My “pedophile” experience

Posted on August 20, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

My ‘pedophile experience’   began with a cute little nine month old baby called David.  And it began in the park.  I was ten and living in LaSalle, Quebec.

In those days most kids had the freedom to roam about the neighbourhood,   It certainly seemed danger-free, and for the most part, it was.  By today’s standards, we would be horrified.

I used to wander the nine blocks to the park (we lived on the corner of Ninth Ave.) and hang around the swings.   Friends occasionally showed up.   As long as I came home for lunch or dinner, it was assumed to be fine.

Little David came to the park in a stroller, with grandpa pushing.  At that age I adored babies, and would rush over to play with David.   I was not paying any attention to the old man; however, he was paying attention to me.

At the edge of the park there was a winding path that led down to a creek.   The path was lined with chokecherry bushes.   We children would pick them and chew them to get the pits, laughing at the sour faces we made and the bitter taste when we spat them at each other.

One day the old man suggested he, baby and I go for a stroll down that path.  Naturally I went along.   Halfway down the path he sat on a fallen tree while I played with baby.   The old man opened his zipper, pulled out his penis and urged me to come closer for a better look.   I do remember him saying “It’s nothing to be afraid of.”  Funny the things you remember.

I was a little shocked, nonplussed and very disgusted.   It probably showed, and he folded himself up and put himself away.  We walked back up the path to the swings.

I often think that if I had told my parents what happened, it might well have become a traumatic event in my life.  Their reactions would have been far stronger than mine.   But as it is, the ‘dirty old man’  is just another memory from my childhood.    Along with drowned men and houses burning down – far more traumatic events in my young mind.

Posted in awareness, child abuse, consciousness, ignorance, Insight, modern life, parenting, pedophiles, Reflection, reflections, trauma | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Stigma-free’ and real education…

Posted on August 20, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

We hear a lot of talk these days about ‘stigma’ around mental health issues.   But what does this mean?

It means you have to be awfully courageous to admit out loud – for example – that you are depressed (especially now that the psychiatric industry has claimed it as an official ‘mental illness’).   There are social and economic costs to taking such a step not to mention the potential for falling into an Alice’s rabbit hole of un-anticipated nightmares which could in turn lead to even greater stigma.

First, peoples’ beliefs fly into action.  Friends, relatives, or neighbours may suddenly feel nervous around you, treat you ‘with kid gloves’, think of you as somehow born weak or flawed.   They are stigmatizing you.

There was an ‘anti-stigma’ conference in Ottawa recently – a result of increasing awareness of how serious the problem  can be.   Karyn Baker, Executive Director of  Toronto’s Family Outreach and Response Program, was one of the speakers.  She said,

“A 2004 survey of discrimination against people with experience of mental unwellness in New Zealand showed that more people reported discrimination occurring from their friends and family than any other source.”

One can only imagine how much this would add to the pain of the individual who is already distressed.  And obviously the root problem, is ignorance.

Gerard Kennedy, who ran for the Liberal Party of Canada in Parkdale-High Park, has been promoting the idea of a “Stigma-free zone” for the riding.  As part of this campaign, he held a related event this weekend at The Revue theatre, a community-run movie theatre in Roncesvalles Village.  I’ve now been to three of his events, and much as I find them always interesting, I fail to see them moving us to stigma-free living any time soon.  As far as I can see, his events do little to change ignorance about mental illness into knowledge about mental illness.

Which gets me into my usual rant:  I believe we are hugely under-educating people.  We still have such an underlying obsession with stress-free education that, in my view, we essentially have our children playing their way through school.

People usually roll their eyes at this point in the conversation.  And before you do that, let me do a quick summary of what I believe.

We ‘threw out the baby with the bathwater’ when we reduced testing, structure, memorizing, grades, and directive teaching and didn’t replace them with newer better concepts.  We could have made better decisions about how to reduce stress for students.  What we should have thrown out instead was the critical-judgmental attitude of parents and teachers toward “low grades”, and instead instituted a completely new, inter-active ‘feedback’ orientation to education, with the student doing much self-direction.  An all-new approach to teaching could have much better educated  teachers who could inspire, stimulate and motivate – instead of authoritarian imposition.  Imagine the difference.

