My (long) introduction--2.5 years overdue because I need help

[Guest guest]

I have been monitoring this Yahoo group for a couple years now. I say

" monitoring " because I haven't been very active, and except for the rare post

since I joined, only lately have I been dipping my toe into the IOWL group

waters again. Years of self disgust caused me to isolate and withdraw from the

world. Sure, I go to work, and I don't skulk around wearing dark sunglasses and

a hooded sweatshirt like the Unabomber, but I do not have one single friend

outside my marriage. That makes me so sad! I pride myself on being independent

and self sufficient, but I now think I am very lonely. Still, I don't reach out

to anyone, and I am very reserved and aloof when others make friendly overtures,

always having an excuse why I can't do something. Sometimes it surprises me that

I am feel so alone, but why should people try when I reject them? I suspect I

emanate an overt " back off " vibe. 

This is very hard for me to say, but if I want to heal myself from the inside

out, I must say it. Part of that withdrawal comes from feeling angry and

resentful at the shock of what I let myself become. When you grow up caring only

about what other people think about you, your entire inner world changes, along

with your self worth, when those thoughts are obviously no longer good. I used

to be that girl that men would run to hold the door for--I even caused a traffic

accident in Madrid, hee! I was offered every job I interviewed for, got promoted

quickly, and people in services industries always rushed to help the pretty

girl. I was ambitious and worked hard, but looking good opened so many doors,

and I took that for granted for many years. In fact, it only fed into my

unhealthy sense of getting my self worth from external things, like the approval

of others, which was so important to me. That all came to a screeching halt

after I got fat. For the first

time in my life I experienced insults and men yelling mean things at me when

walking down the street, rather than hitting the car ahead of them from gawking.

I didn't get the job I interviewed for, even though I knew I was the most

qualified candidate. I got passed over for promotions or got very tiny raises. I

started to get exploited at work. And here's the irony: Even though I am

sometimes the fattest person in the room, I have become invisible. INVISIBLE!

Doors actually close in my face. So a large part of my rejection of other people

is so they can't reject me first. I have also become so very tired of having to

work even harder than normal to overcome those first impressions (fat people are

lazy, stupid ...). It's exhausting on every level, and I don't think I even stop

" performing " when I am alone. How messed up is that?

How did I change so drastically? I have never trusted my body, and I learned not

to trust myself because I did not feel worthy. That's thanks, in large part to

my mother,

but it didn't help that I came of age during Charlie's Angels and became a young

adult when supermodels were all the rage. I actually looked

good--no great--back then. I was extremely athletic, muscular, curvy,

and feminine. A nice, healthy 130 pounds on my 5'5 " frame. Without going into

the gritty details, I dieted my way up to more than 150 pounds overweight, and

each pound made me more and more sad, depressed, disgusted, and angry. 

I've carried that self loathing and anger around for a long time, nurtured it

like it was my baby, one I often wished someone would adopt! So I remember when

I discovered the podcasts--it was like they had been written specifically for

me. Get that monkey off your back. Forgive yourself. Trust your body. It took me

more than 50 episodes before I saw the connection to the Law of Attraction,

something I have believed in my entire life, long before I knew it was a

philosophy, but never quite knew how to implement it in my life. I have always

been a big-time daydreamer (could drive for hours with nothing but my thoughts),

but I am also a fixer, always looking for solutions and ways to improve things,

so these podcasts really spoke to me. Listening to them seemed to be enough for

me at the time. Everything I heard was new to me and so easy to incorporate it

into my life, but I didn't do the homework, and I certainly did not reach out to

anyone else doing

IOWL. I didn't need no steenkin' friends to help me lost weight!

I easily released 50 pounds when I started listening to the IOWL podcasts over a

period of about 6 months. I threw away my top-weight clothes and knew I had

found the answer--that it already existed inside me--and that I would never be

that fat again. But it didn't last. I remember the catalyst. My husband and I

took my parents to dinner for my mother's birthday. I decided to have dessert,

and I was so upset with myself the next day, I gave myself a case of The

Awfukits and slowly gained almost all of it all back.

To anyone new, please don't take my experience as the way it will be for you.

IOWL is NOT a diet and it is not like any weight loss plan I have ever seen. The

closest it gets from my reading (and, oh yes, I have read everything out there)

is the book Normal Eating, but 's message touched me more deeply, and in a

more practical way. She is a master at organizing thoughts in a useful,

meaningful, cohesive way. So why did I gain the weight back? Because I stopped

trusting my body again. I thought I needed to show it what's what and give it

some tough love. Love, ha. Add a bit of feeling sorry for myself, a lot of

black-and-white thinking, and I was on a roll again. Actually, I probably would

roll if I fell down, but we'll save that fun for another day.

