BLOWING OUT SOMEONE ELSE'S CANDLE TO MAKE YOUR'S SEEM BRIGHTER

Other people’s criticism, or judgment of what is wrong or bad about somebody or something, is merely a reflection of their need to control and dictate rules, guidelines, and boundaries. They are enforcing apon other's the principles by which they use to feel better about themselves.
Their criticism is also a reflection of what makes them feel insecure. Otherwise they wouldn’t take the time and effort to impose their opinion with the intent to put other’s down.  It is this type of controlling person that attracts chaos, and expresses criticism that constantly wreaks havoc, attracts conflict, and draws attention towards to their need for attention and control.

Could it be that their bias is what they think gives them value, that they like the control they feel when people submit to their judgments, or that criticizing others puts them higher-up in a pecking order? Is their offensive attack to protect and control something they don’t want to lose? Even if what you do has no bearing on what they do, if (in their mind) it conflicts or competes with their bias, they’ll feel the impulse to protect their ego, and justify an offensive attack - thus, blowing out someone else’s candle to make theirs brighter.
I understand this reaction. This is the premise for why we war, why there’s prejudice, why we feel justified in hurting others, why ideals judge, hate, and fight to seek value above other ideals. This is why people who have low self-esteem feel the need to put others down in order to pump them-selves up. As if putting someone else down really improves self-esteem!

If a person was confident in themselves and what they do, would they:

·         Start rumors, lie, and put effort into seeking allies that construe faults conflict and controversy?

·         Spend more time trying to discredit the work of others, than they do crediting their own work?

·          Need to justify or defend their beliefs or actions?

Their energy and motive is no longer in the integrity of the work they do, but instead to the corruption of their shallow ego to offend the work of other’s.
If they were secure in their view, would they feel the urge to attack other people’s belief?
How many of you have been overly criticized by someone you love and want approval from?  Is their disapproval the truth of who you are or is it merely a reflection of the ideology they think you should adhere to? Is their criticism a way to control you, to put you beneath them, and a way for them to feed their ego? One of the most common reasons people emotionally eat is out of insecurity, or to compensate
for lack of approval. Eating is a form of self-approval and an easy means to feel secure when insecurity ensues.
But what if you are that critic? Is it your entitled right to force others to remove your insecurity? Instead of forcing other’s to fulfill you are you forcing your insecurity on your body? Do you criticize yourself and enforce diet restrictions to control your feelings of insecurity? Is it your body’s job to make you feel better about yourself?

Consider your internal battles and question if you are the critic, if you are your own opponent, and if you are a martyr to your own abuse. Is the battle you have with other’s really a battle within yourself? If you are secure in yourself, secure in what is authentic and what makes you independently valuable, is there really a threat? Is there a need to put others or yourself down? No.
Before you criticize yourself and others seek what you are compensating for. Are you defending something that needs no apology or are you taking offense to something because you feel insecure? Question why you feel threatened and why you need something outside of yourself to feel better.
If you are blowing out someone else’s candle, it really doesn’t make yours burn brighter, but in fact, it just makes your surroundings darker.

HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILDREN HAVE A POSITIVE BODY IMAGE

The link between body image and depression, low self-esteem, social anxiety, and eating disorders has been studied as a personal psychological problem for well over fifty years. Because the prevalence of eating disorders and body image based problems have skyrocketed over the last 20 years, the discussion of body image is now being looked at not strictly as a personal psychological problem, but rather an indication of a social problem. This is great news for us parents! As the body image epidemic grows culturally, we can recognize the problem and prevent it from spreading to our own children. But first, we need to recognize it in ourselves, and we need to understand what body image is.

What is body image?
Body image is defined as a person using his or her body to construct a sense of self. The image of who she is becomes psychologically constructed by how she looks, her attractiveness, her sexuality, how her body performs (athletically), or if her body is healthy. In short, body image is used as a gold standard of worth for people who are able-bodied. Are you attractive enough, thin enough, sexy enough, athletic enough, or healthy enough? I like to refer to these as sacred body-righteous standards.