I believe that most children easily have the potential to be good readers and have great basic math by nine or ten years of age.  By this same age, they could have the beginnings of ‘critical thinking skills’ – and by age 12, could have excellent social skills including a great understanding about feelings, self-confidence, communication, and so on.

And what better time than adolescence to learn about emotional needs, elementary psychology, relationship skills, the spectrum of ‘differences’ and states of distress like depression?  The fact that invisible mental states – like the possibly 10% who ‘hear voices’ (or other auditory hallucinations) – are not talked about is a self-reinforcing phenomenon.  In other words, the less we talk about them, the less we talk about them.  The result when they do surface: stigma.

Imagine a class of 12-year olds having a discussion with an articulate, knowledgeable ‘voice-hearer’ who has just spoken to them on the subject.  Perhaps during a weekly afternoon on ‘Society’.

Fast forward to my Utopia – and imagine an appropriately educated 16-year-old saying to his friend, “Want to talk about it?”  Imagine a 17-year-old girl asking her friend, “…and what are your voices saying?”

Now that would be a lot closer to ‘stigma-free’.  Dream on, Fearless.

Posted in awareness, education, fear, Feelings, ignorance, Inclusion, psychology, reflections, stigma, values, Wish List | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Magic wand list – #1

Posted on August 18, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

I tend to be too serious, so here’s my effort at “light”!

Some people have a “Bucket List”.  I have an “If I Had a Magic Wand” list.  Here are the sorts of things I would arrange in the world, the way I feel today, if I did have such an instrument:

Everyone on earth would have a home, and all their basic needs filled.

Of course I would save the environment.

I wouldn’t make everyone happy, because I believe, as Fritz Perls said, “You have to suffer to grow”, and I believe in personal growth (and maybe happiness or contentment later).

I would cure cancer and other awful diseases.  They interfere with life and love and personal growth.

I would eliminate bugs that sting.

I would grow trees everywhere, and teach every generation to treasure them.

And wildflowers.

How’s that for a day’s work?

Posted in reflections, Wish List | Tagged | 3 Comments

Here-and-now vs. There-and-then

Posted on August 17, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

So what exactly does it mean, and what was life like before I learned to stay in the here and now?

Well, the opposite to staying in the here and now could be, for example, remembering, or imagining, or analyzing – or perhaps ‘projecting’.   In these cases, our mind is not here, in this moment.  Any of these habits of thinking could cause or reinforce feelings like anxiety, depression, or fear.   Mastering the skill of staying in the here-and-now, on the other hand, can produce a less stressful way of being – even dramatically reduce habits like depression and anxiety.  I am not suggesting we should never indulge in remembering, analyzing, etc., just that we can do far too much of it.   It can have a strong negative impact on how we feel.

Some people might not be comfortable with my referring to depression as a ‘habit’.  And I don’t want to make light of something I struggled with for over 30 years.    Even if you easily buy into the idea of depression being a habit, that can still be a long way from knowing how to change it.  It’s a tricky business.  But most modern psychologists would point out that our thinking very much influences our feelings. Sometimes we fall into patterns or habits of thought, or memories, which in turn produce and reinforce depression.  I learned through therapy that if I could focus on ‘the here and now’ – e.g. the physical object I was sitting on, the smells in the air, the sounds – my depression would lessen.   When I got good at it, it would actually disappear.

Thinking about someone – or a situation – that makes us angry, about which we feel powerless – can be a classic producer of depression.   Sometimes referred to as “anger turned inward”, this usually unconscious sense of powerlessness, is fairly common.   Learning to stop dwelling on such thinking can bring on – like the song says – “peaceful, easy feelings”.  Easiest method: bringing our thoughts back into the here and now.  My mother used to say, “Stop dwelling on it” – but I didn’t understand what that really meant, the way I do now.

Thinking about other people, events, times or places, I sometimes refer to as “there-and-then thinking”.   One of my thought habits was remembering people or events that made me feel hurt – definitely there-and-then stuff.   I also frequently thought or talked about my fear-of-public-speaking – more there-and-then stuff.   Every time I talked to someone about it, I went right back into experiencing the feelings of fear, in detail.   In essence, I was rehearsing or practising those feelings.  Weird to think of it that way, isn’t it?!

