES to our ability to explore what does work in 2010.

The problem with New Year’s Resolutions is that they lack perspective –as do we when we are making them. For instance, we forget that they are year-long resolutions, just as full of ups-and-downs as any year will be, and only achievable over time. Resolutions rarely factor in the small, daily steps we need to get from here to there. They live in giant leaps – leaps which more often than not prove to be neither possible nor safe to attempt. Finally, resolutions often address our determination to change our outer circumstances, rather than focusing on the only place where we can ever hope to change anything – inside ourselves.

So this year, I would like to suggest that we forgo the traditional New Year’s resolutions in favor of New Year’s intentions. Intention, unlike resolution, is flexible. Moreover, intention is gentle, recognizing that there is a bigger picture that adds up over time if we just stick with our intention for long enough. Intentions are also relational – recognizing that the good of each individual is only achievable by seeking not just our own good, but the good of those around us as well. Most importantly, intentions come from deep within us, forcing us to dig down underneath concrete goals like “get a new job”, “eat healthier”, or “fix the problems in a relationship” to find what stands in between us and our ability to achieve our heart-held goals.

So now, start thinking about the intentions you wish to pay attention to in your new year. Are you worried about cherished relationships? Ask yourself what you can do to better cherish yourself so that you will have more to offer to cherished others as well.  Do you long for greater equanimity in the face of situational difficulties? What can you do to identify what evokes feelings of peace within yourself, and include those activities in your daily schedule? Are you seeking financial stability? Maybe it is time to end the harsh inner criticism you have been feeding yourself in favor of simply asking for help to better understand and change your financial picture.

At Southlake Counseling, we are excited to see what the New Year will bring! We have been privileged over the last two decades to witness countless individuals’ inner transformations – transformations that have led to amazing outer shifts as well. Do you need help forming intentions and figuring out how to bring your dreams into reality? Are you still grappling with the fear, hesitation, and doubt that a hard economic year engenders in us all? Do you know that 2010 must be different, but are just not sure how to make the changes you dream of? Contact us at www.southlakecounseling.com today. Together, we can help you say “no” to self-limiting thoughts and behavior patterns and YES to your own limitless possibilities for 2010!

Be Well,

Kimberly


Published on Tuesday December 29, 2009 in Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Your Say Yes to Life Monday Motivator: “Fat” is Not a Feeling But I FEEL Fat!

We all have “fat days”. Even if you are a man reading this, you probably are not scratching your head wondering what a “fat day” is. You know.

We all know. 

Fat days are like cold-and-flu season, garden weeds, or your dog’s next teeth-cleaning appointment – they are going to come. Inevitably. There is no sense trying to run and hide.

But what can we do? If having “fat days” is more about management than elimination, and we are all going to “feel fat” from time to time, then where is the dividing line between the inevitable and its amount of influence over how we feel about ourselves, our bodies, and our lives?

Once again, it boils down to knowledge…and choice. First, we have to understand and decode where “feeling fat” comes from and what it means to us. Next, we have to decide if this business of “feeling fat” still works for us, or if we would prefer to make a new choice in how we understand and deal with fat feelings, and fat days, in our daily lives. 

So where do we start? We can begin by exploring where feeling fat even comes from, how it started, and why it is so much a part of our culture today that we often accept it without question – and even welcome it in as a helpful, rather than harmful, regular houseguest.

In 1995, the Discovery Channel reported the sad but fascinating results of the introduction of western television programming into the culture of the little island of Fiji. Prior to receiving access to westernized shows like “Melrose Place” and “90210”, only three percent of Fijian females suffered from eating disorders. Three years later, 74 percent of Fijian girls reported feeling “too big” and 62 percent had gone on a diet.

We may not think the environment around us gets under our skin, but we don’t have to look very far to see how much influence it actually has on our day-to-day routines and perceptions of ourselves and others. We feel fat because anti-fat messages are everywhere we are. Billboards, television and movies, advertisements, even our daily dialogues with each other are full of labels like “thin” and “fat”, “good” and “bad”, “healthy” and “unhealthy” – and almost none of it is backed up by actual scientific facts.

In fact, most of the steady diet of fat-bashing that we take in has one purpose and one purpose only – to induce dis-ease so that we will spend our hard-earned cash to fix a problem that is all in our heads!

