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Many of the articles posted within the emotional feelings network of sites were found at the website above... thanks so much & be sure to visit
them! There's so much information to be found there!
kathleen
 Your Internal Feelings About Food & Weight from Dr. Phil's website
This exercise is designed to
help you turn back the clock & get to the heart of why you overeat. Get a pen & some paper & write down
your answers to the questions below.
1. When did you start using food for non-nutritional
reasons?
Why was it that you started
medicating yourself with food, taking care of yourself with food & comforting yourself with food?
Go back to that time &
write down what you were feeling & experiencing at the time.
2. Write down all
of the insecurities that you're feeling right now.
3. Now look at your answers to
question 1 & question 2 together. The answers to question two may be more specific because you don't have to remember
as far back, but do you see similarities?
4. Now take every comment, fear &
anxiety that you wrote down in response to questions 1 & 2 & challenge them. In writing. i.e., if one of your fears
is, "My spouse isn't really attracted to me because of my weight," challenge it by writing down a piece of evidence.
Evidence isn't, "Because
that's the way I feel." Write down any facts you have that can support your challenge. For example, "My spouse met, fell in
love with & married me while I was at my heaviest weight."
Challenge every fear
& negative thought you wrote down in this manner with facts you can support.
 Defining Your Internal Factors
from Dr. Phil's website:
Internal factors
are reactions that you create inside yourself in response to the world. Even though they happen inside you, it's best to think about them as behaviors because they're actions that you choose.
By choosing how to perceive
yourself, you can either behave your way to success or behave your way to failure; i.e., if you believe you're competent & special, you'll live up to that truth. If you believe you're incompetent & worthless, you'll live down to that truth.
The powerful internal factors that shape your self-concept are:
Internal Dialogue: This is the continuous conversation
that you have with yourself about everything that happens to you. This dialogue is constant, happens in real time (at the same rate at which you would speak the words aloud) & provokes a physiological change
(with each thought comes a physical reaction).
Labeling:
Humans tend to organize things into categories. We even categorize other humans by labeling them into groups, subgroups,
classes & functions. But were you aware that we label ourselves?
For better or worse,
these labels have a powerful impact on our perception of self because we tend to "live" the categories we've attached to ourselves ("I'm a loser" or "I'm a winner.")
Tapes: These are beliefs that have become so deeply ingrained that they "play" automatically in our heads & influence our behavior without our
awareness.
Unlike labels
("I never win"), tapes have context: "I won't get the promotion because
I never win." Tapes are dangerous & potentially self-defeating because they have the power to set you up for a specific outcome.
Fixed Beliefs / Limiting Beliefs:
Fixed beliefs are the beliefs we hold about ourselves, others & life's circumstances that have been repeated for so long they've become ingrained & are difficult to change.
 
Dads’ comments may push girls toward bulimia
Parental criticism & weight worries affect daughters from young age Updated:
6:37 p.m. ET Feb 8, 2007
NEW YORK - Fathers are important
influences on their daughters’ perceptions of their weight & shape during childhood & can increase their
risk of developing an eating disorder in adolescence, research shows.
“Fathers have been mostly ignored in previous research on eating disorders,” Dr. W. Stewart Agras, who led the research, told Reuters Health. Based on his findings, Agras said fathers “should
avoid criticizing their daughter’s weight or shape. Rather they should build up their daughter’s confidence by
emphasizing other positive attributes.”
Weight concerns & preoccupation with being thin, together with social pressure to be thin, are strong risk
factors for eating disorders in later adolescence.
In
an effort to throw light on what factors during childhood contribute to weight concerns & thin body preoccupation,
Agras & colleagues from Stanford Univ. in California followed 134 children (68 girls
& 66 boys) from birth to age 11 & their parents.
Annual
questionnaires beginning at age 2 assessed parents’ concerns about their children’s weight & eating
habits as well as their own weight.
The results show, Agras said, that “fathers are important in influencing their
daughters toward bulimia, particularly fathers who were overweight & wanted to be thinner.” These influences may be direct - such as criticizing the daughter’s weight
or shape - or indirect, by expressing their own concerns about weight & shape.
“Parents who exhibit concern or criticism about their daughter’s weight & shape & who push their
daughter toward dieting may increase the risk of their daughter developing bulimia,” added Agras.