Fantasy is another kind of there-and-then thinking.  We can virtually imagine a whole relationship with someone we have a crush on, even projecting a personality – none of which exist in the here and now.   If we had remained here-and-now  in the first place, we might not have had to feel rejection.   A rejection unrelated to reality.  But there-and-then was such a pleasure!

Most of us have experienced projecting an attitude onto a person, imagining a negative  attitude toward us, only to eventually discover they actually liked us.  We were interpreting – as it turned out, mis-interpreting.   Interpreting is another sort of there-and-then thinking.

Enough about the details of here-and-now thinking.  The point is the “before-and-after”:  Before, I spent far too much time in unnecessary depression, anxiety, and fear.   But how can I feel anxious if I am not imagining unreality?  If I am here, now, what is there to feel anxious about?   Maybe if I’m in a war zone or something….  But generally, everything is fine.  Even if we’re concerned about environmental degradation for example – a valid concern – fear is not going to save the environment.   Fear is unproductive, so we might as well choose serenity by being here, in this moment.

Even with “an audience” – let’s say I want to sing – if I am totally focused on the beauty of the song and the pleasure of singing it, how does fear arise?  It’s from the part of my brain that thinks about the ‘judging’ people listening.   If I focus on the pleasure bubbling up inside me, and the full breath needed, and my lungs and diaphragm as they cradle and support a note, there is little room for fear.  Only pleasure.  At least, for me!

And now that I am competent at being here, now, I am listening to the music playing softly in the background, with the steady hum of the air conditioner.   Two men at the other end of the café are having a passionate discussion I can’t quite hear, and I smell the aroma of wonderful coffee, freshy brewed.  What richness I would miss, if I were ‘somewhere else’.   I am here, now, and I feel mellow.

Posted in awareness, consciousness, Feelings, personal growth, psychology, Reflection, reflections | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Friendship is blind…

Posted on August 9, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

Sometimes I look back in wonder and appreciation for the people who’ve contributed to who I am today.  I owe so much to individuals who’ve come into my life and shared their thoughts and feelings, their experiences and insights.

One of those was Don, a blind man I worked with in my twenties in Montreal.   He would come into the office for a few weeks at a time, and I was his assigned ‘temp’.  He taught me a lot about blindness, about the world, and about life.

It started with my first ‘duty’.  I’d work with him all day.  He’d be staying at a nearby hotel, and I had to take him there at the end of the day.   When I look back, I realize it was probably more often that he wanted the company than actually needing my help, and I’m grateful for that.

On that first trek, he explained that he would just put his hand on my elbow, and I was to walk as I normally do.  He would sense when I stepped up or down, or changed direction.   It worked, and after a few such walks I became comfortable with his hand on my arm.

Once we became friendly, he invited me to stay at his hotel room for a drink after work.  It soon became obvious that his blindness meant loneliness when he was visiting in Montreal.   No doubt this contributed to his apparent heavy drinking.  He was married, and not “up to anything”, but it must have been difficult coping with being alone in a hotel room all evening.  So I remained, often.  And in remaining, I was enriched no end.

I learned that he had become blind at 17 due to a rare illness.  Adjusting had to be unimaginably hard.  He never really did get over it.

I learned that even late-onset blindness produces sharp hearing and smelling senses.  I learned that his sense of touch was exquisite.  Despite this, it was very difficult for him to learn braille – just as it would have been for a 17-year-old to learn how to read and write —  learning these things late is just harder.  I learned that a blind man could type better than most – in fact a blind person could do just about everything, with only a little help.

I learned that most people were uncomfortable with blind people, as I had been before Don, and that was too bad.  Because it makes their already challenging lives worse.

He was tremendously knowledgeable, had received a degree – with help.  He listened to CBC Radio, which at the time was a great source of knowledge.   He had people like myself read to him; he dialed his own phone – today’s push-buttons would be easier – and spoke to countless people every day.  He patiently and articulately explained many world and local issues to me —  as well as what it was like living blind.  His only fear was that one of his flights would crash, because the idea of trying to save himself seemed overwhelming.

My friendship with Don reinforced the fact that when you get to know a person, any physical difference fades into background, and the person himself becomes foreground.   As with all relationships.

The arrangement with Don continued for years – though I lost touch with him when I left.  I was sad years later to learn he had died of cancer.  I had much to thank him for, and many reasons to remember him still.

