Last week, I was listening to my client describe how she wasn't doing well after thinking she ate too much.
It wasn't just that she wasn't doing well.
She spiraled.
Definition of spiral ==> the result in which a situation gets worse and is difficult to control because one bad event causes another.
She ate the food.
She thought she ate too much.
She couldn't stop thinking about it.
She started thinking she was going to gain weight.
She started looking in the mirror and judging her appearance as fat.
From there she started to restrict food.
Then started comparing herself to others.
She started overanalyzing and narrowing her focus into this one event that created such paralyzing fear and anxiety.
It was all she could think about for those 4 days leading up to our session.
Truth is, she feared she was reverting to patterns from her life a year ago when she was in an obsessive destructive relationship with food and her body.
My first question for her ==> what if nothing's gone wrong here?
In that moment, her entire facial expression changed from worry to relief as she said...
"Well that would be a relief."
She'd been so conditioned to see this as a "bad pattern" and assume the worst, that it took her a few minutes to sit with the possibility that nothing had gone wrong.
That she wasn't reverting back to old patterns.
What if this was an opportunity to put into practice what she's learned over the past year?
Something she couldn't have done 12 months ago, even 3 or 6 months ago.
But right now, she's in a great place to have a different perspective and new tools to be able to work through this.
So, instead of something gone wrong, it could actually be a moment to fortify what she's learning... who she's becoming.
I see this with my clients and Resetters.
They develop new habits and ways of thinking and being... and then something comes along where they revert back to an old pattern after making positive changes.
They overate.
Binged.
Stayed up too late.
Skipped breakfast and lunch.
Mindlessly inhaled a bag of chips after work.
Ate a pan of brownies.
And it creates a lot of drama in their head.
It's never going to work.
I'm never going to figure this out.
Here we go again.
I just ruined the whole day.
Why keep trying?
This is going to make me fat.
I'm such a failure.
I have no willpower.
And queue the spiral.
Do you do this too?
Before you make the situation mean anything ==> ASK: what if nothing's gone wrong here?
What if it's an opportunity...
...to be curious instead of judgmental
...to speak kindness to yourself instead speaking words of shame and negativity
...to be honest with yourself instead of pretending and hiding
...to receive grace for the moment instead of working so hard to prove your worthiness
...to live into possibilities of doing this differently instead of being paralyzed by perfection
What if you can let it be what it is and not make it mean anything?
What if you can pick up where you left off and keep moving forward?
Making the next more nourishing choice...
One choice. One kind thought. One gracious moment. One honest moment at a time.