‘Influences occur before adolescence’
The study also found that parental behaviors such as over-control of what their child eats, together with parent & peer pressure to be thin, also
raises the risk of eating disorders.
Importantly, this study shows that “all these influences occur before adolescence,”
Agras said.
 
It's Absolutely, Positively Not About Food (sm) - by Jane E. Latimer, M.A.
You’re reading
this article because you think you have a food or weight problem, right? And what if I told you, you’re wrong. Moreover, no matter how hard you try
to fix the problem by dieting, you end up failing. Why?
Because you haven’t
fixed the real problem.
If you're working
a diet program, working with a nutritionist, a 12-step program, or are in a spiritual-recovery group - good. Keep doing what you're doing. You don’t have to change a thing.
This
article will teach you about the 3 core issues underlying all food & weight problems - the issues that many
programs leave out. Just add these strategies to what you're already doing & you’ll be in good shape.
I lived for 20 years food obsessed. I've also lived for 20 years fully recovered. I can teach you how to be free. I’ve done it myself & I’ve helped many others like yourself.
And I’ll
tell you this, there isn’t a person out there that I’ve worked with that hasn’t had to address their core
underlying issues - fear & LACK.
That's why we cling
to weight, or cling to our obsessions or cling to our compulsions because we're desperately afraid of never being fulfilled.
And because it’s
a heck of a lot more comfortable to fight off food compulsion then to face the terror of our own unfulfillment, our own lack. You see, we all have a unique comfort range. It feels kind of safe, but it isn’t really.
It's simply familiar
& carries a sense of pseudo safety. Think of yourself as a caveman or cavewoman. Your food issues are your cave. You venture out into the scary big world & you have to face your own fears, right?
But snuggled up
inside your cave, you’re safe from harm.
Sorry. I wish I could tell you there was a kinder way, but I can’t. Your job is to face your fears. The good news is that you can learn to leverage these fears into what I call Power Drives.
You can actually
begin entertaining the thought of leaving your cave & building a beautiful home in the sunlit valley above. Most of us hide out in our caves - bury
our fears simply because we don’t know what to do with them.
After all, they’re
scary. It’s natural to run away when we see one. You run to food. No biggie. Other people run to other things. You just happen
to use your food obsessions to handle your fears.
In this article
I’ll start showing you HOW to stop turning to food, HOW to face your fears & better yet, how to use your fears to move you towards freedom.
What a power we all possess. We actually can turn our fears into our greatest allies, to help us attain what we’ve always wanted:
In 40 years of
working with this issue, I’ve broken-down the fear problem into 3 crucial mindsets that must be overcome. I call these the 3 Laws of Fear-Based Lack.
Fear-Based Lack is a devastating condition that results in thoughts, feelings & behaviors that create & re-create over & over again a chronic condition of underlying shame, struggle & inadequacy.
Fear inhibits our expression in such a way as to produce a deep & profound state of emptiness or lack.
The 3 Laws of Fear-Based Lack are:
- For every compulsive bite
& diet, there's an equal amount of repressed authenticity & aliveness.
- For every compulsive bite
& diet, there's an equal amount of repressed self-integrity & self-strength.
- For every
compulsive bite & diet, there's an equal amount of repressed self-nurture.
Whenever there's repressed
authenticity, integrity & nurture, there's a profound & deep pervading sense of lack. We use food to fill the void & cope with the terror that this underlying emptiness will never be filled.
For now, let’s explore each of the 3 above fears & learn how to begin leveraging ourselves out of our fears, underlying lack & resulting food/fat symptoms into alive, authentic living.
The 1st
Law of Fear-Based Lack is:
- For every compulsive bite & diet, there's
an equal amount of repressed authenticity & aliveness
As children, we're programmed
to absorb (like sponges) the beliefs & lifestyle of our parents & our culture. What we see around us is what we pattern ourselves after.
As new-born spiritual beings
we come into this world wide open -ready to explore & create. Instead, we're surrounded by the fear our parents & society have already internalized.
Our little sponge-self absorbs the fear & takes on the fear reality. The child body becomes riddled with pain. (It's painful to lose our spiritual
truth, at any age). We find ways to “survive” our fear-ridden childhood.
One of the ways is by overeating
or producing a biochemical system that protects us with fat.