Posted in awareness, blindness, communication, compassion, education, fear, friendship, ignorance, imperfection, personal growth, Reflection, reflections, values | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Dancing off on a tangent…

Posted on August 9, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

I’ve waxed ecstatic about Swing Dancing, but there are aspects of dancing which I don’t care for.  One is the learning part.   If I had it to do over again, I would only go to the occasional workshop rather than a full course if I had to.  Even if a workshop instructor is obnoxious, at least the event is brief and forgettable.  Of course those with ironclad ego strength wouldn’t be bothered and might even enjoy the process.

Frequently, a strange thing happens to people who teach dance classes – and those who attend them.  Not all, but enough for it to be a noticeable phenomenon.  Something about dance classes brings out what I call their ‘Inner Bitch’.

In the beginner classes, it can be enough to make you feel discouraged, want to give up and leave.  It took me a year or so to figure out that much of the bitchiness is actually insecurity and perfectionism.  So a person who is impatient with a dance partner, and ‘instructs’ with impatience, is probably insecure, had critical-judgmental parents, and so on.  At least that’s how I rationalized it so I could stand it  (I was there because Dance Partner had never learned formal ‘social dancing’).

Then just as students all learn in different ways, so do dance instructors teach in different ways.  Bluntly, some are better than others; some are impatient, and so on.  And some are quite authoritarian.  I learn dance steps best by copying while the teacher is demonstrating.  But my first ballroom instructor insisted that everyone stay still and watch while she demonstrated, and then try to copy what she had done from memory.  My short-term memory is dreadful, so this was not fun.

The underlying idea that we should become skilled dancers in order to go dancing seems sad.  It used to be that one went to a dance, and gradually picked up ‘dance steps’ with helpful dance partners or friends.  It was a subtle process which also resulted in new friendships as well.  The sharing of  ‘the dance’ and evolving through levels of learning was an important part of the “social” – as they were often called.   Now most people feel they have to qualify to go to a dance, by learning the skill first.  Which of course leads to all the aforementioned dance classes.

This perspective adds unnecessary costs, and more structure and organization to today’s over-organized lives.  It creates a huge time lag between the first desire to learn to dance, and the time when one can at last hit the dance floor confidently.  It reinforces the tendency to prefer dancing with people who are at your own level.  And it adds to the already fragmented lives we live, separating those who can from those who can’t.

I would give up dancing in a minute, if it would contribute to eliminating just one activity ghetto!  Ah well, just another point of view…..

Posted in consciousness, dancing, Feelings, imperfection, modern life, reflections, values | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

“A Hard Name” – the documentary

Posted on August 8, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

The other night, for the second time in a week, I watched the TV Ontario  documentary A Hard Name.*  No doubt I’ll watch it again.  This is unusual behavior for me, but I know I’ll realize something new yet again, and be moved, yet again.

I was  so affected by the “doc”, that I find myself still searching in my mind for what to do.   For something must be done, to save children  from going through what the eight subjects in the documentary went through.  They had unbearably brutal childhoods.  The kind that makes your jaw hang open in shocked horror that a human being could do such things to a young child.

It made me want to find the newborn infant long buried in each of these people, and hold them and comfort them tenderly – as if it were possible to somehow erase the pain that caused them, in turn, to inflict pain on others.

Each time I think of it, I want to cry again.  But that would be a powerless act, and I want to take power, and take action.  My first act, is to ensure that I don’t forget them, or the lessons from them – if I have to watch that video every month “til kingdom come”.

One of my own recent changes has been in how I see pedophiles.  I never imagined that I could one day have sympathetic feelings toward someone who committed any act against a child.  But twice in the past month (once during the documentary) I have felt that way, having seen the undeniable pain of the pedophile.

The documentary also brought back an issue I had forgotten about, which has to do with removing young children from dysfunctional or abusive parents.  Judges who give too much importance to biology when “protecting” children sometimes cause extra emotional damage through their decisions.  Often babies or very young children are removed from a mother’s home because they have already been a victim of cruelty or serious neglect by that mother.   The child is placed in a foster or group home, and the mother is told she must work on her problems in order to get the child back.

