Accidentally Overweight

by Libby Weaver

So you may find when you review your answers that you start giggling or get teary, as you begin to see the conflicts. Doing this exercise for the first time may also make you realize how tough you’re making it for yourself to feel and experience a given emotion, in this case love. Notice if your language is absolute, featuring words such as “never” and “always,” so your nervous system can only feel love when all of these things are happening at the same time.

  Additionally, most people have no idea what they really want, so how on earth is anyone else supposed to? No wonder people get so angry with their partners and don’t understand what’s really behind it. They never feel loved because their partner doesn’t do all of the above! Besides, how do you explain to someone that they “can never use anything but a nice tone” with you? For one thing, the way one person defines a “nice” tone will be entirely different from someone else. We are very funny, we humans.

  * * *

  Rejection list

  The next step is to create your current rejection list.

  Question: What emotion is really painful for you to feel?

  Answer: Rejection

  Write down what currently has to happen for you to feel rejected. For example:

  If my partner raises his/her voice at me.

  If my partner doesn’t look me in the eye.

  If a colleague, who usually stops by to say hi when they walk past my office, doesn’t.

  If someone ignores me.

  If someone questions my work and asks me why I’ve done what I’ve done.

  * * *

  A “rejection” story that exemplifies what I mean involved a client and one of her colleagues. My client didn’t enjoy her job, so the highlight of her day was her colleague stopping by her office to chat on his way back from the coffee machine. They mostly chatted about things other than work and he stopped by every day. Until he didn’t.

  One day, he walked past (she said “marched past”) and didn’t stop to chat. In that moment, many females would react internally in the same way my client did and ask, “What have I done?” It can take us two minutes, two days, two weeks, or two years before we pause to think, “I wonder what might be going on for him.” By then, you have tortured yourself with every possible scenario of how you could have offended him, even though you hadn’t had an interaction with him since your chat the day before.

  Perhaps he just had piles of work to get through and he forgot to stop. Maybe he had a sick child and was racing back to his desk in case the phone rang. I could hypothesize for hours. My point is, save yourself a whole lot of heartache, rejection, exhaustion, distraction, mean self-talk and “unresourceful” eating or excessive drinking, and ask yourself, “I wonder what might be going on for him (or her).” He might appreciate your concern. And on the off chance he is upset with you, you can sort it out immediately.

  You can see that the items on the list of rejection scenarios above could easily happen 50 times a day. How many times do you think this particular woman experienced “rejection” in a day compared to “love” based on these two sets of “rules”? Even though you don’t walk around all day saying, “I feel rejected, I feel rejected, I feel rejected,” you might still feel flat, lousy, depressed, angry, irritated, and frustrated. You may loathe yourself because you have scratched your “rejection” itch 50 times that day, and your perception is that you touched on love only twice.

  Let me remind you again, none of this is conscious. None of these thoughts are cognitive in nature. They reveal themselves in your body as a momentary sick feeling in your tummy or a momentary spasm in your back, for example. In that moment, if you wanted to, you could access your sense of rejection. But you’ve conditioned your conscious mind never to go there (unless it is glaringly obvious). How often you subconsciously “feel” rejection and how often you subconsciously “feel” love is the fuel for your life. Your fuel, your juice, your passion won’t show up if you are spending most of your day touching on rejection and feeling like you aren’t enough. And it is at the end of a day like this, that, if food is your “comfort,” your “drug,” the way you “bolt,” then no amount of “willpower” will ever be able to override your subconscious desperation to avoid actually feeling the rejection that, when you were a small child, your conscious mind perceived but decided was just too painful to feel.

  There are numerous ways to get out of dodge, to alter the above scenario and patterns. The first involves rewriting your rules about what has to happen for you to feel love and rejection and, with practice, your emotional landscape will begin to change. After all, the first set of rules went in without you being conscious of it. Now it’s time to direct your own rules and choose ones that actually serve you! It is, however, essential to practice saying your new rules once you have them. They can be great to recite while out for a walk. People driving by won’t notice or if they do, they will just think you are singing (if you are concerned).

  * * *

  Rewrite your own rules

  Playfully approach rewriting the rules for any of your emotions. The whole idea is to make the emotions you want to feel, in this case love, or success, for example, really easy to feel, and, with the new rules we write, to make it really difficult to feel the emotions that debilitate us such as rejection or failure.

  Write new rules for yourself about how you will feel your desired emotion, or what I call your “green” emotion, for example love. Make it really easy to feel! It is vital you keep the green emotion in your control, not reliant on anyone else.

  Start the spiel with “Anytime I…” and write “or” in between each rule.

  For example, “Anytime I…

  Smile or

  Appreciate nature or

  Eat food that nourishes me or

  Drink a glass of water or

  Hear birdsong or

  Exercise or

  Write in my diary or

  Read a book or

  Light a candle or

  Laugh or…

  I feel love.”

  Read these out loud every day for a month and move your body as you say them. You might sway gently, dance, walk, or use powerful arm actions. Pay attention when you smile and, after a while, notice a different level of happiness start to emerge from a feeling inside. You will hear more birdsong. You will drink more water, and each time you will not just be listening and appreciating and quenching your thirst, but your nervous system will start to feel “love” from the activities you do that, for you, now demonstrate love toward yourself.