As we grow into adulthood, our spiritual truth is kept alive by a vague memory, a vague longing for something that we hope is deep down inside.
In many cases, this yearning
is totally repressed by the day-to-day struggles of being an adult. In other cases, the longing is tenaciously held onto &
drives us forward seeking meaning, spiritual truth & healing.
This yearning is our key to freedom. HOWEVER, as we begin to follow the path of longing, we MUST PASS THRU the gateway of our grief, anger & fear, because those feelings are a part of the repression mechanism & environment of our childhood conditioning.
The good news is that as we
follow the pathway of the yearning, we're on the road back to our greatest, most alive authentic Self.
The fears are just temporary roadblocks that can be surmounted with support & guidance.
The way it works is this:
1. Your food & fat issues
disguise your fears
2. To release your food &
fat issues, you must confront & pass thru your fears
The truth is this:
1. Your fears represent nothing more than an illusory reality you adapted yourself to in order to “fit in” with the reality
you perceived your parents occupying.
2. You can move thru your
fears into the most incredible, ALIVE & AUTHENTIC Self you’ve ever longed to become.
This is how:
1. You can harness the power of your mind to reconnect yourself with your spiritual truth & powerfully confront your fears so that you can create & claim a life based on your ALIVE, AUTHENTIC Self.
2. Just as in Akido, the student
is taught to utilize the energy of the enemy to FLOW into victory, you can learn to utilize the energy of your fears to EMPOWER your ALIVENESS.
3. By focusing on ALIVENESS,
not FOOD, you're powerfully anchored into the essence of your Being, which strengthens your ability to confront your fears..
The way out of fear of FOOD/weight issues is to identify & face the fear of bringing forth our most alive, authentic Self. This is an incredible journey folks.
This is what life is
about.
Just in case you were curious about memory repression as I am, I have looked up some articles, this one explains what
memory repression may be about, but at the bottom of the page I'll include some links for
you to read more about it at your leisure. I believe it's a highly controversial topic.
kathleen
Mechanism in the human brain that blocks unwanted memories
Article Date: 09 Jan 2004/ Source: Michael Anderson / Source: John D.E. Gabrieli / University
of Oregon
'Science' showcases research on forgetting
EUGENE, Ore. (USA)-Researchers
at the Univ. of Oregon & Stanford Univ. have located a mechanism in the human brain that blocks unwanted memories.
This is the first time that anyone has shown a
neurobiological basis for memory repression.
The findings, by lead researcher Michael Anderson,
associate professor of psychology at the Univ. of Oregon & his colleague, John D.E. Gabrieli, professor of psychology
at Stanford, will be published Jan. 9 in Science.
The research provides compelling
evidence that Freud was on to something 100 years ago when he proposed the existence of a voluntary
repression mechanism that pushes unwanted memories out of consciousness.
Since
then the idea of memory repression has been a vague & highly controversial idea, in
part because it's been difficult to imagine how such a process could occur in the brain.
Yet, the process may be more commonly applied than was previously
thought.
'Often in life we encounter reminders of things we'd rather not think about,' Anderson explains. 'We've all had that experience at some point - the experience of seeing something that reminds
us of an unwanted memory, leading us to wince briefly - but just as quickly to put the recollection out of mind. How do human
beings do this?'
Anderson says that this process isn't restricted to traumatic experiences, but is applied widely, whenever we're distracted by memories, pleasant or unpleasant.
'This active forgetting process is a basic mechanism we use to exclude any kind of distracting memory so we can concentrate on our tasks at hand.'
To mimic the brain's process
in the lab, Anderson & Gabrieli tested subjects using a procedure Anderson devised. Subjects first learned pairs of words
such as ordeal - roach, steam-train & jaw-gum.
Then they were given the first member of each word pair &
asked either to think of the second word, or to suppress awareness of the second word.
Subjects performed this task while being scanned in a functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine that produces images of brain tissue & function. From these images, researchers can determine which parts
of the brain are in use for different tasks.
After this phase was completed, Anderson
tested the students' memory for all of the word pairs & confirmed that suppressing awareness of unwanted memories resulted in memory inhibition, replicating a finding he reported earlier in the journal Nature.
The fMRI images of the subjects' brain activity during this procedure yielded astonishing results.