It’s not like the judge appoints some fine social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, etc. to help the mother sort out her life; no, she’s expected to go off and, despite a dysfunctional childhood herself, straighten herself out – somehow.  And then six months later, she’s given another chance.  Sometimes this goes on for years before the judge finally decides it’s time to place the child in a permanent home – where he or she is now a traumatized person instead of an infant, and that little person will be dealing with this unstable beginning for the rest of his life.

There are so many ways to wound a child; and those wounds are eventually  multiplied through that person’s life.

The producer of A Hard Name, Alan Zweig, was shocked over and over again to learn of the horrors perpetrated on these eight victims-turned-villains.  The only thing that shocks me is that so many people will never know, because they avoid exposure to anything that’s painful to watch.  “It’s just too unpleasant”.  Or, “I just can’t bear to watch”.  I do understand this, as one who never watches horror movies.

But there are innocent children going through the same nightmare right now.  Don’t we owe it to them?

*http://ww3.tvo.org/video/164576/hard-name

Posted in child abuse, consciousness, convicts, criminal, parenting, pedophile, reflections, social justice | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Gay’ as I’ve known it…

Posted on August 7, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

I must have been 14, when my friend June informed me that there were boys who preferred boys instead of girls.

“They’re called ‘queer’”, she said.   I still remember some of my mixed reactions: weird; interesting; and concern that this would mean there were fewer guys to go around for us gals.

In my first job at 19, in my ‘steno pool’ at CPR, I became friends with quietly gentle Brian, another stenographer, and Ellie, who had the desk next to him.  Ellie had a little crush on Brian.  One day the three of us went out together after work.  A friend of Brian joined us.

I had not yet developed gay radar, or even ‘common sense’ about relationships, so my naïve interpretation of the situation was that we had a potential pairing-up here.   Brian’s friend was sweet, very feminine, and had Rosy Cheeks.  Had I been more conscious, I could have said the same about Brian.

We got together a few times – the same foursome – and it wasn’t until perhaps the third get-together that it dawned on me that any pairing up was not going to be between Rosy Cheeks and me.   It was going to be between Brian and Rosy Cheeks.

I adjusted, and Brian and I became good enough friends that he invited me to be his date at a family wedding in Ottawa.  We never actually discussed his orientation, but I understood that his family didn’t ‘know’.   In the end, Brian and Rosy Cheeks were the beginning of my slow development of gay radar.

After I left the railroad business, I lost touch with Brian – keeping in touch not yet being one of my values – or skills.  I moved on to the airline business – what was then ‘T.C.A.” or Trans-Canada Air Lines, in the Public Relations department.

There I eventually became friendly with charming, thoughtful Gerard, a French-Canadian with whom I practiced the language and had open, spontaneous  conversations.  He was one of those precious people with  whom no subject was too sacred and I didn’t need to carefully censor myself with him.   Self-censorship – in those conservative times – was basically considered ‘civilized’.  There were certain things that simply were not talked about.  Even with him, we never discussed his being gay – but I knew that he knew that I knew, and he knew I appreciated him.   I still treasure a bracelet he brought me from Mexico.   I wish that I had been free to let him know how much I wished he could be freely,  openly gay.  But he died of Aids in the 80s – while the world was still trying to figure it out.  And before it became an open topic.

I don’t know why I felt comfortable with ‘homosexuality’ relatively early – perhaps because I had known what it was like to be ‘different’, to feel less accepted than others.  Who knows?  But I often had gay friends.

Like Karsten at the Ontario Arts Council.  One day we went for a drink together after work, and for no particular reason I said, “By the way, my assumption has been that you’re gay”.  He was so startled he sank down into his seat, temporarily speechless.  He had believed that his orientation was not obvious, and didn’t know what anyone thought.   Karsten eventually became one of the founders of the Aids Committee of Toronto – or “ACT”, so those were still early days.

Mark became a friend some time before he became a Unitarian minister, or married his partner Jim.  We raised more than a few glasses of wine together over dinner, and I have a tape recording of him telling an ‘Abeyoyo’ bedtime story to my then 6-year-old daughter.  We knew by then that he had Aids, which is why I deliberately recorded the event.  Mark was such a sharp thinker, and articulate speaker and writer, that it seemed natural that he became a Unitarian minister.  It was certainly the only church I could have joined, and he was nourished by its accepting philosophy of the “interdependent web of all existence”.   We were lucky enough to end up in his congregation, and when he died, needless to say we were all devastated.  I still have copies of several of his brilliant sermons and papers.

