Alternate Reality

As I mentioned in my last post, I am taking a leadership and management class. It’s truly amazing how the exercises that the professor demonstrates in class are applicable to all areas of my life.

This week’s post is no different. During my class the concept of “alternate realties” was introduced to me. Its about recognizing the mental models (aka filters) that we have put in place for ourselves and exploring other ways of viewing the same situation. Click here for a blog titled, Problems vs. Opportunities by Donald E. Gray, that provides a good explanation of the usefulness that alternate reality exercises can have on ones’ mental health.

I put together a scenario that I am currently dealing with as an experiment to see if I can employ an alternate reality. The goal is to adopt one of the possible alternative views that I describe below and get rid of the old view.

The Problem

I am mentally and emotionally exhausted by my pre-occupation with food and weight. My friends and family couldn’t possible understand what I’m going through and would only see the stress of it as self inflicted.

I will search for every piece of evidence that the alternate view is true and take notes on all my findings. I will do my best to ignore the thoughts that bring me back to my “old” way of thinking.

This is quite the challenge….

Possible alternatives:

• They are too pre-occupied themselves to recognize that I’m struggling.
• They are teaching me that in order to overcome my obsession with food and weight that I must build up my own mental endurance and learn to push through it even in the most taxing of times.
• They are teaching me what it feels like to overcome obstacles and to take care of myself first and others second. This creates inner strength and reminds me of how important it is to reach out to others in their time of need.

These seem a little negative to me. Perhaps I’m not in the best of moods. Based on the possible alternatives that I came up with, I’m going to choose the last bullet to try on as an alternate reality. Of course, I’d love to hear other possible alternatives, and perhaps even try those out too. Please feel free to share your ideas.

Being the Victim

I am enrolled in a Leadership course and one of the exercises that was introduced during class this week seemed to appeal to me as another tool toward overcoming emotional eating.

The exercise is about identifying and acknowledging how we often react as victims. Below is a simple of example of how one may react as a victim.

For example, when I get stressed out at work I might look at the situation in this manner.

1. What happened to you? I am stressed out because we are behind schedule. The developers didn’t fix any of the problems we found and now we’re going to miss the deadline.

2. Who wronged you? The other team. They didn’t deliver a good product, so now my team can’t complete test.

3. How did they hurt you? They put a lot of additional stress on the team and on me. I overeat when I’m stressed and now my self esteem has gone down.

4. What punishment do they deserve? They should have to work nights and weekends until its fixed. They should have to explain why we are behind schedule and take the heat from the boss.

I felt very victimized and viewed the situation as beyond my control. I didn’t take responsibility for my own reaction to the situation and certainly didn’t contribute to the solution.

Now, lets take a look at what it would mean to take a creative approach.

1. What challenge did you face? I face the challenge of meeting schedule deadlines and resolving unexpected problems.

2. How did you respond? I responded by coming up with excuses and placing blame elsewhere. I also stressed out and sought food for comfort.

3. What are the consequences of your actions? It creates barriers between the teams and adds tension. Also, I engaged in unhealthy behaviors that make me feel guilty, disgusted, and hopeless.

4. Could you have done something more effective? Yes, I could’ve kept the line of communication open between the teams and as soon as the problems began to arise we should have had a brainstorming session to come up with recovery options. I also, could have gone for a mini-walk, drank some hot team, did some breathing exercises, or journaled to break the stress and regroup.

5. Could you do something now? I still have the chance to do the things I listed above. Its not over yet. I just have to take a more humbled approach and show that I’m serious about working together.

6. What lesson can you take from this experience? Playing the victim is a defensive and often destructive behavior that doesn’t offer many options for change or growth. It creates more stress in the long run.

It may seem simple, but I’m going to post the creative approach questions next to my desk at work as a reminder of how to better approach stressful situation. I hope this will help me change the way I think and ultimately reduce my stress level. My primary reasons for emotional eating are stress as it relates to work.

Has anyone else tried a method similar to the one I just described?

