So a new member of Sick to Fit asks
the following question:
How do you address a lack of self-esteem
or how do you keep going when regret,
guilt, frustration, etc., make you
question if the effort is worth it?"
So before I answer the question,
I want to invite you to like this video
and subscribe to this channel for more.
So first thing I want to do
in responding to that question is
honor where the asker is right now,
which sounds like a painful place.
And I have been there and pretty much
everybody I know has been there.
And so I want to acknowledge that that
place can hurt and it can be confusing.
And the voices
- Ooh, I got a message.
Turn that down. -
The voices in our heads when we are
in that place can be cruel
and the opposite of productive.
So when we're in that place,
the thing to do first
is simply to breathe and get into our
bodies, because we aren't going to solve
this in our heads or at our
heads is where the mess is.
And our heads are not trustworthy
at this point. Do you agree that when you
are swirling in thoughts of regret, guilt,
frustration, unworthiness,
that's not a safe neighborhood?
Right.
You don't want to hang out there.
What is a safe neighborhood?
Our bodies are safe neighborhoods.
All right.
I don't trust my thoughts,
but I trust my heartbeat.
Put your hand over your chest
and you feel your heartbeat.
That's not lying to you.
That's a real heartbeat.
Put your fingers on your wrist.
Feel your pulse.
That's real.
The thoughts in our head
can be complete lies.
They can be fantasies.
They can be insane.
But our bodies are real.
So let's get when you're when you're
feeling that craziness,
the first thing to do is to breathe
awareness into yourself, into your body.
Take a breath and notice that your
body responds to that breath.
Chest rises, belly made to stand,
shoulders may come up.
You may feel cold,
air the tip of your nose
and just
identify as a body.
The second thing I want you to do is
notice that all those emotions
and thoughts and judgments are actually
your interpretation
of physical sensations.
Now, you may not believe me
and you may not be able to
follow that line directly right now,
especially people who have
a history of trauma
where there was a time in your past or
the experience that you were experiencing
in that moment was so overwhelming,
you kind of checked out dissociated and
because that became a protective pattern.
So you may not be able to connect
with your body fully right now.
Don't worry about it.
That comes with time.
It comes with practice.
It comes with a willingness to come back
into the safe neighborhood of our flesh.
But if you can't feel that, at least
do the breathing,
maybe move your one foot, wiggle the toes
clenched and unclenched the toes of one
foot and just notice that you notice that
to begin to bring yourself
back into the body.
But once were there,
once you've made that journey,
however long it is for you,
you will realize that every emotion you
have, every thought you have is a
translation of a physical sensation,
because our bodies are sensing machines
that create thought, create emotion
to help us navigate the world.
And it's through our senses,
through touch, sight, smell, sound,
and particularly how we translate those
inputs into our bodies themselves,
into our what's called proprioception,
the feeling of having a body.
So guilt, frustration,
regret are all sensations.
You can try this, you know,
try to make yourself feel guilty.
Think about the worst thing you've
done or not the worst thing.
But, you know, maybe a two out of ten
on a scale and something
that was embarrassing to you.
You said you did you kind of regret
and notice that you can feel
something in your body.
It might be a hollowness
in the pit of your stomach.
It might be a palpitating heart.
It might be tension
in the back of the neck.
It might be pinching between the eyebrows.
That's a.
All these emotions are they are physical
sensations that we give a name
to and we give a story to.
So what does all this have to do with how
do we deal with it? How do we deal
with it? So the question is,
how do you keep going?
So, like, you know, how do you address it?
I don't know exactly what that means or
you know, but the question is,
how do you keep going when
you have these sensations?
So what you understand is that all
of the feeling of I want to give up,
whether, you know, is the is this worth it
is not really the question.
You're not sitting there like a bean
counter with a calculator counting.
Well, what's the benefits of not having
diabetes or heart disease versus,
you know, the urge to eat a candy bar?
Like, no, that's not
the calculus you're doing.
You're not really asking.
Is it worth it?
You are asking a different question.
The question and it's actually
two different questions.
So one of the questions is.
Is this worth.
The risk.
And what do I mean by risk?
I don't mean the risk of a heart attack or
diabetes because you know
what those risks are.
You know, the risks of obesity on your
joints, on your heart,
on all the organs in your body.
You know, the risks of your
lack of self-esteem.
When you feel like you're not in control
of your your own behaviors,
you're eating your movement, your words,
you know, all of the costs.
But there's a there's a risk
of trying and failing.
That's really at the heart of this.
What if I try and fail?
So that question about is it worth it?
Is really a question of self-protection,
because if we if we say, oh,
it's not worth it, I don't even care.
I don't care anymore,
that actually serves a function.
It doesn't serve the function of our
health, but it serves the function
of protecting our heart.
Because if we care about something,
we are vulnerable.
Do you ever remember trying to be cool
and like, you know, whatever?
Right.
That's a very safe place
to be at a superficial level.
When we don't care, we can't get hurt.
When we care, we get hurt.
