My therapist recently told me, you have to hear 10-15 positive statements about yourself to overwrite just 1 negative comment you heard or thought about yourself. At this rate, I think I’ll be forever in debt to my negative balance. Sometimes I wonder how long it will take me to heal from my weight issues that turned into so many other issues I’m no longer sure what to call them. I spent decades in that old body……. how many decades till my bank is in the positive?
As a morbidly obese person, there was plenty of things to talk to myself negatively about. I found very few reasons to love myself or ask anyone else too. I wore my weight like a barrier to keep others away so I could control my world. I wore my weight like a space blanket trying to heal myself from trauma I didn’t understand. I wore my weight with a beautiful but painful smile. As I think about the language I used with myself, I keep hearing a phrase: “If I could just….” If I could just lose weight. If I could just be a better wife. If I could just learn to be confident. If I could just break the habits I’ve had my whole life. If I could just……be a different person.
This language, straight up, comes from my childhood. I was a bit of a problem child. I know, shocking. There’s teachers of mine that might read this blog and be shocked because I was an excellent student. I was polite and considerate. I was always mildly popular and outgoing. But at home, things were a lot different. As a baby, I’m told I was very low maintenance and rarely cried. As a child I showed only the usual behaviors and petty Barbie fights with my sister. Then something changed and I started to become more defiant. I would choose random acts of refusal to do things regardless of the punishment. It took me years to change my behaviors and they were later labeled cries for attention. Now when I look back, I just funneled those behaviors into other relationships that weren’t at home. I learned to get attention from men and friends in all the wrong ways. I put stock into relationships that meant nothing and got my heart broken over and over by anyone I asked to care for it.
Throughout these difficult years as a kid, I remember hearing “Why can’t you just behave?” A LOT. Maybe they said it one time or 5 times or 5,000 times but I heard it. I kept it. And it became my inner language.
I, in no way mean to blame my parents for my inner monologue. What I’m trying to say is, when I heard that, it made me feel like I was wrong, broken, messed up. So now, whenever I feel broken, I use that language with myself. Why can’t I just……. like everyone else? I used to think I was too broken to be a good wife, a good daughter, a good friend or even a beautiful person. I’m learning now that sometimes, I just can’t. There are some things that I just can’t be. There are some things I wasn’t meant to be and choose not to be. My weight represented all the things I was meant to be but couldn’t let go. It represented all the things that “If I could just….”.
Over the past year I’ve slowly changed my inner monologue to “I can” and “I will”. People know me now for my tenacity instead of procrastination. People see my success and not defiance. I carry confidence with me everywhere I go now instead of feeling broken. Instead of feeling like I’ll never be enough of anything, I feel complete.
