Dropping History, Dropping Pounds

Ahhh history....

Everyone's got history...lots of it in many cases.

We feel trapped by our histories, burdened down by what has happened to us...  
and by what we have done to ourselves as a result of stress and traumas. 

All the events that upset our lives and put us on less than glorious paths in life...
and in the less than glorious ways we care for our bodies.
 
We feel like we are wading through an ugly endless swamp
and we are getting tired of dealing with it all.

While history matters...it is real...and powerful at times,
it is less helpful when it comes to getting better. 

Sometimes, when I see that something is not working like it should, I take a different tack.

People spend so much time and energy trying to understand what has happened to them.
And that can be a good thing.   But there is a season for everything.

When all that effort isn't giving you the results you need, it may be time for a new approach.

One approach that can really help is 'dropping history'.

So what would happen if we found a way to drop some of that history.

So much of our history is filled with defeat, self blame, unpleasant triggers and the like.
We go round and round and round....looping endlessly
until we have worn deep ruts in our minds and in our habits.
That gets discouraging!  It goes nowhere!

Here is how I learned to drop history and free myself.

It started with a friendship that had faltered. 
A certain person had offended and hurt me to no end. 
I would not retaliate in kind, but I would tally up all the terrible things she did or said. 
As time went by I began to seethe with resentment and hurt.
Many were the times when I self medicated with food or drink as a result.
Eventually the whole mess was taking up way too much room in my head.
I was stuck.  The load just got heavier and more hurtful.

One day an image floated before my mind's eye. 
I saw a large chalkboard and on it was written all the grievances that I had against her. 
It was a very long list.  I felt my anger and spitefulness arise once more.  Pretty toxic stuff.
    
Then I saw a big eraser on the ledge of the chalkboard.
I had the thought of just simply erasing the whole tiresome list.
Making it clean...

'Who cares!?'  a part of me cried.   'Who cares!?'
Some of that junk was 10 years old....Who cares!?
Wouldn't it just feel better to wash the slate clean?

In my mind's eye, I did just that!  I wiped the board that day...
Over the next days and weeks when the memories returned to haunt me,
I wiped the board clean again and again and again.  Day by day.
"Who cares about all that junk?!  Not me!"

I learned to live without that history and all the misery that came with it.
I found myself feeling lighter and happier... Why hadn't I thought of this before?!

Had I forgiven her?  Well, I suppose so... 
I just wasn't interested in carting all that around anymore.  It wasn't healthy...for me or her.

It soon occurred to me to drop history with other parts of my past...
"Who cares?!" became a kind of anthem.

In the end, I even learned to forgive myself!  The greatest gift!

I honestly don't care what mistakes were made yesterday or last month or last year.
All that weighs me down and gets me no closer to my goals. 
When you learn to drop history, your own good energy returns to you.
It is suddenly easy to change your life for the better.
Let the past go...
Living without history can be incredibly liberating!  
Today is a good day....that is enough. 
Why poison today with thoughts of yesterday?

You will be amazed at how much history can be dropped...
Take a chance...pick a starting point and try it for yourself!

I leave you with a quote from Marcus Aurelius:
"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”

Finding your clues...

Several readers have asked for more information about how these ‘hungry ghost’ problems occur…

How to know if that is a piece of their puzzle…

What to do if you suspect  'hungry ghost' involvement.  

First… take note of when your problem started... 

was it in childhood, young adulthood or later in life? 

Try not to over-analyze at this stage.  It is just fact-finding for now. 

You will, no doubt, have various explanations in mind just the same.  

So go ahead and note them.

For the moment, let's say that those are the stories we tell ourselves.  

Note them, but don't engage them for now.

As much as you are able, leave any blame and self-recrimination on the side.  

It just confuses things.

Make a list of the foods you struggle with.  Notice your patterns. 

Is there a time of day or night when you feel more vulnerable?

What might those foods be symbolic of?  A certain person?  

Something shared?  A need for comfort?

As you assemble the information you will start to have clues to your mystery.

Notice your emotions around your over-eating, bingeing or lack of eating.

Are you experiencing sadness, melancholy, anger, frustration, pity for one's self?   

Are you missing someone?