This study revealed for the first time strong neurobiological evidence for a novel idea about how memory repression occurs
that is quite simple:
unwanted memories can be suppressed with brain areas
similar to that used when we try to stop overt physical actions.
Put simply, the brain systems that permit one to
stop an arm motion midstream can be recruited to inhibit or stop an unwanted memory retrieval.
Instead of inhibiting activity in brain regions having to do with physical action, however, these control processes reduce brain activation in the hippocampus, a structure known to be involved in conscious memories of the past.
Crucially, this reduction in hippocampal activity led the
subjects to forget the rejected experiences.
Anderson relates the ability to control memory to the ability to control our physical actions, like the time he knocked a plant off his windowsill at home.
'As
I saw the plant falling off the sill out of the corner of my eye, I reflexively went to catch it. At the very last second,
I stopped myself, midstream when I realized that the plant was a cactus.'
Anderson's
research indicates that stopping unwanted memory retrievals build on the same brain mechanisms that help us to achieve this
control over our overt behavior, providing a very concrete mechanism that may demystify how repression occurs.
Intriguingly, Anderson & Gabrieli could predict how much forgetting people in their experiment would experience,
simply by examining how active their prefrontal cortex was when attempting to suppress memories.
Anderson & Gabrieli's clear, straightforward
neurobiological model for exploring motivated forgetting in the laboratory is a landmark achievement. Until now the idea that
unwanted memories can be repressed has been a controversial issue among psychologists.
The
UO researcher & his associates have provided a way to scientifically investigate & map the cognitive & brain process
in the laboratory. Among the immediate benefits may be the ability to better understand the cognitive & neural mechanisms by which people deal with the memory aftereffects of a traumatic experience & the breakdown of these mechanisms in post-traumatic stress disorder.
Anderson emphasizes, however, that future research is needed to examine the role
of these mechanisms in suppressing emotional experiences, as the current study focused on the suppression of relatively neutral
events.
Nevertheless, they also provide a well-grounded hypothesis
for how some people may come to forget unwanted memories of unpleasant life experiences.
'To
me what's most important is achieving a better understanding of how we learn to adapt mental function in response to traumatic life experience,' Anderson explains.
'Survivors of natural disasters, crime, acts of terror such
as 9/11, the loss of someone close all undergo a process that may continue for a very long time - a process of learning to
adjust both physically & mentally to those events.
Now we have a specific neurobiological model of
the mechanisms by which people normally adapt how their memories respond to the environment. My goal is to expand on this model so we can better understand these important experiences.'
For more information: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~blevy/lab/homepage.htm
http://gablab.stanford.edu/
original article resumes below!
This is why we're here. If
you're reading this article, you're probably ready to find yourself & give up your food issues forever.
The 2nd Law of Fear-Based Lack is:
- For every compulsive bite & diet, there's
an equal amount of repressed self-integrity & strength.
Your spiritual essence has
its own unique set of values. And those values are longing to express themselves in this world. When we take on the fear-based reality of our parents & of society, (what we see represented around us), we
squash the vital expression of our essence, which results in lack.
To be able to express this
truth in the world, is joyous beyond belief. We're desperately longing for this. Expressing essence, we are in integrity.
Feelings of shame, guilt, fear & resentment, mean we're out of integrity. We must allow these feelings to guide us back to our truth so that we can radically alter our lifestyle to match this truth.
Let me give you an example of how this process might work, as I’ve personally
gone thru this process many times & on many levels. For years I worked at IBM. I'd go to work depressed, then come home & cry. Why?
The answer was simple. Working
at IBM wasn't the work that expressed my essence. Thru the years, as I’ve made vital changes in support of myself, I’ve discovered that my truth is voraciously creative.
Any job that asks me to fit
into another person’s system won’t work for me. I’ve tried on all sorts of systems I still try on
systems. But, what I discover is that in order for me to be truthful to me, I have to have the freedom to try on a system & then re-create it.
I have to have the freedom to act spontaneously. Now, my parent’s system didn’t work for me. It wasn’t a bad system. It worked for
them. It just didn’t work for me. We were as different as lettuce & carrots.
My authentic Self wasn't mirrored in my environment. To be in integrity with myself, I’ve had to find the courage to live my life very differently from the way I saw my parents live theirs. Working at IBM was the perfect job for someone
living in my parent’s system but it didn’t work for me. No wonder I was depressed.
