How Body Image Leads to Complacency in Life

In a society that is so focused on, to the point of obsessed with, body image and unreal expectations of perfect beauty it isn’t that surprising that even the smallest wavering’s from that ideal would attract our mirth and downright hatred. We feel unattractive, undesirable, like a fake, undeserving and yet yearning for our needs to be met; you get the idea. In a way these external quarks about our bodies become our only focus for these internal feeling states. Like if only I didn’t have … then I could have… We pour all our feelings into them believing and associating them with why we aren’t getting what we want and why we are stuck where we our. There are some benefits to this symbiosis if you will of body hatred. It allows us to step away from the uncomfortable feelings until we look into the mirror or focus on what we can’t seem to have which puts us face first with our target of hate. Unless of course it has come to a point where the body hatred is all pervasive and never relenting.

The Emotional Origins 

It allows us from realizing that these feelings of lack or disgust originate from inside ourselves because we bought into what society tells us about ourselves. It isn’t our extra weight that makes us feel like shit, don’t forget only a few hundred years ago extra weight was seen as the height of beauty and a status icon for higher class citizens. It is that we were told at some point to feel bad about who were inherently were, often times based on the most ridiculous measurements. The other thing it allows us to avoid is that we can simply choose to stop feeling this way. I can sense your anger at that statement, none the less it is true regardless of all the arguments your mind is shouting at you right now.

The Payoffs To This Behaviour

The other benefit that we receive from continuing our external based hatred is that it allows us to completely avoid taking risks. Well if I can’t get… because of… then why even bother. In this way we can insulate ourselves from having to reach out and be vulnerable, from having to try and maybe fail. It keeps us from having to dust ourselves of and try again, and maybe again, and maybe again learning along the way until we become successful by getting what we want. This body shaming and body hating is our ticket to complacency. In which ways does your body faux pas allow you to avoid taking risks, avoid taking responsibility for the fact that you can create the things in your life that you believe you can’t because of it? What are your body faux pas, when did they start and why? How have they benefited you up until now?

Behaviours That Are Out Of Alignment  

            It doesn’t just stop there; it can even be certain behaviors that we do that give us the same hatred focal point and the same outcome. Which behaviors that you do, or that you have begun to do make you feel the same way, like you will never have something in your life that you really want? When did it start and why? How do you feel about it? How has this pattern benefited you up until now? In the case of behaviors in some instances they aren’t actually in line with whom we are as healthy individuals; like my OCD, or smoking as examples. This doesn’t mean that we can’t create what we truly want as long as we have these behaviors, quite the opposite. But with both body and behaviors if we are out of balance then we can choose to work to get back into balance. What we need to do is hold the intention that it is for self-love that we are doing the work to get back into balance rather then because it will lead to us attaining the external outcome that we desire.

The Beginning of Letting Go

There also comes the point where you have to analyze where these judgments and baselines are coming from. Trying to bring the unhealthy teachings to light has been taken on by many individuals raising the call to question and heal. Yet we still go on buying into what is being churned out for us as beliefs and views about ourselves. Media, society as a whole it doesn’t matter. The people setting the standards are no different, no wiser, no smarter then you. They also represent a very small minority that is very out of touch with what real people actually find attractive. So it begs the question when will we stop letting others guide our views and finally ask ourselves what we find beautiful. What we find sexy? When we will stop allowing others to create our world, our reality, when will we own our own power to choose and to create? When will we let go and move forward? 

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Cheers,

Charlotte Brammer

Moving Through Grief and Starting Over

The turmoil of Grief

I don’t know whether the hope, rage or the despair is better when grieving. You come to hate the hope because even though it allows a reprieve from the rage or despair that you feel, it also leads to another devastating crash when it flees again. On the other hand the depths of despair are so deep you wonder how you will ever climb out again as those who care about you tell you that it will get better and you pray their words are right. You become addicted to the rage because at least in some small way it empowers you and you feel neither hope nor despair but a smoldering hatred that gives you a small freedom, but then you realize what it does to you and you begin to hate the hate because it twists your body and soul in ways that feel wrong. In the meantime you walk one day, one moment at a time in world that has shifted, a world that you feel will never be the same, a world that has lost the allure and the vivid colors it once held for you.