  Now write a new rule for yourself about how you will feel your “red” emotion, for example rejection. Make it really hard to feel. Make it about you rather than anyone else. Start with “Only if I were consistently to indulge in the debilitating, unresourceful emotion of… [for example rejection] instead of remembering that…”

  … only I determine how I feel and respond to others, and I have not walked in anyone else’s shoes.

  It is so important to read your new rules aloud and combine them with motion. This helps engage your nervous system, allowing your subconscious to be reeducated with rules and meanings that will serve you and allow you to feel and acknowledge how truly amazing you are.

  * * *

  Network spinal analysis (NSA) and Somato respiratory integration (SRI)

  A second modality I want to share with you is called Network Spinal Analysis (NSA), a powerful, non-cracking form of chiropractic that also encompasses a particular type of breathing called Somato (body) Respiratory Integration (SRI). It is truly a phenomenal practice. We’ll be looking at a third way to alter your subconscious responses by applying a spectacular and gentle process called the Emotional Matrix (“Em–Matrix”).

  There is a school of thought that our body carries memories of what we have experienced in life. You may have noticed a person’s posture perhaps, and used language to describe them (for example) as “having the weight of the world on their shoulders.” Often, based on their perception of their own life, p
eople will indeed feel this way. An NSA practitioner believes that, via your nervous system, your body stores experiences, both physical and emotional, and that our postures, even subtle ones, hold us in these patterns of belief. An NSA practitioner sees many different defense postures in a day’s work and gently helps the body begin to shift into more resourceful postures. What is a great gift, is that as the body changes, so do the physical and emotional resources available to that person. And that can help change the choices they make.

  When you think about your spine being the “connector” between your brain and your organs, you begin to get an idea of why your spine’s health is worth optimizing… for it offers you a gateway between your body and your mind.

  Developed by an incredibly gifted man, Donny Epstein, NSA involves gentle, precise touch to the spine that cues the brain to create new wellness strategies. Through working on the physical structure of the body, behavioral change unfolds literally effortlessly. Through SRI, people are educated to the body’s rhythms and their own inner wisdom using focused attention, gentle breath, movement and touch. A big part of SRI behind the scenes is helping the nervous system feel “safe”, a place from which new perceptions, healing and optimal health can transform. I personally love these approaches to health and as with many modalities, they really need to be experienced to be “understood.”

  The Em-Matrix

  What if I told you that every single emotion is here to serve you? What if I told you that every emotion has a gift for you? What if I told you that every emotion has a message for you and that once you hear it, a space will remain for your truth, your core essence to expand into? And what if I told you that instead of delving back into your past to help you cognitively understand why you eat “unresourcefully,” we could instead simply and gently explore the emotions and the patterns that exist today. Welcome to the Em-Matrix, a concept and a process the world so desperately needs. Open your mind and heart to this.

  An incredibly gifted and generous woman called Deborah Battersby is the founder of a concept called Em-Matrix. Having studied with Deb, I’ve discovered how powerful her work is in the way it allows people gently to see how every emotion that we may perceive to be negative, has actually come to serve us. Deb has created a process that you can be guided through (or with a little experience, you can take yourself through) and that will allow what I’ve been referring to as your subconscious mind to communicate the real reason a particular pattern or emotion keeps showing up in your life.

  For example, you really want to quit your job and start your own business, but, every time you come close, you feel frightened. Fear can serve you or fear can hold you back. Guided by the fundamental principle of Em-Matrix that all emotion is here to serve, the gentle and effortless Em-Matrix process allows the “fear” to speak and communicate its wonderful intentions, which could include “to keep you safe” and “to offer wisdom.” Yet fear may be holding you back from a life that somewhere in your heart could be enormously fulfilling. And when humans aren’t fulfilled, many of them eat.

  What I have now seen time and time again is that, once you see that a particular fear was there to help you and it had simply overstayed its welcome, you let it go and you allow your truth to fill the space where once the fear resided. The Em-Matrix process allows your subconscious to “speak” and as a result I’ve seen very anxious people go from being wired and highly stressed, to being calm and centered and mostly remain that way. This process positively impacts your nervous system because your old, subconscious thoughts and feelings that once silently wired and unwittingly consumed you now give you strength, passion, and insight.

  A simple explanation of how this happens is that when you have a perception that an emotion you feel is negative, your SNS activates; the “fight-or-flight” response. It does this partly because, in that moment, you judge yourself. And if you continue to touch on this emotion frequently and subsequently have too much time with the SNS activated, it will bring with it all of the consequences of too many stress hormones, including cortisol. If this pattern or this emotion stops you from truly resting, your PNS is unable to do the rest and repair work it needs to, which, as you now know, drives its own set of consequences.