P.S. I apologize for only being able to blog once a week. I had hoped to blog at least twice a week, but my work schedule is just out of control right now.

Tools

This particular post is hard for me to write. I had a chaotic week at work, resulting in a 70+ hour week, and as a consequence I abandoned all plans to give my health and well-being top priority in life. I failed to drink my daily water goal, exercise 4 times this week, and identify tools for my triggers. The latter of which, would have really helped me to get through the week.

However, one thing I’ve learned is that self loathing will only get you to the bottom of another box of cookies and won’t actually help you to feel better about yourself. So with that in mind, I am going to take control back and put some things in place to help me be more successful next week. I’ll start with my tools for dealing with triggers.

It became painfully obvious this week that my biggest trigger is stress. In particular, stress as it relates to time. What I mean by this, is anytime I had to stay late at work, I got behind on a task, I was given new tasks with little time to complete them, I found myself diving into the M&Ms, chips, cake, licorice, etc. (Which of course takes its own time.)

So here are few tools I’ve identified to help me deal with that trigger in particular.

Trigger: Stress as it relates to time.

• 10 minute walk
• Start the day with a to-do list. If new tasks develop throughout the day re-prioritize the list. MAKE IT REALISTIC.
• The list needs to include both work and personal activities
• Journal for 10 minutes about what I’m feeling and why.
• Squeeze a tension ball
• Take some deep breaths
• Drink a hot beverage
• Take a hot shower
• Listen to a favorite song
• Hug someone
• On-line game
• Something that doesn’t take too long, but can offer a quick distraction. Things such as solitaire, free cell, minesweeper, etc.
• Here’s a website with some games too that are supposed to be stress relief games. http://stress.about.com/od/funandgames/tp/games.htm
• Short word or number puzzle like sudoku

Trigger: PMS (For me my cravings increase and will-power decreases about 1.5 weeks prior to my period.)

• Exercise
• Drinking water
• Playing a board game
• Following a balanced, planned eating schedule
• Reading a magazine
• Taking a hot bath
• Talking on the phone to a friend
• Walking the dog
• Taking a nap

These tools are for the triggers that are most dominant in my life now, and I hope to add to the tool list as I go. I’d also like to hear about any ideas you have about how to get control triggers.

Helpers

This week's main Mental Awareness goal is focusing on tools to reduce or alleviate triggers. One thing that was identified to me in the past was to share my triggers with my husband in the hopes that he could help me move past them. While this was great advice, it should have come with a warning.

One of my triggers is eating out. It doesn't matter why I am eating out (celebration, not enough time to cook, just because). When I eat out, I feel myself lose some control and suddenly start providing myself with reasons as to why its okay to go over board with the appetizers, main meal and dessert. Its very challenging. Well I shared this with my hubby, and now I feel like I'm under the microscope every time we go out to eat.

He has been and continues to be extremely supportive, encouraging, and patient with me as I try to deal with my emotional eating binges. He has even talked to my therapist about how to help me! So what's the problem, right? He sounds like a great guy, and trust me he is. However, when he does try to help me in this area, I get extremely sensitive and defensive. The simple question, "Are you sure this is going to be okay" when we go out to eat sets off a fuse and I suddenly feel so ashamed, angry, and hurt all at the same time. I feel so embarrassed by my past behavior, and so angry because I feel like he is controlling what I eat.

The reality of the situation is that he is just trying to help me out. I know that, but there is no reasoning with me once that little fuse has gone off. I feel completely out of control. Has anyone experienced something similar with their spouse or loved ones?

I encourage you to reach out for the support of others and by all means clue them in to what they can do to help you, but I will warn you that your reaction to them supporting you may be different than you expect. By no means should this discourage you from sharing with them though. It has helped me realize a whole new set of emotions and feelings and from that experience I can grow. Growth isn't always easy, and sometime what we find out about ourselves can be difficult to understand. However, understanding oneself is the only way to be truly happy.

Progress

I hope everyone had a great first week of the New Year. Mine turned out to be a lot more jammed pack then planned, but I survived and am quickly running into next week.