Okay, so now we know. We have been told to feel fat, and we have – up until now at least – very obligingly obeyed. But now we really do feel fat – so what options do we have to extricate the word “fat” from the very real and valid feelings we are having underneath?

First, we can start to access our power of choice by working hard to understand what “feeling fat” means to us. We have to recognize that “fat” in and of itself is NOT a feeling . More accurately, “feeling fat” it is an edgy little ache that grabs our attention long enough so we will trace it back to its source and deal with the real root issue. So when we feel fat, we can instantly snap to attention and begin our sleuthing process – tracing it back, and back, and back, until we uncover what triggered the fat-feeling so we can deal with that and move on to recapture our sense of health, wellness, and balance.

If you are struggling with or in recovery from an eating disorder, you may already be familiar with the technique of naming your fat feelings. This is a very helpful approach that involves building your emotional vocabulary. There are five major emotions – anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness – and about a million permutations of each. For instance, if we know it is not “fat” that we are really feeling, could it perhaps be “anger”? Or is it instead a permutation of anger – maybe “rage”, “annoyance”, “hostility”, “displeasure”? In this way you can take your power back by naming what you are really feeling, and investigating what your real emotions are trying to tell you so you can work through them and return to peace and equanimity again.

You might also want to try another code-breaking exercise to figure out what “fat” really stands for in your life. In this exercise, you will complete two sentences. First you will write down: “Thin =” and complete the sentence with appropriate descriptions of what “thin” means to you in that moment (examples might include: good , happy, desirable, successful, popular, attractive, etc). Next, you will write down “Fat =” and complete the sentence with your assessment of what fat feels like to you in that moment (examples could include: disgusting, irresponsible, lazy, unattractive, unacceptable, lonely, unsuccessful, etc.). In this way you can backtrack to discover what you are really feeling, and begin to deal with those feelings.

At Southlake Counseling, we understand how painful “feeling fat” can be – we have spent years honing our skills for battling back against our culture’s focus on the socially-acceptable prejudice of weight-ism and helping others to do the same. If you are having trouble completing the exercises above, or if you try your hand at them and find that strong emotions are coming up and you need support to work through them, visit us at www.southlakecounseling.com. Let us help you to start your New Year off on an empowered note by saying “no” to feeling fat in 2010 – and saying YES to feeling what you really feel, owning your right to have and express your true emotions, and doing what you need to do to live the life of your dreams!

Be Well,

Kimberly

Published on Monday December 21, 2009 in Eating Disorders and Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Your “Say Yes to Life” Monday Motivator: Finding a Reason to Recover, Part III

I hope you have been enjoying this three-part series on Finding a Reason to Recover. To recap, in Part I, we explored what a “reason” is and how to decipher the reasons we have for the choices we make. In Part II, we looked at the word “choice” and how the very natural human emotion of fear factors into the choices we make to stay stuck or move forward.

For the conclusion of our series, we will explore what it means to “recover”. Accepted definitions of this word include: “to get back, regain, to compensate for, recover losses from.” 

These definitions might resonate if we developed an eating disorder as an adult, and we have strong memories of what life was like, what we were like, and who we were before the eating disorder set in.

But what if we have been struggling with the eating disorder for so long that we can no longer recall who we were or who we could be again without that influence controlling our lives? Or what if we were very young when we first became ill, and today contemplating life without the eating disorder feels identical to contemplating life without….us?

In this context, recovery can feel like a scary, even impossible, concept to grasp.

So here is where we must start pulling together our reasons and our choices to stay stuck or break free and assemble them on the foundation of our sense of self – our personal identity. If we don’t have a personal identity, or don’t remember it anymore, then here is where we must start, because the simple truth is that we cannot recover, regain, or get back anything if we don’t know what – or who – we have lost.

If you enjoyed significant time free from your eating disorder before you became ill, then now is the time to put your memory to work and remember what life was like. What were you like? What did you enjoy doing? What did you look forward to? Whose company did you seek out? What did you think about when you woke up in the morning and went to sleep at night? How did you spend your time and energy? What were you curious about, fascinated with, interested in? Who were you? So spend some quality time this week getting to know you B.E.D. – Before Eating Disorder.