My spiritual essence had no
expression. Simply put, I wasn't in integrity with myself. I longed for freedom, but I had no idea that to acquire that freedom I was going to have to have the courage to protect my truth & act on my truth.
You must do the same - in the sense of finding your truth. You must inquire into your own truth & discover what it's you passionately need to feel at one with yourself. This means you must stop doing what you think you “should” be doing, stop living another’s reality.
This means you courageously embrace your values with dignity. I don’t know what this might look like for you.
What do you dread when you
wake up each morning?
What do you regret when you lie down in bed each night?
What dreams & visions
for yourself have others convinced you are silly.
I don’t know you &
I certainly don’t know the look of your truth. But, I do know what when we begin honoring ourselves in our own lives, we take on a whole new way of being in the world that brings us joy.
This is living in integrity with ourselves. And this demands the courage & strength that I call FIERCE. Being fierce means strongly pursuing what brings us joy. It means being highly focused in pursuit of our dreams & being willing to be uninhibitedly intense in wanting what we
want.
It demands having the courage to not be like everyone else. How magnificent.
Self-strength takes courage to act in our own behalf, to take actions that support the Self. It means learning to say, “No,” to the demands of an outside world that don’t mesh with our own aliveness.
It means learning to say “Yes,”
fiercely to our inner values & calling. It means developing strong boundaries, setting limits & courageously moving in the direction of our inner dictates.
It’s painful to be out
of integrity with ourselves. It's painful to know that a deep part of us isn’t being expressed because we’re confused, afraid & lacking in the support we need to help ourselves shine.
So, what does food have to do with this. Food hides the
pain. It numbs us so we don’t have to confront the yearning & the changes we might need to make. It fills the deep hole inside, a hole that can only be filled by us making different choices.
It covers the grief we feel at the loss of the true Self. Take food away & you'll have to feel the feelings but these are good feelings because they point the way to wonderful change.
It’s just a bad habit
to keep running back to food. It’s a huge distraction from what's vital.
The 3rd Law of Fear-Based Lack is:
- For every compulsive bite & diet, there's
an equal amount of repressed self-nurture.
STOP!! Don’t take that
compulsive first bite! Let down some of your control. Stop dieting.
Instead, I want you to look
inside yourself & ask yourself this one question:
- WHAT COULD I do for myself right now that
would be obscenely Selfish?
This is a radical request
for most women, but I have to tell you that I see, time & time again, the pain that putting others first brings. Most
of us are taught to put ourselves aside & be there for others. I see this over & over again.
I see the suffering that losing
oneself to others causes. If you were to ask me, what's the most prominent cause of weight-gain or anorexia?
I’d have to say, caretaking
others at the expense of oneself! No doubt in my mind. Absolutely none. If you aren't putting yourself first, you're eating (or restricting)
instead!
You’ve
got to unlearn this pattern & you’ve got to become obscenely Selfish. There IS a difference between true caring & caregiving. Essentially caring happens in joy.
Caregiving happens in sacrifice
& numbs us to joy. You see, the essence of the Self is extremely Selfish. But not in a way that hurts or ignores others.
In fact, the Self doesn’t even know what Selfish means. The Self just plays at what innocently brings her pleasure. And s/he figures that others will be excited to play this too. When we're selfishly following our greatest passion, we give others permission to do the same. There's a glow about us that others want. We become attractive & exciting to others. We spread joy.
So how did you lose this? I’ll tell you. You see,
when you were that small young child & you absorbed your parent’s & society’s fear-based reality, you learned this untruth:
Don’t trust yourself, because harm will surely come to you. Fear means harm is lurking around the corner. Any “wrong” move can & will result in some forsaken tragedy.
We learn to question
our impulses & our spontaneity. We become adept at doing things “right,” which means doing things in a way that'll prevent
harm from coming to us & our family. We learn to 2nd-guess ourselves & to be careful. Too careful.
We learn to disown
our impulses & replace them with caution. Not healthy caution, but caution based on fear. This is how we learned to watch out for others, rather than enjoying our selves.
We
can unlearn this fear-based living. Indeed, when we begin replacing our fear-based caution with radical Self-Nurture, our Self thrives. Why?
Becaus
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