Do you find yourself eating like a starving person, or eating like a man 

if you are a woman?  Is there a special food or cuisine?

Take time to consider all the subtle aspects that you experience. 

Is there a sense of being pushed from behind or above?  

A sense of something bearing down or overshadowing you?

Is something interfering with your will?  

If so, do you experience it as creeping up on you or suddenly overpowering you? 

Or do you have a sense of something gnawing or craving from inside?  

If so, where?  In  your belly, throat, etc.?

Try to stay calm and objective.  There is no need for fear or shame.  

We are just gathering information.

Keep assembling your clues. 

Is the food or drink characteristic of you and your taste or is it outside 

your habitual food or drink?  

Let's take a look at your personality...  

Are you deeply sympathetic?  A caregiver?  A sensitive?  An introvert? 

Empathetic?  Spiritually inclined?  

Do you often feel responsible for others’ wellbeing and/or happiness?  

Do people seek you out as someone they can confide in or share their problems with?

Would someone describe you as a bleeding heart sort of person?  

Does a loved one or family member linger in your mind?  

For that matter, does someone that you have had difficulties with 

or unfinished business linger or attach?

You might add to this list...

Do you experience several of the above?  

If so, you may be too open and vulnerable for your own good.

We are the easiest targets for a needy one…on either side of life.

We often are not aware enough of who and what is in our energy field 

and how that impacts us, sometimes against our will.

A little awareness will go a long way here…  

Here is an example…  On a trip to England and Wales some years ago, 

I found myself fascinated by the charming old churches that dotted the countryside.  

I like anything old and I wandered through many of the adjacent graveyards, as well. 

I saw people making grave rubbings and I gave it a try myself, thinking nothing of it.

When I returned home to the states, a friend invited me along to visit an old woman 

who she described as gifted.

The old woman took one look at me and exclaimed “Oh my!  You have been visiting graveyards!

You must never do that!”

She was quite vehement about it.  I was a bit shocked and I must admit I did not understand 

her concern.

She went on to tell me that I was much too open and sympathetic by nature 

and that that sort of venture was off limits to me.

Her observation was that a whole group of the deceased spirits had followed me 

back to the states.  

They sensed that I was a tenderhearted person and they attached themselves to me. 

It never occurred to me that such a thing would happen.   

I knew that I had been feeling unusually tired and a bit weepy since my return…

not my usual self.   What she said made sense... 

I gave myself a bit of a shaking, got back into life and made it a point to resist 

all such influences and I was soon back to normal.

Thinking back on it, it’s easy to see how we experience other people’s ‘stuff’ 

without realizing it.  

Their sadness, their stories, their shifting emotions…even their illnesses.  

It is simply their energies moving through us….much like a weather system. 

In the very same way that spending time with a negative person can drag us down 

for awhile, we can experience the heaviness or infirmity of an energy floating 

in our vicinity.

It just happens quite naturally. 

Women and children often have quite porous boundaries…too open, too soft, too yielding.  

Too unaware.

These are boundary issues that we were never taught.  

In fact, if anything, our boundaries have not been recognized or respected

and that has become the norm for us.  

We can get tangled up in all sorts of unpleasantness.

As we learn to erect those fences and put our boundaries back in place, 

we gain control of our lives, sometimes for the first time.

You begin to experience that it is normal and necessary that you have control 

of your body, your life…even your energy field and that nothing interferes inappropriately. 

You learn eventually to keep all interference to a minimum. 

Your life becomes peaceful, especially in your stomach…your emotional brain. 

Compassion for Ourselves

Because we are so often in conflict with our knowing, our gut instincts, our built-in guidance system,
we experience distress signals from our stomach region. It is our body's way of signaling us that
something is amiss.  Nature will turn up the volume over time so that we can hear it over all the
commotion of life.  If only we had been taught to read those distress signals for what they are...
Instead we are taught to wage war against the symptoms. 

Now, consider this....from the time we were born, our parents would respond to our disturbances
by putting something in our mouths...often a pacifier or bottle.  In some other cultures a child is soothed by massage...touch.  But, in our culture, it is usually a bottle...usually administered
to stop crying.   So there is a double message there.  'Let's 'bottle it up!'

