Letting Go

I think its a beautiful thing that because of the comments I have received from you, I have been inspired to write this post.  Its just more evidence of how much we need each other in this life to grow and progress.  Thank you so much for your comments!  You are blessing us all when you use your voice!

Now be prepared because this is a long post.  This is some of the most important information to understand in order to overcome eating disorders, depression, or any addiction or negative behavior.  I hope it will help you as much as it has helped me.

The concept is letting go.  It truly is one of the hardest concepts to understand and actually do, but its the most important thing we need to do if we want to progress and move forward in our lives.  This illustration shows what I mean.

So this represents each one of us.  Imagine this trailer is full of things we are holding onto, the things we have attachments to.  How quickly are we moving forward with all of this baggage we are trying to tug along with us?  Not very fast right?  Not much forward momentum going on.  What do you think would happen if this person started cutting some of those strings?

Yes!  She would start progressing and moving forward.  If all those strings were clipped, this person would sprint forward because there would be nothing holding her back.  When we hold onto experiences or feelings, we slow ourselves down from progressing.  We stunt our growth.  We place ourselves in bondage to our attachments, preventing ourselves from experiencing freedom and joy.

Favorite Quote #5:

You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.

Why do we hold on so tightly to the past when it keeps us from enjoying our present and building a magnificent future?  Choose to clip the strings!  We are the only one that carries the scissors and that holds the power to cut our strings and let it all go.  As we do that, we free ourselves to move forward with greater speed and power, enjoying the journey and sprinting into a future full of joy, contentment, peace and fulfillment.

I believe eating disorders, or any addiction for that matter, are our way of not facing up to the negative feelings we have which are usually generated by experiences we have had in the past.  We swallow down our pain, despair, shame, regret, embarrassment, etc. with food.  I truly did not know how else to deal with my pain and shame back at the age of 15.  Food became my coping mechanism, my comfort.  I would use food to go unconscious because being conscious in that moment was more than I could take.

Addiction acts as an escape from the hard realities of life.  However, we deceive ourselves by thinking that is what really happens.  We all know that addictions and disorders are painful, causing more damage than good, causing more pain than even the initial pain of life that drove us to the addiction.  Whether you have experienced it yourself or you have seen a loved one or friend deal with addiction, we all want to be rid of them.  The reason why they are so painful and counter-productive is because we are doing something to our bodies that is in exact opposition to what our bodies are designed to do.  Imagine you're swimming.  You take a big breath and go under water, trying to stay under water for as long as you can.  What inevitably will happen?  You'll jump out of the water gasping for air!  Now why does that happen?  Well, our subconscious mind's sole purpose is to keep us safe.  The human brain has a built-in default function that no matter what we do, it will do whatever it takes to help us survive.  So let's relate this back to an eating disorder.  I will use binge eating as an example.  When I go into my private space to binge, I use food to shove all those negative feelings down, down, down under water.  I don't want to see them or face them in that moment so I push them down, but that doesn't mean that they are gone.  Just because I don't see them doesn't mean they are not still there lurking under the water.  They are still alive and kicking and inevitably they are going to rise up gasping for air.  As we shove our negative feelings into our subconscious mind, it knows that they shouldn't be there.  Those feelings are hurting us so in its effort to keep us safe, our subconscious mind tries to purge those feelings.  It shoves them back into our conscious mind as a way of saying, "This negative feeling is not allowing you to feel safe.  Get rid of it!!  Let it go so you can feel safe again!"  And it will continue to do that with our negative feelings every time we shove them down.  I have a favorite book entitled Feelings Buried Alive Never Die by Karol K. Truman.  That title perfectly describes what happens when we try to suppress our negative feelings instead of facing them.  We continue to eat in order to not have to deal with the painful, shameful feelings, but those feelings are still there and they will never die until we face them and let them go.

Favorite Quote #6:

You'll never get enough of what you don't need because what you don't need won't satisfy.

Our addictive behaviors are addictive because they are not what we need.  What we need is to let go.

This is kind of a sad analogy, but think of someone getting pushed under water again and again.  They come up for air only for a brief second before someone pushes them back down again.  Each time they come up for air they are gasping more intensely because they didn't get enough air the last time.  Finally, their subconscious mind kicks in and that person starts fighting off the other person because they need air to survive so desperately.  Ladies and gents, we are the ones doing this to ourselves.  We are the ones shoving our negative feelings down every time they rise back up again.  The more times we shove them down, the more intense that feeling comes up the next time to a point where we blow up because our subconscious mind is saying "I have got to let this feeling out because it is killing me!!"  I am not proud to say that this has happened to me, but it has.  There have been several times in my past where I have literally lost it, completely blown up because I could not take feeling like I was unloved and unaccepted anymore.  Now remember that no matter what anyone else says or does, our beliefs about ourselves, whether based in truth or not, determine our perception of the world. Because of my belief that "I'm not loved and accepted",  I would get to a point that if anyone said or did anything to me that I interpreted as "I'm not loved or accepted," I would lose it.  I would freak out and blow up.  It wasn't pretty.  Let me explain this to you with some diagrams.