You find yourself in a world where the smallest things break you open, leave you uncovered to the world, to yourself and you hate what has happened to you. You remember a time when it wasn’t so, but can no longer feel it. Or even worse you can feel it in all it roundness and when the dream fades you are reminded in a very visceral way the truth of your loss once again. You start to avoid places and things, can’t stand watching movies or TV or music because they all hold your desperate heart in their uncaring palms, fingers pressing on your loss ever so slightly. Perhaps you gain the courage to face the places that hold the potential to make you feel but they do not alleviate the feelings in the moment though they may shorten the time it takes to climb out of the mourning process.

The twisting of the Grieving Process

Reading about the stages of grief can be helpful, understanding the process was helpful for me because at least I knew that what I are going through is normal, is real and I wasn’t crazy. However when you are grieving and dealing with your own daemons, which twist and churn the feelings to attack your very core, your very worth it is another thing completely. When in the depths of your despair instead of merely feeling the loss, the daemons turn the loss into validation that you are flawed, unworthy and unlovable. In your hope the daemons turn your hope to shame over your weakness in not being strong enough to not want the one who hurt you. Even if you were strong enough to be the one that walked away from something that was not healthy your daemons tell you are weak to remember the good times and be sad. They laugh at your pain and tell you that you deserve it, what were you thinking. All the while your life has changed and now you need to find a way through all of this to create an entirely new life, find a connection to a new vision, to new dreams while mourning the loss of the ones you held so dear just a little while ago.

Creating a New Life While We are Broken Open

I was asked to write about the grieving process; at first I was hesitant because it is a vastly important and vastly shared experience and I wasn’t sure if I could do it justice. What I realized as I thought about my own experiences is that I have a vast amount to share and say. What I also know is how hard it is to have to change your entire life and create something entirely new while grieving. This is almost impossible when you are just trying to survive, when feelings of numbness take hold and you don’t even care if you live or die, if you stay on the subway platform or you jump off. How can we find the motivation, the energy to get up and create something of inspiration when it takes all we have just to crawl out of the blankets and put socks on our feet? How can we possibly put on a brave face when the world itself has shifted and nothing is the same to have the conversations that will decide the directions that our lives take? How is it that we learn to cope and try to remain balanced as our internal tides climb from rage to despair to hope to acceptance to rage with no warning, no pattern that we can see? When our daemons and unhealthy past beliefs attack us in our greatest pain?

New Growth from the Forest Fire of Loss

And yet we do, we find a way, we tap vast pools of strength we never knew we had, we make our way through the crucible and find ourselves forged anew. We look in the mirror and ask where it came from, the ability to stand through adversity and survive. Once we are out the other side we wonder how it is we had the strength to create a new life, new growth out of the forest fire of loss. There is so much potential in grief for self-healing, for self-love and care, for new growth. It allows us to see things within that we normally wouldn’t see and allows us the opportunity to purge our daemons once and for all so that we have the freedom to feel our losses free from shame and guilt so that we can be cleansed and made whole once again. I know in my own experience that there were a few things that helped me be able to create anew.

• Understanding the grieving process

1. The stages of grief – Denial and or hope, anger, sorrow, bargaining and acceptance
2. How the stages don’t go in order and don’t finish all at once but come in waves and interchange with one another
3. That as time goes on the waves of anger, sorrow and hope begin to ease each time, the lows aren’t as low; how acceptance and peace begin to become stronger and longer each time we come out of the darkness
4. Learning the lessons that the experience holds for us

• Understanding how our own unhealthy and negative beliefs create more stress and despair. Understanding how to let them go and move into a healthier place
• Understand the difference between pure unaltered grief and when our own stuff is interfering
• Understanding how to create beneficial change in the first place, the pitfalls and the steps
• Allowing the tides to flow with self care and compassion
• Creating a new vision in alignment with our truth
• Taking small steps one at a time to build again
• Accepting the help of our support systems and reaching out rather then isolating

Moving Forward

It is never easy, but we aren’t alone. Like anything else in life we are guaranteed greater success if we understand the rules and foundations in the first place. The grieving process is no different; even if we wish it were something we could bypass all together. One step, one day, one wave at a time until we emerge onto dry land once more and look back in appreciation of ourselves and of the lives we now live. The loss of a loved one, of property, of our significant other, of a way of life, of a violation, of a betrayal is devastating; all loss is. With the right tools you can make your way through, you can build again; you can create the life you desire. The Envision Series of workshops dive into how to heal, how to create change, how to build a vision and a life that is in alignment with your own powerful truth. It will give you the skills and knowledge to be your own therapist so that you can create whatever you desire.

Charlotte Brammer

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