For me, if I hadn’t really thought about it before, that relationship made it obvious that there was no reason why same-sex couples shouldn’t have the right to publicly declare their love as well as the legalities the rest of us were entitled to.  By this time, it was hard to understand people who didn’t see gay love as just another kind of love.   When I explained to my little girl that two men were marrying each other, her only concern was, “Who gets to wear the wedding dress?”

I was later lucky enough to be friends with a lesbian couple who held one of the first gay weddings in Toronto.  It was a memorable event, and in my life, a joyful symbol of how far we had come as a society.

When I see the horrible state of gay life in some cultures and countries, I could weep.  The love that “dare not speak its name” is still in the shadows, still sometimes results in hatred, pain or death.   How terrifying it must be for a young person to realize for the first time that he is attracted to someone of the same sex.  Like the beginning of a life-long nightmare, instead of a ‘dream come true’.

Posted in awareness, causes, consciousness, education, friendship, gay, history, homosexuality, ignorance, Inclusion, love, modern life, personal growth, Reflection, reflections, values | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hearing….

Posted on August 4, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

The point of acknowledging a ‘disability’, in my opinion, is to raise an alert, for a need for consideration and accommodation.   So just as someone in a wheelchair needs a ramp in order to participate in certain events so does someone with a hearing disability need some consideration and adjustment in order to participate.

It is astonishing how many people react to deafness almost as if the individual couldn’t be bothered to really try to hear.  As if the hard-of-hearing didn’t really want to participate.

And it is just as amazing how many don’t realize that hearing aids are not a panacea. They don’t move us from ‘deaf’ to ‘hearing’.  They primarily make sounds louder, but often the greater problem is really not volume so much as it is lack of clarity.  Especially when there is loud background noise.

My deafness makes sound fuzzy and muffled.  Like when you try to tune in a radio station, and it goes a little ‘off’ channel.  Or, I often say, like being under water.  It’s hard to hear the difference from one consonant to another.  I might not catch the difference between ‘tea’ and ‘pee’.   To a companion with a sense of humour, this can lead to great hilarity.

But I’ve been surprised – and hurt – by ‘friends’ who would feel sympathy for someone blind or in a wheelchair, yet who react with impatience to a request to repeat.  And then mumble the repeat.   And some even in close relationships for a long time, continue to mumble or speak with their back turned, despite knowing the importance of lip-reading as an aid to understanding.

It happens often enough that we build a tendency to just nod and smile as if we heard – but even that can come back to haunt us when ‘the other’ realizes we hadn’t heard – as if we simply hadn’t been listening, or didn’t care.

My friend Sara seems to almost intuitively speak so that I can hear.  She faces me, repeats, waits til a noise ends before she speaks, and so on.  And never reacts impatiently when I don’t hear.  She has spent a lot of time with elderly people and built up a wonderful sensitivity to their needs.  I am a lucky beneficiary.

Subtle differences among speaking styles can make a huge difference to the hard of hearing.  For example, last night I watched a current British mystery drama.  I doubt if I caught 50% of the lines.  But when I watch an old movie – from the days when actors spoke ‘theatrically’ – I catch almost everything.  Most people probably would not notice the difference.

Modern technology has meant some improvements for us: like “Blue Tooth”.   I had stopped watching TV with others because for me to hear, the volume had to be too loud for them.  But Blue Tooth has made it possible for my new hearing aids to tune in loud to sound that is low for others .  Amazing.

But what do poor people do?  Well, we can see what they do: they tune out, stop participating, and feel sad and lonely.  Apparently this diminished participation can also have a negative impact on one’s brain.  They live increasingly ‘inside their own heads’.

For some, that may be the only place where they can participate.

Posted in awareness, compassion, consciousness, deafness, ignorance, Inclusion, Reflection, reflections, values | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Personal power: Food, etc.

Posted on August 4, 2012 by fearlessanalyst

Back in 2006, I mused as follows:

“Just when I think I’m in charge of my life, I discover myself eating that extra two hundred calories, or not bothering to get any exercise.  

Just when I think I’m feeling motivated, I realize I’ve just wasted another evening watching television….and fall asleep unsatisfied or depressed. 

