Fwd: News from Geneen Roth - Vol. 5, No. 1

[Guest guest]

I don't how many of you know about Geneen Roth.... This " getting help "

thing just kinda hit me. I forget to ask for help.

I also LOVE the description of the " Frito Help " scenario. Sound familiar?

Patti

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 7:07 AM

Subject: News from Geneen Roth - Vol. 5, No. 1

To: pattilbear@...

Vol. 5, No. 1

January 15, 2012

Geneen's

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Retreats

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Online

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*Ask For Help*

A few years ago, I was interviewed by a talk show host from a military

radio station. She wanted to know about emotional eating during stressful

times. Like deployment, she said. Like sending your husband off to war and

not knowing if he’ll come back. She said that military wives feel as if

they need to hang tough and buck up since, despite their hard work at home,

they’re not the ones fighting the war.

She said that although women on their own find themselves having to do the

work of two people, they believe they can’t ask friends for help and

support because everyone’s in the same boat: stressed, exhausted, and

alone. So food becomes their pleasure and solace. It becomes a way for them

to have something that’s all theirs. Then she mentioned that Fritos were

her comfort food and that nothing but the entire bag would do.

“How is that working for you?” I asked. “How well do Fritos provide

comfort, love, reassurance?”

“They work,” she said. “For exactly five minutes.”

For the five gleeful minutes before she starts to eat — those five minutes

when it occurs to her that, *Oh goody, I can open up a bag of Fritos* — she

has something to look forward to, something she knows will give her a bit

of peace. And then of course there are those other 30 seconds — the first

few bites, when everything disappears but the crunch and the salt and that

soothing feeling of something filling the mouth. But then the magic of the

Fritos disappears, and soon she feels terrible about herself for eating the

entire bag.

“So what would happen if you didn’t eat the corn chips?” I asked.

“I’d walk around feeling exhausted and drained,” she said.

“And — the million-dollar question — what if you decided to give yourself

something different, something pleasurable that *wasn’t* salty and crunchy?

What could that be?”

Even if you’re not a military wife, I’m sure you’ve asked yourself this

question. And the usual answers — take a bath, take a walk, take a nap,

soothe yourself with music — don’t seem to cut it, especially with children

underfoot and/or a life with many challenges. From that vantage point, it’s

easy to feel that eating is the only option. So what’s a girl to do?

A girl can think again. And look harder. There is always at least one thing

you could do besides eating, something that would take better care of you

than food does. (How do I know this? Because food is a physical substance,

and a physical substance can only fill physical hunger. It cannot — and was

never meant to — provide the things that only other people can provide,

things like love and contact and comfort.)

I asked my radio host why she wasn’t turning to her neighbors for help.

Why, if they were all in the same boat, couldn’t they support one another

by trading off child care? She said that asking for help was just not

something they did.

“Why not?” I asked.

The only answer she could give was, “Because.”

That would be a fine answer, I said, but only if you were perfectly happy

and didn’t want to change. Only if you prefer to keep using food as your

drug of choice. If you want to change your relationship with food, you need

to change the way you think and the way you act.

We all want to change the way we eat and, of course, change that number on the

scale, but we don’t realize that wanting to change what we do with food

means changing what we do without food. And often that means taking a risk.

Breaking out of our routines. Doing something we’ve never done before.

Questioning beliefs we’ve taken for granted, such as “I am supposed to do

this alone” and “Asking for help is a sign of weakness.”

Think about the events in your life that send you running for the Fritos.

Is one of them a situation in which you believe that you are not supposed

to ask for help? If you didn’t eat in that moment, but decided to ask for

exactly what you need, would you still feel that need to eat?

Giving myself permission to ask for help is a process I’m still trying to

master. For example: I was in New York visiting my mother who, at 78, had

just had complicated back surgery. When the doctor told us that she’d have

to undergo another procedure six days later, I was scared — at her age,

more general anesthesia was something she didn’t need. And since my usual

pattern is to believe that the first sign of discomfort signals catastrophe

(a sore throat equals throat cancer), I knew that I needed to fly to New

York immediately to be with her.

