I've never been fond of fat on meat, especially meat in stews. Quite early in my school life the cook at primary school would do a stew for lunch. Cubes of meat with floppy, rubbery lumps of fat attached were an awful experience for a child who was not allowed to leave anything on his plate! So I'd spit the unswallowable bits into a handkerchief and chuck them away later. It got so bad that I dreaded school lunches, then dreaded school and so on and on, increasing in intensity. I couldn't tell my parents, or anyone. Then one day my mother found a hankie full of half-chewed meat!! Horrified - yet relieved - I spilt the beans to her. To her it was not a big deal - we talked it through and I felt so much better about school, lunches, leaving food and everything after that!
With weight loss clients in particular I get them to fill out a questionnaire which is pretty basic, and just asks some broad brush questions on their relationship with food.
In the course of one client's "preamble", she (rather tongue in cheek) mentioned that she used to buy sweets on the way home from school and would hide them from her parents! This was a rather casual remark in a rather lengthy resume and could have easily been dismissed as humorous and throwaway.
However, as I listened to her talking about how her food relationship impacts upon personal desires and wishes, it became apparent that the structure of her "emotional eating" needed analysing so she could see the cold logic of what was happening - and from that would spring the opportunities to reprogramme her responses.
When she encountered a less than appropriate food choice, her after-eating response was governed by her mood, her state of mind, at the time. If feeling ok she would proceed as normal, whereas if feeling down she would feel guilty about making a bad choice. This guilt would feed back via a loop into her state and she would proceed to eat more of the same. The guilt would increase and the loop would continue until she had really 'overdone it'!
No matter how logically she told herself what was happening, she was caught in this loop and 'powerless' to intervene.
Quite often, revealing this structure to clients actually gives them some resolve to make their own changes on the inside - though I had an inkling here that for this lady there was something else available to kick start things for her. The hunch was that the "Going home from School" story was a good place to start - mainly because it was not resolved in any way. There, she had hidden the sweets from her parents, never got found out, felt guilty, continued to do it, kept feeling guilty etc. The secrecy and the guilt were all in a loop.
We explored the whole area of this covert childhood tale, seeking to loosen the association between sweet-type foods and guilt. I got her to think and talk through a load of possible scenarios following what would have happened when her parents HAD found out.
Once this 'pathway had been swept' I brought her back to talking about dealing with her present and future food issues. There was a distinct change in her physiology as she talked about things this time, and it was noticeable that there had been some changes on the inside for her.
I did add, before closing the session, that she would now remember the 'schoolgirl tale' every time she reached for the wrong food choice - and that this (now resolved) memory would be useful for her in making better choices and in keeping amplified guilt out of her state of mind!
Do you have any childhood 'secrets' that were never resolved properly that may now be working against your better judgements?
Better go inside and have a "rummage"!
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