  When it comes to emotions, it can be the emotions that we literally keep “stuffed” inside ourselves that may drive us to indulge in addictions to keep us distracted from the emotional pain. That’s the flight. That’s the bolting and the getting out of dodge. The never wanting to return “home” to yourself because you perceive it is too painful and, gosh, also because that big scary piece of pain that you were so clever to stuff back down inside yourself with the cake you ate after dinner might bubble to the surface. So you keep bolting and never feeling what it really is that’s present. The fight, on the other hand, is either “suppressed” or it “explodes” in angry outbursts or rage, and the consequences of that not only affect the individual exploding but usually the people around them, too. Whatever you then say to yourself (a story) about who you must be to explode like that is powerful and keeps your SNS dominant with everything that it creates.

  The Em-Matrix is a wonderful process to experience. It is such a spectacular yet gentle way to change the patterns and emotional landscape of your life. The distinctions, transformations, and breakthroughs it offers have the potential to change that landscape—to change the world really. Imagine how much less cortisol we would all make!

  Signs your emotional landscape needs some support

  You are human (i.e., most people need to explore this area of their lives)

  You eat emotionally

  You have good nutrition and health knowledge, but this doesn’t translate consistently into good health and nutrition choices

  You don’t understand why you do what you do when you know what you know.

  * * *

  EMOTIONS SOLUTIONS

  I hope you now see how your thoughts and beliefs are just as powerful, if not more powerful, than anything you put in your mouth, and so taking the time to understand your emotions is a vital piece of your weight-loss puzzle. The following solutions are all about helping you to do just that.

  Eating in a way that doesn’t serve you is a way you distance yourself from how things are when they are not how you want them to be. Ask yourself what you want to distance yourself from—the state of your marriage, the way your children speak to you, the hurt from your father sending you to boarding school at a young age—and really experience the fact that how you eat will not change these things. You need other strategies, not lousy eating, to transform that pain. It is never about the food.

  Do the “Food is...” exercise and learn what role you are really asking food to play in your life. Once you see that it is more joy or more fun or comfort you are seeking, you can schedule ways to experience these emotions through means that don’t take away from your health.

  Explore your subconscious rules about what has to happen for you to feel the emotions you want to feel, as well as those you seek to avoid, using the strategy outlined. It can offer powerful insights into why you may find changing food behaviors so challenging (if you do) and you will be able to bring much more compassion to yourself with the new understanding you gain. Rewrite your rules!

  Bodywork and/or breathing processes may assist such as NSA and SRI. Seek out skilled practitioners to support you with this if it appeals.

  Remember that every emotion is here to serve you; some just overstay their welcome. If there is a recurring emotional pattern in your life, identify it, for example anger and then say to the anger—”If it is true that you are here to serve me, what is it that you are here to do?” In every moment we are responding from love or fear. There is no in between. And quite often when there is an emotion that has overstayed its welcome, it originally appeared to help or protect you. But now it may be destructive, to you or others. Processes such as Em-Matrix, help you get to the heart of what the emotional pattern is really all about.

  * * *<
br />
  The Wrap-Up

  After all of this talk about food, hormones, alcohol, coffee, and body size, I want to remind you that it is never about the food. Nor is it about the hormones, and yet, at the same time, it is about them because you will feel so much better if you address, for example, your estrogen dominance or insulin resistance. But hear this, please hear this… you would never want the garbage or the harmful amounts you swallow, if you knew who you really are. If you truly had a deep appreciation of how magnificent you are or saw the light that shines inside you, regardless of how dim you tell yourself you are or how dim you think you need to be to fit in, you would never treat yourself that way. And when you decide you don’t want the rubbish—rather than you going without the garbage because someone told you to—everything changes, including the estrogen dominance, the insulin resistance, and the body fat you no longer need. You feel safe because you have you.

  But in this space you are not even focused on your size. You know you are a remarkable human, and you have such a deep appreciation and level of care for yourself that an excess of anything no longer appeals or even appears in your life. When we choose to drink alcohol, we are spitting in the eye of our greatness, dulling ourselves so we feel less, do less, shine less. Sharing a drink over a celebration is a very different scenario from the daily grind of alcohol, and the sharing is to be enjoyed if you like to do so. Of course alcohol can be good for your soul. And only you know whether you are nourishing your soul or dimming your light.

  You shut down your insight, you shut down your feelings, and you shut down your truth when you rely on alcohol to “relax” in the evenings. What you are actually saying when you drink alcohol in excess is that you can’t face your reality. Perhaps you can’t face it that you can’t bear another moment of baby talk (even though you love your children very much), and that feeling leads you to believe that you are a bad person. So, you drink to “cope” with the crazy 5 to 6 p.m. period. Or because you had an affair and, even though you stayed in your original relationship, you are bored with your life. You drink to make the life you chose more bearable. Maybe your daily alcohol intake began when you started a new job, one you didn’t really want. And you can’t face it that you feel so resentful toward your husband, with whom you once shared a beautiful, intimate marriage, because he bought a business that did not do well financially, forcing you back to work against your will. So you drink each evening with a bitter taste in your mouth, justifying your consumption through your story that you deserve it because you work so bleeping hard. What you actually deserve is to see your own brilliance and then live from that place. You would never want to shut off from that, and alcohol abuse effortlessly exits your life.