Commitment, intention, structure
Thursday afternoon. Wow, my session last night with Gloria was so intense! I won't go into details except to say that my homework was to choose something to focus on, make a commitment to it, and then use that commitment to form the structural base to build everything else from.
Basically, I just broke down at the beginning of our session. I told her that I was tired of everything being so hard and just wanted to stop. Stop thinking. Stop wondering. Stop exploring. Stop everything. It's not just the weight loss and fitness thing, it's everything. Work. TCB. Alcott. (OK, I would never want to stop him, but I want to stop having to try to fit him in with the 5,000 other things I need to be doing.) Friends. Family. Getting out of my chair to carry the Subway bag to the trash in the kitchen makes me want to cry. No, it's not physically painful, but I just don't have the energy.
I've shifted over from constantly fleeing from the things I don't want to deal with and have been trying, instead, to fight through them. There is only so much fight in me before I collapse from the effort of fighting a 5,000 front war. And it's unnecessary. I don't need to fight, I just need to accept and move on. Sometimes I need to express my needs and carve some space out for me by saying no. When the fighting I'm doing is basically against myself, there's nothing good in that.
Anyway, I've chosen my "Othersize Fitness" aqua aerobics class at the Y for my commitment. Gloria witnessed my commitment to attend Tuesday and Thursday nights for the next year. (This cannot be a weinie commitment and a year is the minimum.) If I cannot attend one of those days, I will go to the Friday night TotalBodyWorkout AquaFit class for 85 minutes instead, no negotiations. This will mean missing Alcott's football games on those weeks, and that will have to be OK.
The commitment then provides structure, as it becomes ingrained in my head, and I can then get down to the business of examining my reactions and getting in touch with my body. The chaos and dissonance are keeping me from hearing what my body is trying to tell me. It knows why I eat when I don't need to and I can hear it if I can only clear away the other noise.
And then there's the part of me that wants to make this "easy" by restricting and punishing. If only I'm tough enough with myself, the weight will come off and I'll be "OK". This process I'm going through is so hard and I'm tired of hard. I'm right on the edge of being frustrated enough just to kick off a really wicked strict diet and exercise routine. I want to publish an elaborate plan and try to stick to it. I want to report the minutae of how I'm doing every day so that I can analyze and regroup. And while I'm doing that, I won't have to think about why I always regain or what thing that's locked away inside me is so awful that it makes me feel I'm not important enough to fight for.
Basically, I just broke down at the beginning of our session. I told her that I was tired of everything being so hard and just wanted to stop. Stop thinking. Stop wondering. Stop exploring. Stop everything. It's not just the weight loss and fitness thing, it's everything. Work. TCB. Alcott. (OK, I would never want to stop him, but I want to stop having to try to fit him in with the 5,000 other things I need to be doing.) Friends. Family. Getting out of my chair to carry the Subway bag to the trash in the kitchen makes me want to cry. No, it's not physically painful, but I just don't have the energy.
I've shifted over from constantly fleeing from the things I don't want to deal with and have been trying, instead, to fight through them. There is only so much fight in me before I collapse from the effort of fighting a 5,000 front war. And it's unnecessary. I don't need to fight, I just need to accept and move on. Sometimes I need to express my needs and carve some space out for me by saying no. When the fighting I'm doing is basically against myself, there's nothing good in that.
Anyway, I've chosen my "Othersize Fitness" aqua aerobics class at the Y for my commitment. Gloria witnessed my commitment to attend Tuesday and Thursday nights for the next year. (This cannot be a weinie commitment and a year is the minimum.) If I cannot attend one of those days, I will go to the Friday night TotalBodyWorkout AquaFit class for 85 minutes instead, no negotiations. This will mean missing Alcott's football games on those weeks, and that will have to be OK.
The commitment then provides structure, as it becomes ingrained in my head, and I can then get down to the business of examining my reactions and getting in touch with my body. The chaos and dissonance are keeping me from hearing what my body is trying to tell me. It knows why I eat when I don't need to and I can hear it if I can only clear away the other noise.
And then there's the part of me that wants to make this "easy" by restricting and punishing. If only I'm tough enough with myself, the weight will come off and I'll be "OK". This process I'm going through is so hard and I'm tired of hard. I'm right on the edge of being frustrated enough just to kick off a really wicked strict diet and exercise routine. I want to publish an elaborate plan and try to stick to it. I want to report the minutae of how I'm doing every day so that I can analyze and regroup. And while I'm doing that, I won't have to think about why I always regain or what thing that's locked away inside me is so awful that it makes me feel I'm not important enough to fight for.
Comments