Is this why you won’t make a decision?
The whole room smelt like heat,
You know the type of all-encompassing heat that fills even your nostrils?
Well, that and a truckload of cacao.
There were people dotted around in their socks,
Journals out,
Lounging back next to crystals that size-shamed the rose quartz I keep under my pillow,
Sipping hot smoothie drinks from the cacao bar at the back.
I was pretty apprehensive about going to a new meditation studio alone,
Debated turning back and going home in fact,
I’ve tons of work to do and I don’t feel 100% about it,
So I should probably just prioritise that.
But man I’m glad I pulled myself together,
The hour of hypnosis was one of the best meditation classes I’ve been to,
The teacher was warm and the room filled with open hearts and smiles,
I felt kind of at home in that cacao-stinking, Mexican blanket filled, sweat box of a room in the middle of an unknown part of Austin.
I feel this quite a bit when I travel alone,
A mix of apprehension,
Desire to experience everything,
Fear of doing so,
Sporadic loneliness as I walk past big families,
Interspersed with ultimate connection as I meet new people more on my wavelength than almost any stranger I’ve met in the UK.
So I've been thinking.
So many of us stall on taking action,
On changing and doing something different.
Usually, it’s because of fear.
We fear the uncertainty,
The outcome,
And often,
We fear the loss of where we are,
Even if where we are isn’t serving us anymore.
I was doing some training recently and the professor (of somatic therapy) reminded us,
People don’t want to recover from disordered eating because they want to focus on life.
You avoid it and think,
I don’t have time to do that work right now
If I just focus on life stuff enough,
Maybe it eventually won’t be an issue anymore.
And when you say,
I don’t want to change right now,
What you're really saying is,
I don’t know how to give up these behaviours that always regulate me.
And that’s totally ok,
These behaviours have helped you out quite a bit over time.
But the real road to optimal health incorporates your life,
It doesn't add more to it,
Fitness and health should never take from your life,
And recovery from disordered eating, working on your health and fitness,
They help you feel safer and more regulated in your body,
Not less-so.
There’s another reason you’re not doing the work yet,
Not making change,
Because recovery from disordered eating can be a trauma itself,
When you recover,
You can feel a sense of loss,
Of the time it took from you,
The impact it had on your health.
I see this a lot with my clients,
When they finally find peace with food they express a sense of loss.
But the only thing worse than losing a year to something,
Be that a hard relationship with food or a hard relationship with a red flag,
Is losing a year and one day to them.
Barack Obama famously said
"You don't have to get to 100% certainty on your big decisions, get to 51%, and when you get there, make the decision and be at peace with the fact that you made the decision based on the information you had"
And I really love that metaphor for anything you’re struggling to decide on,
To change.
It probably won’t be as trivial as a trip alone to a different city or a meditation class filled with strangers in their socks,
But it's a helpful reminder to be a bit braver,
Don't you think?
