Self Acceptance, Revisited

I've said it before, but it never stops being true. Until you are safe in your own skin, you can't be safe anywhere.

Emotional eating goes hand in hand with self-judgment. You tell yourself you shouldn't be hungry (I just ate an hour ago, how could I be hungry again?). You tell yourself you shouldn't want cake (Why can't I just be satisfied with a salad?). You tell yourself you should be thinner (I look awful... I'm so fat... My cellulite is so bad, people can ski the moguls of my thighs).

When your inner critic judges you, you are left with shame, and a self divided. One part of you is harsh, critical, and unloving. The other feels judged, punished, and unlovable.

Common wisdom says, change the parts you don't like so you can love yourself. If you operate under this belief, you may already be realizing something very important. It doesn't work. No one has ever hated or judged themselves into happiness.

When you're hating yourself, hating your body, the only way out is to explore and heal the shame.

For most of us, shame is circular. Initially, we may have been judged by someone else - classmates, a critical parent, a spouse or lover. The judgment was never questioned, never confronted. Boundaries were never set (It's not okay for anyone to criticize your looks. Ever).

You believed that you had a problem. It was your fault, and yours to fix. You believed that the only way to ensure you were safe from judgment was to fix the problem. Then you set about criticizing yourself in order to motivate change.

But there is another part of you, the one being judged, who knows that what she really wants is not thinness. It's love. She knows that love based on her looks is not really love at all. She knows that for love to be real and lasting and always safe, it has to be unconditional. She needs to be loved at any size, at any weight, no matter what.

So whenever your inner critic puts you on a diet or tells you no more carbs, the other part of you says, Oh yeah? I'm eating whatever I want, and you can't stop me! Usually this part doesn't have much of a voice. Instead, you just find yourself standing in the kitchen eating frozen cheesecake out of a box, wondering, Why am I eating this?

Transforming the inner critic
Instead of trying to change your body, what would it be like to change your inner critic? What if you spent time looking in the mirror each day, practicing just being with yourself in a non-judgmental way?

Most of the time, when I recommend mirror work to clients (which is done... naked), what comes up is fear. They don't want to see themselves. They don't want to feel the harshness of the inner critic coming down on them, confirming their worst fear - that they are hideous and unlovable. But those that do the work find something very different begins to happen. When they practice just being with themselves, noticing themselves, describing themselves without judgment, the inner critic starts to get quieter.

In time, a new voice emerges - the voice of self-love. When you can look at your whole self with care, with kindness, with sweetness, you become a safe person to live with. You become a great roommate. And the safety and care you create within then becomes all the protection you need in the world. When you are in loving relationship with yourself, you can be in loving relationship with the world.

Taking Ourselves Lightly

My last post is, yes, silly, but I really think we have a lot to learn about being happy, following our hearts, living in the moment, and accepting ourselves - from our animal friends.

On my own journey from emotional eating, I started out with a belief that my happiness was wrapped up in my looks. If I met the cultural criteria: thin, young, sexy, I could feel good about myself.

But there was always a catch. Either I wasn't thin enough, or I was thin enough, but knew I couldn't sustain myself on a diet for too much longer. And soon enough, youth would be gone.

Allowing myself to judge and be judged by these criteria meant my happiness and freedom had to endlessly be earned. In the movie biz, they say, "you're only as good as you're last picture." In the diet biz, you're only as good as you're last weigh-in.

Living this way is crazy. And what is it we're actually earning? What I discovered, was that I didn't really like having friends and lovers who would judge me based on my appearance. It was like having an anvil hanging over my head, held in place by a very thin thread.

When I realized it was not my weight that was causing my insecurity (which was there whether I was thin or fat), but my own self-judgment, that's when my life finally began to change.

While it's not easy to shift the painful, negative thoughts and emotions that come with self-judgment, it is possible (and preferential to living under the anvil!).

So take a lesson from your favorite 4-legged friend. You really are lovable, just as you are this minute. You are good enough. You don't have to earn friendship, affection, kindness or respect. You just have to start giving these things to yourself, unconditionally and in abundance. As your self-treatment changes, you will teach others, by example, how to treat you. Those who are too entrenched in their own judgment will fall away. It's okay to let them go. You deserve better.