I need to develop some way of being very conscious of  making these self-defeating choices – ‘in the moment’ when I’m making them.   Then presumably I could stop myself, in that moment, and – and what?  Dialogue with myself  and my demons?”

So here we are in 2012, and I realize these issues are no longer part of my life, though they had quietly tormented me for decades.  I often referred to my (Freudian) “oral gratification complex”.  I had tried most ‘diets’ but always replaced lost pounds before long.  Finally, I went on an ‘inner journey’ and in case anyone is interested here’s what worked for me:

The way I see it is that I broke the habit of the cerebral exercise of ‘describing’ (as above) the issue, and worked on a new habit of paying real attention to the tiniest minutiae of how I ‘behaved’ or ‘lived out’ my relationship or response to food.  I confess that I think I’d get pretty bored doing this for any length of time, but a few hours at a time, on a regular basis, seemed to be enough to break habits and develop new ones.

So for instance, I had a habit of grabbing a handful of nuts (or.. fill in the blank) to munch on – “just a few nuts”, right? Just a few nuts add up to many calories by the end of the day.  Supposedly, it takes something like 1200 calories to support a pound on the body.  The extra pounds are as subtle as the nut-eating itself – almost unconscious.  I focused on the tiniest physical act of placing a nut in my mouth, and being aware of it as a choice to support weight.  I focused on the pleasure too, and the reality that the pleasure would soon be over, but the weight I was choosing would be there much longer than the pleasure of the snack.

I went through the same exercise with all my self-defeating eating habits – like carrot muffins with my coffee!   Like ‘seconds’ when a dessert was delicious.  Quantity became irrelevant to me, and quality became central.  I focused on savouring each mouthful, took the time to ‘take it in’ and get a detailed sense of the tastes and textures of what I was eating.  I took my time making myself – for example – a fresh salad, tomatoes from my garden, my own vinaigrette, letting the fresh pressed garlic ‘steep’ in the olive oil.   I ate ‘mindfully’, focusing completely on the meal rather than letting my mind wander,  and slowly, taking time between each bite, so my body had the chance to ‘feel satisfied’.  I wanted to get to know the relationship between the food and my feelings.

At first it wasn’t easy – I had to remind myself constantly as with any habit.   One thing that became part of the process was to ask myself – when I reached for a food I didn’t need – ‘what is my real need that I’m trying to satisfy with the food’.

I gradually realized that sometimes it was a ‘comfort’ thing; and sometimes it was a simple desire for pleasure.   The physical pleasure of deliciousness.   So I began to deliberately choose other pleasures – like beautiful music…. And use your imagination…

I worked on visualizing vividly imagining myself as a person with a peaceful feeling of ‘enough’, ‘satisfied’, serene in the face of food, in touch not only with my hunger when it was real, but also in touch with my ‘appetite satisfied’ feelings.  Eventually it actually became easy to resist temptations, though I confess I had to completely give up those carrot muffins, in order to forget their flavor and texture.

Another little mental exercise that I began early on was to ‘get into’ having a clean, empty mouth, and trying to hold onto an attitude of  curiosity and exploration of how it actually feels to not eat anything for hours.   So for example, if I felt an anxious urge to reach for some food, I would stop and explore those feelings: was it really hunger for food, or was it a hunger for something else?  What was the real need?  Eventually it would disappear.  Something about paying attention to my feelings often seemed to satisfy a need all by itself.  Almost as if I needed to acknowledge them.   So be it.

Eliminating evenings of TV turned out to be easy.  I turned on music and opened a book, or visited with a friend, or worked on a long-postponed project.   Productivity reigned.

There’s a theory that it’s easier to stop ourselves from doing something, than to make ourselves do something.  That fits with my experienced. In any case, I’ve had less success with making myself ‘exercise’.  Maybe a different mental approach would work.  I enjoy walking or dancing, but going for a workout seems unpleasant, painful and unrewarding, short-term.   I do lift some little weights – occasionally.  But when my daughter enthusiastically goes off to the gym for a ‘workout’, I don’t get it.

But I think, at the end of the day, it’s really about becoming more conscious of our feelings  and our choices – empowerment.

Posted in awareness, consciousness, diet, Feelings, food, personal growth, personal power, Power, psychology, reflections | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment