Part 1 of this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-johnson/addiction-recovery_b_1929196.html addressed the dynamics of excess body weight being a side effect of addiction whereby food is used to repress and numb unbearable (often unconscious) emotional content.  In other words, in order to really understand the dynamics of weight gain and loss, we need to shift our focus away from obesity as the result of the simple physiological equation of calories in and calories out.  Instead, we need to consider that the real problem is the emotional weight that put the physical pounds on in the first place.  In order to maintain a physical weight loss, we have to lose the corresponding emotional weight as well.

Part 2 now speaks to emotional weight loss.  There are all kinds of physiological theories about why the vast majority of people who lose weight regain the lost pounds and then some.  My own experience on this journey has given me a different answer.  As mentioned in Part 1, I engaged in deep inner work using NET (Neuro-Emotional technique) http://www.netmindbody.com/for-patients/an-explanation-of-net for two and a half years before being ready to begin my physical weight loss. Since writing Part 1 of this article, I went on to cooperate with ease and grace through the process of losing a total of 126 of the 144 pounds I wanted to lose.  Then I hit a wall and suddenly began to revisit my addictive behavior of acting out with chocolate and becoming less rigorous with my weight loss program for a period of five months. I regained about 20 pounds. The good news is I am not horrified!  I know this is not simply a matter of me lacking discipline and being helpless and hopeless.  I don’t believe that it is just a matter of time before I regain all 126 pounds and then some.  Instead I have a new perspective that has to do with the correlation between my physical and emotional weight loss.

Throughout my weight loss, I continued to work with an NET practitioner.  Then, some events in my current life triggered yet another pile of deeply repressed emotional issues coming up for release.  I think my addictive acting out was an act of self-protection whereby I was trying to keep these emotions at bay as I had in the past – that was my go-to method of self-protection.  Much like pulling up a blanket when cold, I had lost 126 pounds of physical weight, but only 106 pounds of emotional weight and felt the need to pull back on those 20 pounds to protect myself while catching up with my emotional weight loss.  I simply wasn’t ready to maintain the smaller physical body yet let alone to lose the additional 18 pounds that would have brought me to my target weight.  It freaked me out at first until I recognized that my “acting out with chocolate” was happening for a very good reason.  This was simply a red flag letting me know that my physical weight loss was getting ahead of my emotional weight loss and I had more inner work to do before I could continue to lose more pounds.

I no longer see this as gaining or losing weight or the battle that typically represents.  Rather, I am inhabiting my life’s journey with greater conscious understanding and compassion.  I see now that when I entered into addictive eating again (which had been gone for a year and a half), that was an act of self-protection in relationship to emotional content I had not yet released that was being triggered by events in my current life.  Seen in that context, it’s far less scary and far more manageable.  The answer was NOT to stop eating the chocolate, but to figure out what emotional experience I was attempting to protect myself from.  The good news is I am finding my answers and beginning to drop weight again.  I have come to realize more deeply than ever before that this entire process is FOR me – even the regaining of lost weight.

I strongly suspect that I am not the only one challenged with body weight issues for whom this is true and perhaps this is a key to all addictive behaviors.  We seem to focus too much on stopping the out of control behavior and not enough on what throws us into these coping mechanisms and why.

I think it is interesting to note that we live in a society that doesn’t even have lingo for emotional health.  We speak of physical and mental health, but not of emotional health.  We are highly complex creatures with conscious and unconscious physical, mental, and emotional dynamics all intertwined.  Unraveling the knots takes courage, willingness, time, patience, wisdom, and in many cases – competent help.

Here are some of the specific things I have learned on this journey of releasing my excess physical and emotional weight:

• Sometimes the experiences and emotions that were repressed from childhood look very minor through our adult eyes, but at the time may have been overwhelming to us, and so we buried them and have avoided them ever since.
• Rather than freaking out at a backslide, it helps to explore its origins with self compassion and the assumption that it is simply feedback that you have some more inner work to do to prepare yourself to be able to sustain further physical weight loss.
• Long-term weight loss is a balancing act of physical, mental, and emotional dynamics.
• Don’t give up because of a backslide or if the rate of your weight loss isn’t keeping up with your desired timetable.   Stay present in the reality you are experiencing and work with that reality rather than trying to change reality.

For many of us who struggle with excess body weight, “success” in losing weight is soon followed by regaining those pounds and then some.  Just now, at the age of 64, I am recognizing why this has been happening to me and perhaps to many others.  I have long suspected that the answer that would break me free of this yo-yo pattern is psychological rather than a matter of finding the right diet.  We are told that fat serves as a protection.  I found that it was not the fat that I was using to protect myself, but rather my food addictions were my method of protection.  Obesity was a byproduct.