And when we care deeply,
we can get hurt deeply.
And when we are in the throes
of an overpowering longing to be
different, to be who we
really know we could be.
The pain of failing there becomes.
Seems to become overwhelming,
and that's where it goes,
and that's where the guilt,
the frustration, the regret, the shame,
the low self-esteem come from,
because actually
not caring as a form of self-protection
doesn't work,
because what happens when you tell
yourself, I don't care, do you feel good
or do you feel worse?
It's pretty obvious.
Check in with yourself.
I don't care about any of that stuff.
First of all, you know, it's a lie.
Second,
you berate yourself, what's wrong with me?
I don't even care.
I've given up.
All right.
So then you spin into a whole new cycle
of self recrimination,
of self blame, of self-criticism.
So the very thing you're doing to protect
your heart is actually
perpetuating the abuse.
So I said there were two questions
that you're really asking when you're
asking how do you keep going or is it
worth it if you ask, is it worth it?
So one of the questions is,
is it worth the risk
of me caring and falling down on the job?
The second question you're
asking is, can I do it
right? It's like a bet,
like any other bet, you know,
will this horse come in first?
Will the Yankees win the World Series?
Will the stock market go up or down?
Will the left or the right
checkout lane check out faster?
Pretty much all of our decisions
are bets on the future.
And so the bet
you're making on yourself, can I do it?
If I don't think I can do it,
then it only is rational
to not make the bet.
The other thing that happens, though,
when we get into this awful rising self
recrimination place, rush, frustration,
guilt, regret, low self-esteem
is that we think the only way out of it is
a giant leap forward, a total
instantaneous transformation.
And we become very binary in our thinking.
I'm either good or bad.
I'm either succeeding or failing.
I'm either pure or impure.
I'm either on the right
path or the wrong path.
And so our interpretation, our definition
of what's the right thing to do
becomes an impossible hurdle.
And when you think, OK,
if that's the thing that I have to do,
then do I bet on myself?
Hell, no.
I've seen how I fail.
I've seen how I fall down.
I've seen how I slip up.
And falling down, failing, slipping up
are incompatible with the vision that I've
set out with the definition
that I've created of success.
No person in their right mind would bet
on themselves if they didn't
think they could succeed.
So the answer here is to
choose a definition,
choose a protocol that when you think
about doing it, you can
bet on yourself, right?
Call it tiny habits, small steps,
atomic habits.
There's lots of books out there
and they all refer to the same idea
of setting up a win that you can achieve.
Now, you're still left with the feelings,
right, you still can feel a lack
of self-esteem, you can still feel guilt,
you can still feel regret,
you can still feel frustration.
And here is the giant secret.
You can feel all those things
and still move forward,
you don't have to act on those feelings.
It may seem like you do,
but the actually what's causing you
to make bad decisions is
not those feelings, but
an urgent need to not feel them or to not
feel them fully or to not feel them
comprehensively or to not
feel them all the time.
Right.
The things that we do
are meant to keep us from feeling
regret, guilt, frustration.
Right.
When you're in the middle of taking
your first bite of forbidden food,
you're feeling relief.
Oh, I God, I feel good now.
I don't feel guilt, regret.
I don't feel any of that stuffright.
Our bad habits,
the things we do that are not in our best
interests are our attempts to not feel
they are systems that we have created
in ourselves to avoid feelings.
So the feelings themselves
are not the problem.
It's the thought
that we can't feel them,
that we can't handle them.
So that's why I began by asking you to go
into your body, because our body
is where we can hold everything.
Our body are really
good at holding things.
Our bodies can handle those feelings.
So as an experiment,
take that feeling of guilt
that the two out of ten bring it back
into your consciousness,
notice it in your body,
and now pay attention to it in your
body as a bodily sensation.
And don't try to send it away
and don't try to amplify.
Don't try to do anything to it.
Let it be what it is like.
It's driving and you're the passenger
and you're sitting watching
and notice as you simply breathe and allow
it to be and tolerate it,
that it shifts of its own accord.
Might take 30 seconds,
might take 30 minutes.
It doesn't matter.
But simply allowing it to be and
in a sense, communicating
with that feeling, you are welcome here.
You are OK.
Here I am OK with you hereat that.
With that practice, you will no
longer be driven by those feelings.
To act
in contradiction to your best interests,
you can simply let them be
and continue to make the decisions
that will get you what you want.
I hope this is helpful.
If you have more questions,
you can always join the Facebook group.
Just search groups for sick to fit.
Thanks for watching.
Again, if you'd like to like this video,
if you find it helpful,
subscribe to this channel.
If you have questions you'd like me
to answer in future videos or thoughts
about this or your own experiences,
you can always drop them in the comments.
Have a great day.
A new member of Sick to Fit asked, “How do you address a lack of self esteem, or how do you keep going when regret, guilt, frustration, etc., make you question if the effort is worth it?”
In this video, I talk about how to keep going when your thoughts and feelings are all undermining your resolve.