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.
My goodness, I expected to come back and see many comments here. I was hoping to see what other people thought. Maybe this is something we are all pondering.
ReplyDeleteI would say that your first option - others are too preoccupied to recognize your struggle - may be dead on. We are all shouldering some burden, or our own entire set of them. The entire world seems to be collectively holding its breath at the moment, so it can be difficult to notice the pain of others when we are scared ourselves.
I would also say that we all 'know what we know.' What I mean is that not everyone has walked in our shoes, so to speak, so they have no real idea what we are going through. A good pal of mine recently had a baby. She had never before dealt with weight and she was constantly finding things that she surprised her - like that walking and exercising with extra weight is not only hard, it can hurt, and it is hard to find shoes that are supportive. She was even more surprised one day on her walk to the store that a pickup truck with some young yahoos in it pulled aside to shout at her. She thought they were commenting on the dog she was walking. Instead they shouted something about her being a "whale" and suggesting she didn't deserve to be in public. She was furious, and shouted, "I'm PREGNANT, you A--hole!" Later, she realized that heavy people go through this all the time - she was devastated. She's a very kind person, these things just never occurred to her because she had never experienced them before. So, as her view and experiences expanded, so did her compassion. I could not expect her to understand the struggle of dieting, or of being fat, as it had never before been part of her world. Of course, she has had struggles that I don't know a thing about either. I guess we all have our own paths and must realize that others are suffering and struggling too.
I think you are right about developing inner strength. I also think that inner compassion and inner gratitude for what we are learning from our journey might help too. Sometimes I worry that I turn my weight loss into too much of a "job" instead of realizing it is a path, a part of the life-long journey. It isn't something I have to perfect today or tomorrow, it is something I can work at a bit each day and see where it takes me. I can remind myself to be kind and polite to myself, as I would to others, and know that I would never expect 100% perfection from them, so I cannot expect it from myself. I believe too that I can let go some of the worry, as that is just manifested fear. I can trust myself ... I am a smart and strong woman, and will find my way. As a friend of mine said, "the river doesn't need you to push it, in order for it to flow."
Have a beautiful weekend.