So when says, " You must put in to get out, " she means it. I listened to a

podcast nearly every day on my drive to work, sometimes on the way home, and now

that I have heard them all, I shuffle them. But I stopped meditating, stopped

putting myself first, stopped taking time to exercise, stopped gardening (wha??

that's my passion!), and I didn't do much more than spotty journal work, which

surprised me most of all because I have a few Rubbermaid containers full of my

old journals. I used to dream of being a writer until the day I realized I

already was, so the journal part should come easy to me.

Something is preventing me from benefiting from IOWL. I sure wish I knew what it

was, but slowly getting back into it now, I feel a very VERY strong resistance,

and that scares me.

I am 48 and have a strong marriage of 9 years, no children except for the furry

kind, a career I love, and an all around blessed life. Both my parents are still

alive, though not exactly in vigorous health, and my only sibling has an

extremely successful career, though I know he's lonely, too. I don't think I

experienced sexual or physical abuse as a child, but my parents sucked away all

my brother's and my confidence at a very young age, which led us to make

chronically bad choices growing up because neither of us ever felt good enough.

I lived my life pretty much apologizing for everything I did. I'm sure many of

you know that little good comes from being a chronic people pleaser, especially

in that it's nearly impossible to develop a strong sense of self when you care

only about what other people think.

So here I am. Intellectually but not spiritually smarter about being a normal

eater, so not much closer to my goal. I don't know what I feel so much

resistance to IOWL this time, and I suspect I have at least one or more whopping

limiting beliefs, but I am at a loss as to how to identify them. Nothing comes

up when I ask myself other than the worthiness issue, but I'll grant that's a

big one. Not sure what to do about it, though. On the positive side, even though

I am still overfat, my relationships have improved since I started listening to

's podcasts, both at home and at work, and I feel a lot less anger and

resentment towards other people, so I have made at least some inroads. I am much

more tolerant and forgiving, and such release of control does not come easy to

perfectionists, but I bet you already know that. If only I could be tolerant and

forgiving of myself.

I want more. I deserve better. I signed up for 's class, but I should tell

you that I have not read past the introduction, and I haven't done a single

exercise from the homework assignment, and the first class is in 8 hours. I so

intended to do the work this time, so why this inner battle? I wish I knew. I'm

holding onto something I am afraid to let go, but I don't know what it is.

If you are still reading, thank you. I wrote this overly-long self introduction

because I am a rational person who cannot intellectualize this away anymore. I

don't know why I am resisting, probably because I don't want to feel whatever it

is I am supposed to feel, but I do at least accept I can't do it on my own or I

will forever be stuck where I am now.

I hated writing it down because I never admit weakness, and I rarely let anyone

know how I really feel (partly because I don't recognize feelings within myself)

unless I am being perpetually cheerful or overly self deprecating in a funny ha

ha way. *eye roll* But if I don't open up, I'll stay stuck inside my little

world full of disgust, recrimination and self reproach, and I assure you it

isn't a whole lot of fun in here.

Hi, my name is Chloe, and I need your help.

Here are my intentions:

1. Discover who I really am and what I want. I've been a chameleon for so long,

I truly have no idea.

2. Accept--no believe--in my head, heart, and gut that I am worthy and end a

lifetime of shame.

3. Discover my soul's gift and know that everything I need is already inside me.

4. Learn how to forgive myself more easily so I can quickly recover from slips.

5. Become a model of health and inner peace so my father asks what I am did to

get that way.

6. Feel comfortable in my own skin.

7. Feel joy again.

8. Be more grateful and mindful.

9. Feel at peace around food; it's only food, not the Holy Grail or skull and

crossbones

I would love to read about your thoughts, experiences, successes, stumbling

blocks, cautions, tips, and breakthroughs. And if any advice comes my way, don't

feel you have to pussyfoot around. I like blunt.

For those of you who have been doing this a long time and have found some

success and inner peace, I'd also be curious if anything in my message stands

out in particular. When I say I am starting at the beginning with hardly a clue,

I really mean it. I'm stuck.

OK, clicking SEND (typos and all) before I lose my nerve because I am this (

|---| ) close to not sending all this embarrassment.