If you developed the eating disorder before you had a strong sense of self, then examine the people around you, especially the people whom you value the most and look up to. What do they enjoy doing? What do you admire about them? If you could be anybody, go anywhere, do anything, who/where/what would you turn your attention to? What causes move your heart? What makes you long to reach out and help someone else? Whose friendship do you enjoy and why? What societal groups tug at your heart strings and why? Who could you be – who would you be – if you had time and energy free from managing the demands of your eating disorder to be YOU? Spend some time envisioning you A.E.D. – After Eating Disorder.

Understand as you do this wonderful, vital work of reconstructing “you” free from the eating disorder’s influence that the priceless gift hidden within the hard work of recovery is the opportunity to wipe the slate clean – or to keep what is good from your past and discard what is harmful now and replace it with something better. You can literally create a fascinating new reality for yourself built on the strength of your determination to overcome your life-threatening disease and the knowledge that if you can recover from an eating disorder, you can do anything you set your heart and mind to achieve.

This is the best reason to do the hard work of recovery that you will ever find. Inherent in choosing to recover is the knowledge that you are worth recovering for, that life is worth recovering for, that you matter, and that there is a place for you and work that only you can do in this world. And even if you don’t feel that way now, don’t believe that now, or don’t see that in yourself now, if you long to be able to one day, then that is a good enough reason to invest the time and energy you have been giving to your eating disordered thoughts and behaviors into recovering from them instead.

Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund, said it best when she stated, “It is time for every one of us to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves at the top of our commitment list.”

She didn’t say “when we feel like it, when we believe it is okay, when we have earned it.” She simply said “It is time” to do it. Now. Today.

It is always a good day to choose to recover. At Southlake Counseling Center, we know exactly how much courage, determination, and vision that decision requires, and we have dedicated our lives to supporting you in your recovery journey as we first were supported by caring and skilled others in ours. So contact us today at www.southlakecounseling.com to find out how to make 2010 the year that you say “goodbye” to your eating disorder and YES to your own precious, purposeful, and powerful life!

Be Well,

Kimberly

Published on Monday December 14, 2009 in Eating Disorders and Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Your “Say Yes to Life” Monday Motivator: Finding a Reason to Recover, Part II

In the first part of our exploration of finding a reason to do the hard work of recovery, we investigated the meaning and purpose of reasons themselves. What is a “reason”? How do we begin to uncover our reasons for staying sick, and our reasons for getting well? Perhaps most importantly, what recourse do we have if and when we discover our reasons for staying sick conflict with our reasons for getting well?

In this second part of our exploration, we will look at the word “choice”. The most commonly accepted definition of this word is “the power, right, or liberty to choose; option”. Yet in many cases, the power of choice feels less like a right or liberty and more like a burden or obligation.

So stop for a moment now and think of how you commonly experience choice in your life. Does choice feel like a human right, a liberty, an option you have for exercising your own powerful, personal freedom? Or does choice feel like a burden, an obligation, an exercise in overcoming almost impenetrable fear?

Eleanor Roosevelt, a strong and empowered woman who lived through one of the most tumultuous times in American history as she supported her husband in rebuilding the hopes and dreams of a nation wrecked by economic depression, is famous for her choice to maintain her personal optimism in the face of the direst of circumstances. She once stated, “The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”

While it is unlikely that any of us will ever make a decision to “reach out eagerly” and not encounter fear, Mrs. Roosevelt’s statement points to the possibility that this experience is not impossible to achieve – but it is also not going to be easy to attain.

The simple fact is that each and every day we encounter many reasons that could support our choice to stay stuck, and we encounter just as many reasons to choose to pursue health, recovery, and wellness…and it is our power of personal choice alone that will determine which path we will take.

So the challenge then becomes to decide what is in it for us to make one choice over another.

As I have had the privilege of working with so many individuals over the years, it has become clear to me that human beings are most likely to choose positive change when the pain of staying stuck exceeds the perceived pain of breaking free.  I have witnessed how each of us, over time, develops a sense of our own personal pain threshold – the line in the sand over which we may be willing to step if the pain of staying stuck outweighs the fear of trying something new. This personal pain threshold is determined by our cumulative past experiences of hope, joy, triumph, frustration, disappointment, and emotional injury. When staying stuck does not inflict enough pain to push us above our personal pain threshold set point, we will most likely choose to maintain our status quo. However, when staying stuck pushes us past our own personal pain threshold, we may actually experience that we have no choice but to step across that line and try something new.