Since self-judgment only adds fuel to the fire, I choose to view this issue with curiosity and without judgment.  To support myself in figuring out what I was doing to sabotage my ability to maintain a healthy weight, I have worked for 2 ½ years with a practitioner of NET (Neuro-Emotional Technique).  According to www.net.com, “NET is a mind-body technique that uses a methodology of finding and removing neurological imbalances related to the physiology of unresolved stress.”  For me, NET offers an amazing way to bypass conscious and unconscious defense mechanisms to get at the originating cause of an issue that is currently manifesting in my body and my life.

I began working with NET for the sole purpose of finding out why I had been unable to remove and keep off my excess body weight.  Essentially what I found was that the repression of emotions is a survival mechanism held in place through addiction.  In my case, since my addiction of unconscious choice was food, the byproduct of this pattern was obesity.

Here’s how it worked for me – from my infancy until my father’s death, the psychological message I consistently received from him and internalized was that I was somehow fundamentally unacceptable.  This same message came from one of my siblings as well and continues to this day.  As an adult, I have done everything possible to heal these relationships but whenever coming face to face with this rejection, and the absence of love from them it hurt at the core of my being.  While I am able to cope with the occasional, yet always unpleasant, encounter as an adult, as a child they were a devastating and constant barrage.  As a matter of survival, I repressed my feelings and fears about being deemed essentially unworthy, unlovable, and unacceptable.  Over time, I accumulated an enormous reserve of repressed, unmanageable emotions.  No matter how I worked on myself as an adult and how well I learned to cope with current encounters, I never recognized or acknowledged the emotional pain and stress I had been unable to endure as a child nor the fact that I was carrying this trauma around with me like a beach ball held under water.  Apparently, not being aware of this nor feeling safe to feel what had been emotionally life-threatening to me as a child, I unconsciously held it below the surface.  What I have come to realize is that I accomplished this in two important ways through my addictions.  First, they were my way of numbing the pain and keeping it on an unconscious level until I was ready to deal with opening Pandora’s box.  No wonder I would regain the weight whenever I lost it – I had been depriving myself of my addictions which were my protection – my repression mechanism!  Secondly, I had been embodying the message of my unworthiness through obesity – perhaps the most shameful and socially visible of all unacceptable, albeit taboo, ways of being.  Other addictions you can hide, while obesity is in your face.

So, here’s an irony to this – if my sibling had not continued to treat me with such distain, I might never have put this pattern together and found my path to freedom.  So, thank you to all those who have pushed this button to get me to this point of liberation!

You might wonder, how do I know I have broken free of this pattern?  The answer is simple.  First, for three months now, I have not experienced any food compulsions.  I have been to a wedding reception attended by my sibling and on vacation for a week recently and neither one triggered the usual desires or excuses for “treating myself.”  Secondly, I am steadily and easily losing weight without the fear of regaining it.  For the first time, I am confident that I will be able to sustain a healthy weight.  Third, I am going through an emotional release very similar to grieving where weeping simply rises to the surface and spills out of me seemingly unprovoked.  The tension and stress of holding down this childhood trauma is finding expression and finally being replaced by a profound sense of inner peace.

If you can relate to my story and suspect that something similar might be going on inside of you with whatever your addiction(s) of choice might be, here are some suggestions:

-Set the intention of compassionately understanding and freeing yourself.

-Make time for introspection to explore your own situation and to get below your storyline.  Be a non-judgmental, curious detective and ask yourself questions like: “What awful truth do I suspect is true about me?” and “How did I get the idea that that was true about me?”  “How did I cope with this as a child?”

-Believe and affirm to yourself that it is possible for you to be free from your addictions.  Don’t tell yourself that you are an addictive personality, or that you are too far gone but rather be open to the idea that your addictions have been serving and protecting you in some way until you can get to the place where you don’t need them anymore.  See them as a survival mechanism rather than as your downfall.

-Find someone wonderful to facilitate and bear witness to your journey.  This might be a personal coach, therapist, NET practitioner, etc.  Just be sure it is someone you feel emotionally safe with and whose skill impresses you.

-Be patient.  This may take longer than you would like, but know that it is possible.  On the way, avoid judging yourself and the ongoing expression of your addictions.  The healing process can often be invisible at times, but trust that it is happening.