In a previous post, I mentioned that everyday we have negative influences coming at us-negative experiences, negative people, negative thoughts, and negative feelings.  When we are balanced we have fairly equal levels of positive and negative within us.  The line at the belly button shows our positive and negative levels being fairly balanced.  Someone that had these levels of positive and negative within them would probably say life was "fine" or "okay".  Life wouldn't be terrible, but it wouldn't be amazing either.  But that's not necessarily ideal.  I promise you life can be way better than just okay or fine.  So now look at the following slides and watch what happens to the positive and negative levels as this person continues to let the negative come in.  Look particularly at the arms.

Our body language and the things we say can be very descriptive of where our negative level is at.  As more negative comes in and we suppress it and push it down, our negative level starts to rise.  Soon our negative level is at shoulder height and we may say "I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders!" or "Life feels so heavy!" Physically we may even point to our shoulders as we say this or we may feel tightness, soreness, or pain in our neck and shoulders.  I actually experienced this.  At one point in time I got what they call a "frozen shoulder".  I couldn't lift my arm very high because my shoulder just hurt and I couldn't remember anything I had done to hurt it.  I recognized after some time that it was negative emotional energy that had gotten trapped in my shoulder and when I released the negative emotions, the pain in my shoulder went away.  The same thing happened with my lower back.  I'll talk about this mind/body connection more in a bit.  Back to the diagram.  Notice at this point that the arms drop a little more.  At this point we may physically hunch over because of the negative emotional and mental burden we are carrying.

Next our negative level is up to our eyeballs and we're saying, "I'm losing my mind!  I can't even see straight!"  We may point to our temples on our forehead, have headaches, or our eyes might feel heavy and we might feel tired a lot.

Soon enough our negative level is over our heads and we're saying, "I can't take it anymore!  I've had enough!  I'm drowning!  I'm completely overwhelmed!"  And at this point, there are several things that can happen.

I'd like to explain this first thing through the use of an analogy to a dam.

What usually is at the base of a dam so that the dam doesn't rupture and burst?  An outlet right?  You can see the outlet for this dam in the bottom right of the picture.  A dam needs that outlet to constantly let some of the water flow out so that the water pressure behind the dam doesn't become so great that it ruptures.  Have you seen the movie Evan Almighty?  I seriously love that show!  Remember the dam in the movie?  It had no outlet, no hole to continually let some water out.  A whole city had been built beneath the dam.  Well what eventually happens?  That dam explodes!  The water pressure got too intense because there was no outlet so the dam could no longer contain the water.  And what happens to the city beneath it?  It is destroyed.  Thank heavens good old Evan Baxter (or should I say a modern day Noah) built that ark.  When I have ruptured, when I have blown up, my family has suffered.  The city I have built around me, my family, is what suffers the most when I reach that unbearable negative level where I lose it.  I know that's a hard thing to realize and accept, but isn't it true?  We need to let it all go.  We need an outlet.  We need to do our work every day to ensure that our negative levels don't reach a breaking point.  It's the only way.

I'm a firm believer that everything is energy.  Even our thoughts and feelings have energy.  Positive thoughts and feelings generate positive energy.  Negative thoughts and feelings generate negative energy.  And that's why our suppressed negative feelings come bursting out of us in anger and frustration.  Its all negative energy.  An incredible experiment was done by Masaru Emoto.  He called it the water crystal experiment.  He took bottles of distilled, pure water and taped a word on each of them, showed pictures to them, spoke to them, prayed to them, or played music to them.  He then froze that water and took microscopic pictures of the frozen water crystals.  The results were unbelievable!  Here are some pictures.

