Resistance

Yesterday I experienced a truthful sensation that I have met with before. This was the sensation of seeing my emotional eating at it's core. And what I saw was resistance.

"Resistance" according to Tiny Buddha, is "any thought, belief or behavior–either conscious or unconscious–that stands contrary to our desire." So, while I find myself really liking the ability of being able to directly feel and work with my emotions rather than eat over them and also feeling most confident and in control when I only eat when I am hungry, I am most certainly experiencing a mental blockage that is "contrary" to these likes.


Lately I have been feeling very righteous in the anger I have been allowing myself to feel. My Mama told me yesterday that I "shouldn't tell people that they are hurting you because their actions come from a place of love". She further explained that I "just seen to understand" that they are doing things from love. Here is the dialectical branch of this situation: I can both understand and feel others' love and still dislike how they treat me. My mother could have meant the best when she tells me that I think she is not as good as my father AND it was still a behavior that hurt me.


I often translate the hurt that my environment inflicts upon me into my own behaviors. I have been trying to use understanding of the reasons why I am using food emotionally as a solution to that behavior, just as I believed that if I was understanding of other people's behaviors, I wouldn't need them to change the way they are acting. Well, I know that I can understand myself or others and that certainly does not mean that I can continue to not stick-up for myself!


It's amazing how persistent thoughts of my mother in particular but also the integrated beliefs of my family have been integrated so thoroughly into my beliefs about myself. No, not other people, just myself. I wouldn't dream of insisting upon something as confusingly irrelevant as the idea that unhappiness means a lack of gratitude for someone else, but had opposition to accepting that as an absolute truth and suitable reasoning for hating myself when I was unhappy.


I also would never tell someone that if they can understand the reasons behind a behavior that is causing their wellbeing harm then the behavior won't cause them harm anymore. Why not? Because it's MENTAL, that's why! Life is not a = b, b = c, a = c. It's often more complex than that. But do I create resistance to thoughts that are more logical (and helpful) than this? Most of every single day.


When I feel that genuine resistance so use healthier methods to deal with my emotions, I am resisting the trust that I placed in my mother even when she continued to do and say things which harmed me. This trust was something that I sacrificed so much of my humanity and self-love for; it was something which I both resented and obeyed; I fought closeness with people if it meant that it would disobey her or disrupt the kind of loving and kind gestures that people seek in their mothers. I chose food in order to protect my mother from the full reality of the hurt she placed on me and the trust I had in her that she was abusing. When I moved out of her house, she treated me like a criminal and blamed me as she had blamed others. She coupled me with my brother and my dad and made me into one of the bad guys she had formerly talked with me about. Giving up the resistance to take of myself-- to feel things as I do without trying to change them; to accept me as I am right now; to be honest enough with myself when I am trying to please others at my own expense-- this takes time and practice but I'll start right now.


Because there is so much resistance to the things which will straighten out my life and make it my life, I need to have faith in my understanding AND change.


I'm hungry. I'm going to go eat because of it.


-Kat