When we are children, we don’t have the psychological resources to protect ourselves from the atrocities that others may inflict upon us.  This trauma is often stored somehow in our bodies.  Repression and other defense mechanisms help us to survive until we can hold our own in the world.  However, the damage done to us while children must itself be healed and released in addition to understanding and freeing ourselves from the related difficulties experienced in adulthood.

As a life coach, I spend a lot of time helping clients to pay close attention to their autopilot reaction to challenges in their lives. What you consider to be challenges and how you respond to them are defining factors in the quality of your life.

Next time your sense of well-being is disturbed, try the following 5-step process and see if it leads you in a better direction. Don’t be surprised if you get stuck on the first step. This is profound work and doesn’t happen overnight. The key is to keep practicing with deep personal honesty until this response comes naturally to you.

1. Attitude: Your attitude will pre-determine your ability to work with and learn from life’s challenges each and every time they show up. If you tend to think of them as ‘wrong’ and as ‘things that shouldn’t happen’ then you will automatically be thrown into a defensive and confrontational posture. On the other hand, if you receive them as simply calling you or the situation into question, a more relaxed, self-trusting, and open response is possible. If the same pattern happens again and again, rather than going into high drama defensive victim mode with such thoughts as ‘here we go again,’ ‘this always happens to me,’ ‘everyone else . . . ’ or ‘what’s wrong with me?’ try another point of view. Rather than suffering through the challenges that come your way, consider embracing your life as a perfectly customized journey of learning, growing and healing. Give yourself permission to be vulnerable and to explore your own behavior without trying to justify it as ‘right.’

2. Feel It, Name It, and Rename It: Once you have opened up your attitude and are ready to learn from your experience, take a few deep breaths and focus inward to what it feels like inside of you meeting this unexpected and perhaps undesired experience. Are you scared? Mad? In shock? Be really honest with yourself and name your feelings and name the challenge. For example, I am working through a challenge with my downstairs neighbor. She complains about things like the fact that she can hear my cats running down the hall. This triggers anger in me and I tend to fly into judgment of her as a small-minded person with a princess complex. My mind reels with anger at her choice to make an issue of everything and anything I do that she doesn’t like, rather than choosing to acknowledge all the things that are good about having me for a neighbor and/or choosing to contribute to creating a harmonious shared living environment.

When I look below the surface I see that this trigger relates to a much deeper issue I am working on that has to do with feeling profound sadness when I encounter all the big and little ways that we choose less than the goodness, kindness, and caring that is available to us in our relationships with one another. When I see any presenting irritation in that context, I am better able to respond in a way that encourages my own learning and growth rather than falling into the same old pattern of judgment and self-preservation. When I redefine the true issue at hand in this way, I take ownership of it by recognizing the difference between the deeper issue and the outer trigger of the situation at hand. By renaming the true issue, I can respond more appropriately.

3. Neutral Observation: Neutrality means not belonging to or favoring either side in a challenge. It is the opposite of analyzing and judging the behavior of others as a way to feel righteous or good about yourself. Neutral observation occurs when we choose to activate that part of ourselves that is not IN the situation involved, but rather is able to move around it and look at it and ourselves from many points of view, free of our triggered feelings and thoughts. This is how we gain insight instead of just running the same old reactions from our past. When we are open to a new point of view rather than automatically making the situation, other person, or ourselves ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ our imagination and deeper insights can lead to entirely new and more rewarding ways of seeing what is really going on.

4. Inner Work: Always do your inner work as described in steps 1-3 above before deciding how to respond to the outer situation. Think of the outer situation as merely the hook or trigger that is calling you to finding greater inner freedom. When you have done your inner work, rename the challenge as your own personal learning opportunity as in the example in #2 above. Trust that what comes your way in life is FOR YOU not against you.

5. Outer Work: Having stepped free of your autopilot, knee-jerk reaction to a given challenge by doing your inner work, it becomes fairly easy to choose how you want to respond to or engage in the situation at hand. As tempting as it is, for example, for me to say something judgmental and unkind to my neighbor like ‘get a life,’ or ‘you better be careful or your mind is going to get so small that you’ll lose it altogether,” I have learned that it serves me far better to say something like, ‘yes, isn’t it a happy sound when my cats run down the hall,’ or to quietly say a prayer for the highest good in the situation and to go do my own inner work.

I know these steps seem simple when you read them. I’ve heard many a client dismiss or become irritated by my guidance towards one of these steps, defensively thinking they already know this. But, the name of the game here is not intellectual knowledge, but application. It is in the doing that we learn. Practice, practice, practice and then challenge yourself to take this process deeper and deeper until you really get free.