Is it any wonder that we instinctively respond to upset by stuffing something in our mouths to stop
our uncomfortable emotions? 

Let's forgive ourselves for this response...it is natural.  It's all we have ever known... 

If our parents were impatient with us, we also imbibed that emotion.  We then go on to treat ourselves with impatience, frustration, anger, upset.

Let's separate ourselves a little from those early influences.  There was a glitch in your parenting.

We can reverse that sort of thing.  How?  By backing up a little and re-parenting ourselves...
making some better history.  Taking the time to hear our upsets and respond to them with a little
gentleness and compassion.   It is OK to cry a little...or a lot.  There are tears from way back that
simply need to be cried...released.    Treat yourself as you would a tender child.  As you do that
sort of thing, there is a steady lessening of internal pressure, unhappiness, fear and pain. 
You begin to normalize in many ways..  It will take a lot of compassion and some time...
Remember...you are deserving of and worth that time.  You need it....  Life has been difficult...

Trusting Your Gut

Throughout our lives,we have been taught to manage everything by way of the brain in our head...
never knowing that we had another brain...the one in our stomachs!
A very capable and smart brain at that!
If you think about various events in your life, you can recall many times that you wrestled
with yourself over choices that needed to be made. 
Let's take an example...Let's say that a salesman shows up at the door. You go to answer and the family dog trots along at your side. You find a smiling face and you smile back , but your dog begins to growl and snarl at the stranger. 
Do you listen to your dog ?   Probably not ...Instead you override your dog's warning and continue on.  The same thing might happen with a child who reacts negatively to one person's touch and not anothers. 
Have you noticed that kids and animals tend to be right about their instincts? 
Have you noticed that when we ignore the warning signs, that we get ourselves into all sorts of hurtful
situations?   
Don't feel bad...it happens to all of us. 
We were taught from an early age to 'be nice', to act in certain ways, and to ignore our feelings and our gut instincts. 

We were raised 'upside-down', as I like to say.

Some years ago, I had a striking realization that EVERYTHING that had ever gone wrong in my life could be traced back to one thing...my failure to trust myself....to trust my gut.   That's right!  

It takes a while to learn all this, so again, do not feel bad. 
We just have a lot of unlearning to do, especially if you are a woman.

As we look back on life,  we think to ourselves: "I should have known there was
something wrong with that man...or that friend...or that business deal!"  
"Why am I always such a push-over?"  "Why do I keep making these mistakes?

Tomorrow's topic:  How this relates to eating disorders.

The Stomach...Your Emotional Brain

The first idea I'd like to introduce comes from Chinese medicine, something most of us know very little about.  In their understanding, they say that we have two brains. 
That was a bit of a shock to me. 
I wondered where my second brain might be.  Any ideas?

Well…here's the answer: it is your stomach.   That is the emotional brain.

Something about that made sense to me....  It probably will to you, as well.
The Chinese go on to say that our stomach is the really the most important brain. 

The brain in our head is more like a computer.  It helps to store and organize and articulate
all of the incoming information. 
It was never designed to figure everything out by itself.  That job really belongs to Brain #1,
the stomach.

Basically, this is how it works.  We actually have many sensitive nerve centers in and around
our belly.

Just imagine for a moment....  You walk into a room full of people at a party or a meeting.. 
You can 'feel' that room...  You instantly know the mood of the room, whether it's tense
 or relaxed and happy. 
You can also perceive the individuals in the room. 
Some of them appeal to you and some you might want to avoid.
You are actually picking up all of that information... tons of it... via your stomach,...your emotional brain.

That information shoots up to Brain #2 via your nervous system hidden in your spine.  Instantaneous!  Automatic!  We never think about it... it just happens.   all day long...

Then your upstairs brain begins to comment on the incoming information. "Well, I'd rather
not be here, but I don't want to disappoint anyone by leaving early."  or  " I have more important things to do right now than to sit in this boring meeting."  or " I'm not sure I trust this salesman,
but he's a friend of my brother."

So now you experience a little conflict between what your gut is telling you (Brain #1) and what
your mind (Brain #2)  thinks you should do. 
 More tomorrow!