They are sacred because they are believed as unquestionable truths, and righteous because the body is used to define the individual morally. If, however, an individual has the misfortune of a disease, a disfigurement, or an accident that leaves her disabled, none of the body image rules apply and the person is free to be and to love herself without condition. But if you are able-bodied, you are held to an incredibly high standard in order to feel good about your body and for it to be approved.
Once an individual internalizes and believes a body-righteous standard is important and required, he is held to the ideal and compared to it in order to define and prove his worth. When he compares himself to the able-bodied gold-standard, the difference between what he believes is ideal and his actual body creates feelings of dissatisfaction and discontent.

But if his body matches the ideal he can feel proud, a sense of power, accomplishment, and safety. Either way, someone who uses body image to define his value, sense of worth, or to construct his sense of identity is at high risk for eating disorders, as well as exercise addiction. But again, for all of this to take hold, an image of what the ideal body is must be recognized, understood, and internalized as an unquestionable “sacred” requirement.

Weight-Loss Apocalypse

WHAT IS HIDING BEHIND YOUR DESIRE TO LOSE WEIGHT? 

When someone comes to me for help, they are seeking guidance for how to rid the horrific side-effects of dieting. These effects are described as chronic anxiety, paranoia, panic, fear, and obsessive thinking about size, weight, clothes, food, and restrictions. They are ridden with incessant pressure to fix their body, anxiety about food, and are heavily burdened by the daily task of starving in order to feel safe and adequate in their body.

When you look at the negative emotions one has about themselves, it's clear why the abuse and dysfunction of dieting is rationalized as a worthy cause. The obsessive mental focus on restrictions, food, and exercise are promoted as “healthy”, with the underlying belief that all of the negative emotions will go away once their body is good enough.

The problem with this focus is that it misdirects and projects the original emotions one has about themselves onto the body. But in fact, the emotions were there prior to believing weight-loss would make the uncomfortable emotions go away. Once an individual believes fat loss will make them feel better emotionally, fat becomes the focal point of cause and effect. In other words, if you feel ashamed and you believe losing weight will make those feeling go away, the unintended consequence is that gaining fat becomes a cause of shame.

For me, days after a traumatic sexual assault, I decided losing weight would help me direct and control intolerable feelings of loss, darkness, shame, fear, chaos, and disorientation. Because I didn’t understand the trauma or recognize why I felt ashamed, my first instinct wasn’t to fix the experience, but rather to blame and fix myself. My way to resolve feelings of inadequacy, failure, and chaos was through organization, order, and control of food, and through a fantasy that fat loss would make me feel powerful and safe.

I consciously made my diet and body my unconscious cause and effect.
Once I began to successfully restrict food and lose weight I experienced feelings of peace, calm, quiet, safe, and order. But the moment I deviated from the safety of my diet, my coping mechanism became my biggest enemy. It became a bigger cause of failure and emotional pain than the original trauma itself.
Feelings of failure, inadequacy, shame, chaos, disorientation, and panic came flooding back, but worse. The only focus that would remove those feelings was to eliminate the damage. Purging, excessive exercise and obsessive dieting took over. Like a rabbit hole, I was sucked into a vicious cycle of mostly shame, fear, panic, anxiety, starving, and severe psychological pain.
At its worst I would have to exercise to burn at least 1200 calories a day and would starve enough to binge and purge 8-12 a day. All just to feel fleeting moments of safety. Ninety percent of my day was spend in horror and heavy depression, especially when I realized there was no way out.  It wasn’t until I had decided to commit suicide that the process unraveled.

In the end, I had to get down to the original emotions and detach them from my body. I had to experience those emotions as a soul, not a body, giving me clarity, perspective, and freedom from the torture of trauma and the suffering of my coping mechanism.
The people who come to me for help, I understand. I know what Hell feels like and despite feeling inescapable, there is freedom. But not without going into the original emotions, and not with coping mechanisms to escape.

When you have the humility to willfully surrender ALL coping mechanisms you accept responsibility for your emotions. You open your mind to recontextualize trauma, and have compassion for yourself and others. You open your soul to the grace necessary to recognize illusions, and the freedom from having to be defined by them.
There is freedom, and it isn’t with a coping mechanism. Once you open yourself to what you are afraid to feel, you are given perspective. Here is a session with a client where I discuss the insanity of dieting and the truth of what your desire to lose weight is hiding.