I'm happy to report that I made some good progress on my goals for the week. Here's a snapshot.

* Exercise: Run/walk 4 times this week for ~30 minutes: I was only able to do this 3 times this week due to being sick and work (can you say 70 hour weeks. Ugh!) But I was proud of myself for getting in 3 days.

* Nutrition: Drink atleast 6 glasses of water daily: Everyday but Saturday. Weekends are really hard for me. I lose my focus, so I'll be improving on this one.

* Mental wellness: Begin journal of emotional triggers: So the journal idea didn't pan out, but I did begin identifying emotional triggers and even blogged about it once, so that counts, right?

I'm excited to get started on my week 2 goals. This week, I'll be identifying tools to help me move past my emotional triggers. So, if anyone has any ideas please feel free to share them.

Emotional Triggers

It has definitely been a trying week, and its only the first of many. So far, I've been able to stay on track with the exercise and nutrition goal, but the mental awareness portion of my plan is proving to be particularly challenging. I find myself resisting the idea of exploring my feelings. I sit down and review the feeling list and my mind is off to the races with a million other thoughts. I'm not giving up though. I recently read an article that lists the top 5 emotional eating triggers and based on the few revelations I've had with what is triggering me to eat, my triggers seem to fall into these categories.

1. Stress and Anxiety: This is the heavy hitter for me.
2. Loneliness
3. Anger
4. PMS
5. Sadness and Depression: I don't know how much sadness and depression plays into my triggers. I am rarely sad or depressed.

One trigger that was not listed that I have identified is Happiness and Celebration. I know it may sound a little odd, but I have found I binge when I am really happy or when I'm celebrating. For some reason I view those times as "free passes" because that's how I've learned to celebrate. With food. Lots and lots of it. As insightful as this revelation may be, I think it will prove to be one of my biggest challenges.

I'd be interested to hear about other triggers that you all may have identified. Together we may be able to unlock our own personal mysteries.

The Journey Begins

Today is the first day of my journey. I started the morning with a neighborhood jog, but let me tell you it wasn't easy. The jog itself wasn't so bad, it was the getting out of bed and actually beginning the day. As luck would have it, my allergies flared up yesterday and I had a very restless, uncomfortable sleep, and awoke with stuffed sinuses, a headache and sore throat. I was determined though, to start this week off on the right foot. So, I put mind in front of matter and placed one foot in front of the other, and before I knew it my 30 minute jog was complete. I still physically felt lousy after the run, but mentally I felt very refreshed and proud.

I followed my run with the first of my 6 glasses of water today. Its about midday and I've had 3 glasses of water so far. This goal in particular is a challenge for me because I'd much rather consume a diet soda then water. Diet soda is made up of atleast 90% water, right??? Well as much as that may be true, not all water is created equal. I recently read an article that discusses the possibility that diet soda (along with other products with artificial sweeteners) make actually lead to weight gain because the body is getting mixed signals. It tastes the sweetness of the diet but doesn't get the calories it expects. According to the article this can cause us to overeat to fill the void of the calories the body thought it was getting. I'm not a doctor, but this made sense to me, so I'm trying to reduce my soda intake and add more pure water to my eating plan.

The third goal I began working toward today is the identification of emotional triggers. To be honest with you I didn't exactly know how to go about doing this, so I resurrected a method one of my old therapists taught me. She provided me with a Feeling List and asked me to complete the following sentence whenever I was feeling anxiety. (You can easily substitute anxiety with the urge to eat (and some may argue that the urge to eat is a symptom of anxiety) so it all works out.
I am feeling _______________ because ____________ . This may seem like a silly exercise, but I urge you to try it before judging it. When I looked at the feeling list, I saw feelings and emotions that I had forgotten. It really helped me articulate what I was feeling, and by knowing what I was feeling it was easier identify why. Here are a few things I have identified so far today, as an example.

• I am feeling lonely because my family has just returned to Colorado and I don't know when I'll see them again.
• I am feeling nervous because I am about to return to work in a new role.
• I am feeling reassured because of the comments and support I have received for my journey.