My husband, Matt, was about to leave for Canada to attend the funeral of a

cousin. He asked if I would like him to come with me instead. “No,” I said,

“go and be with your family. I can handle this myself.”

Each day, I would leave the hospital exhausted and depleted. I’d head

around the corner for a cup of soft-serve “diet” ice cream (if you can call

a bland, tasteless, cold, low-carb, low-fat mixture that you eat with a

spoon ice cream). Then one day, I talked to a friend who said, “And why

exactly did you tell Matt that he didn’t need to come? Wouldn’t it be

wonderful for you if he were here? Wouldn’t you be less inclined toward

cold, tasteless concoctions if he flew here to join you?”

And the answer was yes, yes, yes. Just thinking about Matt’s coming to New

York relieved and comforted me. Yet even though we’ve been married for over

20 years, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could ask him to come. My

unspoken belief was that it’s okay for me to ask him to change a tire since

I can’t do it myself. But if I am merely anxious, tired, and frightened, if

it’s not a life-or-death emergency, I should be able to tough it out and

buck up on my own.

Haven’t I learned by now that it’s all right to ask for help? Yes, I have

learned that, but I don’t always remember. If only we learned deep lessons

right away, learned the first five times, learned the first 50 times, or

even the first 500 times. So this time, I learned again. I realized that

the courageous move in this case wasn’t handling things on my own. It was

calling him and asking him to come and be with me.

My mother came through her second surgery and healed well. Matt arrived,

and my consumption of cold, tasteless foodstuffs ended (though I did eat

some delicious lemon ice cream for dessert one night). Turns out that my

radio host and I had a lot in common. In order to stop using food for

comfort, we had to risk doing something uncomfortable.

So, go ahead. Take a risk. Do something differently. Keep learning, as I

keep doing, that if you want to live the biggest life you can, asking for

help is sometimes the bravest thing you can do.

*Follow Geneen Online*

We encourage you to connect with Geneen at her Facebook

page<http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=18269609 & msgid=240790 & act=LASH & c=\

219671 & destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FGeneenRoth>,

where she reads your reactions and comments and responds to questions. You

can also follow Geneen's updates on

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..

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*NEW*

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Join Geneen for her only West Coast 2-day workshop in 2012 and fall in love

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*Geneen's Fabulous*

*EATING GUIDELINES ONLINE RETREAT*

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*

This eight-part audio series with Geneen explores her ground-breaking

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* " This online retreat is rocking my world!

I haven't eaten sugar for

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*

Spending this retreat time with Geneen is a powerful opportunity to dive

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During these intensive retreats, away from your day-to-day life, Geneen

will guide you to fully embrace this life-changing process. No matter how

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* " The retreats with Geneen are miraculous. Totally incredibly wonderfully

miraculous. " *

Helen Paterson, Retreat Student

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*Everyday Meditation*

*CD / MP3 Instant Download*

Meditation is a way to come home to yourself. Everything that happens is

here and now, and when you take time to steep in what you already have, you

begin to inhabit a world in which you are fully and abundantly alive.

Geneen guides you through an entire meditation session, complete with

instructions and gentle reminders to come back to this moment.

Click here for more

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*WOMEN FOOD AND GOD ONLINE RETREAT*

*Self-Guided Version*

*Six 90-minute Sessions *

*Plus Two Bonus Sessions*

This step-by-step course with Geneen offers a profound process for

integrating and deepening your understanding of her teachings featured in

her #1 bestseller, *Women Food and God.*

To learn more about how you can benefit from this audio course from the

comfort of your own home,*

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*Click

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*

*CONTACT*

*Geneen Roth & Associates, Inc.

P.O. Box 682

Aptos, CA 95001

Tel: Info@...*

*

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*

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