Re: Friends and IE/Body Acceptance

December 20, 2010

Hi Meg,

I sort of responded to this post of yours in my response to Gerri's post. I have

actually lost a friend because even though she loves Geneen's work & has studied

it for years, she can't seem to apply it or doesn't really want to. The problem

came in when she thought that I NEEDED her to be applying it when she wasn't.

That couldn't have been further from the truth but I understand that people will

think what they want & that is how it should be. I didn't feel like I as putting

pressure on her to do IE but apparently, she thought I was. It could just be

that because I was really working on applying IE it was making her feel bad

about not being able to at this point in her life. Anyway, it was a good lesson

to me to just keep my opinions about IE to myself & to let people discover their

own path to living life, which may or may not include IE. Still, it is difficult

for me to hear people complaining about their weight or their size without

jumping in & telling them blah, blah, blah, blah. From now on I think that if

they ask, I might just say something simple like I've been learning to change

the way I eat & then leave it at that. Hard thing to do for someone like me who

loves to " share " .

mj

>

> Hi All,

>

> So, this past Saturday I was out with a friend for the night. This is a friend

that I've met recently (past three months or so) and we just kinda clicked and

have been spending a fair amount of time together. We were having a good time -

had a couple of drinks and then were on our way to a movie - when somehow the

conversation took a turn to food, bodies, etc. I've had conversations with her

before about this issue and I feel like she is very much at a place that I've

been before in my life of thinking that if she was only a couple of sizes

smaller life, dating, etc. would be so much easier and better. She has mentioned

before that her mom is kind of judgemental in the body image department.

>

> Anyway, the conversation turned to what if we could just wish for a smaller

body and she was talking about how she wished she could be a size four or

something and we started speculating on this, like if I was a size 8 or 10 I

would be happy with this since I'm tall anyway and it would be great to be

smaller because of this that and the other thing. I initially tried to resist

the idea because quite frankly, in a lot of ways I'm more satisfied with the

size I am right now than I have ever been before. I tried to communicate this to

her, but I feel like I somehow failed and got sucked into all of this " what if "

talk.

>

> So I don't know if I've explained the situation well enough, but my question

for you all is this: how do you deal with friends, relatives, whoever, who just

don't understand how wonderful it is to accept yourself as you are and how most

of the body image stuff that we encounter in our society is just (for a lack of

a better term) a bunch of bs? I've never really felt quite as passionate about

another topic as I do about IE before, and now that I have had all of these new

thoughts/revelations, I just want to shout it from the roof tops. But sometimes

I find that shouting it from the roof tops doesn't mean it won't fall on deaf

ears. And even if people don't outright reject the ideas, they often just nod

along and say " body acceptance is a good thing " but then stop short of applying

it to their own situation or lives.

>

> I feel like finding IE is helping me to become more confident in certain areas

than I've ever been before, but this confidence is being tested and sometimes I

end up backing down. So should I be more assertive with people? Say if we're

going to start having this conversation I'm not going to join in? Try to explain

my point of view? And what do I do when despite everything I don't seem to be

able to articulate it in a way to make people fully understand what I'm trying

to say?

>

> Thanks for your thoughts,

>

> Meg

>

January 1, 2011

I have a friend who never stops talking about dieting and exercise and bodies

and weight - her own and other women's. I mean it really is her main topis of

conversation. Always making judgements like if you order a salad: " Oh, good

girl. " Everything is either " good " or " bad " - food and bodies and women's

behaviour in regard to food. Before I started IE it didn't bother me so much.

Now it makes me so crazy! Because a) it makes me so sad - to me it is a symbol

of our whole messed-up society; this beautiful strong woman who hates herself

and is so self-critical and obsessive because of what she thinks she SHOULD look

like. And because I find it so triggering for diet thoughts of my own.

So when I'm with her and she starts to talk like that, I try to stay neutral. I

don't encourage her AT ALL. I don't join in with any of her judgmental talk. I

try to change the subject, or if there is a group of us I just kind of drop out

of the conversation like it's boring to me. I don't preach about IE to her

because I think that we all need to come to it in our own time, like with

quitting smoking. If she asks me about her body I just say " I don't really

notice that kind of thing. " And tell her she always looks great to me. It's

really hard though. Very frustrating.

January 1, 2011