So now it is time to contemplate the impact it will have on your life if you exercise your human right and option to choose to stay stuck in close companionship with your eating disordered thoughts and behaviors. You can contemplate or even journal about how your own choice not to do the hard work of recovery will impact your life, your relationships, your career, your daily life, your valued activities.

Next, you can consider and jot down your thoughts about the impact to your life if you choose to invest your time and energy into meeting your recovery, health, and wellness goals.

Now, take a look at what is on either side of your line in the sand determine where your current pain threshold is. If you find that your threshold is not activated enough to make the choice to do the hard work of choosing recovery, then ask yourself what kind of support you need to help you access your human right to choose to give yourself the gift of recovered life.

 At Southlake Counseling, we have both the expert training and the firsthand experience to know that you have the power to say “no” to living with an eating disorder and YES to recovered life – whether you begin your recovery journey believing that recovery is possible for you or not. We also have more than two decades of clinical expertise in implementing the very latest treatment methods for helping our clients to achieve and even exceed their recovery, health, and wellness goals. Most importantly, over the last two decades, we have had the privilege of witnessing thousands of courageous individuals like you harnessing the power of professional support to help them break free from their fears and limitations and break through to recovered life. 

So this holiday season, visit us at www.southlakecounseling.com and give yourself the most precious gift of all –the gift of choosing YOU!

Be Well,

Kimberly

Published on Monday December 7, 2009 in Eating Disorders and Monday Motivator. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Holiday Meal Planning

Thanksgiving is over – but the Christmas holiday is only just beginning.  Stores are packed, UPS and FedEx are working overtime and holiday baking is in full swing.  Amidst this exciting, yet often chaotic time of year, it is important to remember to stick to a healthy overall meal plan, to keep your energy levels up and immunity strong.  Nourishing yourself with healthy foods, along with getting regular moderate intensity physical activity and plenty of sleep and relaxation time are usually your best bets to warding off sicknesses, managing stress and maintaining your energy levels.

Speaking of immunity, if you still have Thanksgiving leftovers in the refrigerator, it is past time to throw them out.  According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), cooked meat and poultry leftovers are only fresh in the refrigerator for about 3-4 days.  Cooked stuffing is fresh about 3-4 days, too.  Gravy is only good for 1-2 days, so definitely throw any away if it is still lingering in your refrigerator.  For more information on food storage safety, visit http://www.foodsafety.gov. 

As for the rest of your meal plan, too often, Americans throw a healthy meal plan out the window when the holidays arrive.  However, try to avoid the “all or nothing” mentality.  You can still enjoy a few indulgences here and there, while sticking to an underlying healthy meal plan.  For instance, it is fine to sample the holiday treats that local stores may offer, such as hot chocolate, cookies and pastries.  And, it is even fine to purchase a few for you and your friends or family to enjoy together.  Your body will best manage these discretionary (extra) calories if you are healthy and managing your weight with a basic healthy meal plan. 

So, starting your day with a balanced breakfast is a good way to begin.  Think whole grains (in cereals, English muffins, breads, bagels), fruits and proteins.  Combining proteins with carbohydrates at all meals and snacks is the best way to manage hunger and satiety levels, reducing the changes that you will have strong cravings or urges to overeat later in the day.  Popular, healthful breakfast proteins include lowfat dairy products (i.e. milk, yogurt and cheese), dairy alternatives (i.e. soymilk), peanut butter, eggs and egg whites, lean meats and meat alternatives (i.e. soy sausage).  You also get some protein from grains.  Many grain products like cold cereals and breakfast bars contain extra protein (often from milk or soy protein ingredients) and fiber, too.  Fiber is especially helpful in preventing disease and managing satiety levels.

So, as you prepare for a day at the office, at the mall or at home doing chores, remember to keep your breakfast balanced.  Continue to eat healthfully throughout the day, too, and know that in moderate amounts, your body will be able to handle some discretionary calories along the way.  As with any time of the year, we should all focus on balance, variety and moderation to keep us healthy.

 Be well,

Julie

Published on Saturday December 5, 2009 in Eating Disorders, Julie Whittington and Nutrition. 0 Comments Tags: , , .