Amazing right?  Now let's think about this.  Our world is 70% water.  We are 70% water.  What do you think we are doing to our bodies when we push down all those negative feelings let alone say negative things to ourselves?  We are poisoning our bodies.  We are generating negative energy that is hurting us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  This is another thing that happens to us when we are filled with negative energy.  Why do you think so many of us are overweight and sick with all kinds of diseases, ailments, and illnesses?  Now I know there are physical reasons for our physical problems too, but we cannot dismiss the truth that our body and spirit are connected.  The body and the spirit together create the soul.  They were meant to be united and as one.  We are the ones that end up separating them and when we do, we reap the consequences.  It is scientific knowledge that when our bodies are more acidic, disease and sickness have a much greater chance of thriving and growing.  When our bodies are more alkaline, disease and sickness can't exist.  I truly believe that the acid that is created in our bodies not only comes from the food and drink we put into our bodies, but also from the negative thoughts and feelings we entertain, suppress, and believe in our minds.  They are negative energies which absolutely affect our bodily functions and health just as the water crystal experiment proved.  The negative energy behind the words presented to the water actually changed its physical and chemical makeup for the worse.  As I said before, our subconscious mind has got to purge those negative feelings somehow.  Not only does that negative energy release as negative emotion, but it can also be manifested as sickness, illness, disease and weight gain.  If we don't let the negative feelings go, then our mind will find another way of letting them go because they are unsafe.  We cannot overlook the fact that if we are hurting ourselves mentally and emotionally then we are also hurting ourselves physically.  

I love analogies.  I am sorry if they get too much for you, but for me I can understand concepts so much better through analogies.  I suppose that is why Christ taught in parables right?  So we could better understand the principle.  I find it interesting that my analogies today are all about water.  Hmmm.  I think water has many lessons we can learn from it.  So here's the third thing that can happen to us when we are drowning in the negative.  This analogy is of the Dead Sea.  Last year at this time, I had the amazing opportunity to go to Jerusalem, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates with my husband and my parents.  We visited the Dead Sea.  Here's a picture of it.

    

Beautiful right?  The water is so blue and calm.  We are boaters so as we looked out on the water we wondered, "Why are there no ski boats out there?"  Well, I think you know enough about the Dead Sea to know why.  Here's a close up of the shore.  

As you can see, no living thing can survive in these salty waters.  Let me give you just a few statistics.  The Dead Sea's shores are the lowest elevation on the entire earth at 1388 ft below sea level.  We were popping our ears as we drove down to it!  It is also the deepest hypersaline lake in the world at 1237 ft deep.  It is one of the world's saltiest bodies of water and is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean.  I have "swam" in the Dead Sea when I did study abroad back in '94.  You really don't swim.  You just float because the salt is so dense.  So my question to you is why is the Dead Sea dead?  I've asked a lot of people this question and most are stumped.  I'll tell you why.  There is no outlet.  The Jordan River flows into it, but there is no river flowing out of it.  So all the minerals that come in can't go anywhere.  They sit stagnant and as they sit, they grow more acidic and toxic.  Do you see where I am going with this?  As our negative feelings sit, deeply buried inside of us, they continue to grow more toxic and acidic to a point where we become dead inside-apathetic, depressed, and hopeless.  I find it very ironic that the "Dead" Sea is at the lowest elevation in the world and is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.  When we get to these points of apathy, depression, and hopelessness, wouldn't you say those are some of our deepest, darkest, lowest times?  None of us want to be there.  This unfortunately is the point where some consider suicide.  They see no other way.  Death is their only outlet.  How tragic!  There is another way!  There is a healthier outlet that will set us free.  It's called letting go. 

Many eating/diet programs want us to believe that our eating issues are all about the food.  I stand as a witness to you today that food is not the problem.  Our problem is the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that we entertain in our mind.  Why do you think so many people go on diets only to gain the weight back again or gain the weight back plus more?  Its because they haven't changed the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings they harbor in their minds.  If you want to change the outside permanently, you've got to change the inside first.

Because this post is getting so long, I will describe the tool for letting go of our negative feelings in my next post.  I want to end this post with an experience that I have had just this week with letting go.  Yes, I am still letting go.  I don't think we can ever stop.  We always have to be aware, ready and willing to face the negative feelings that surface and let them go or they will start building up again until we blow or we become apathetic and depressed.  I still talk with my mentor on a weekly basis and on Monday morning he walked me through a visualization in order to help me finally break down my wall of fear about not being accepted.  Some negative beliefs and feelings will take longer to let go of than others.  Feeling unaccepted has been that way for me because it was at the core of my negative beliefs and behaviors.  The visualization was incredible and by the end of it I felt a huge shift.  I felt empowered and the fear had completely disappeared.  So what did I do?  That afternoon I launched this blog.  I had been fearful to launch it because I was afraid of being unaccepted.  Satan also knew what good this blog could do so I know he was trying to shut me down.  I was keeping myself from reaching my potential and really sprinting forward by believing Satan's lies and holding onto my fear of not being accepted.  A day and a half after launching my blog, I had had 700 hits.  Now I don't even know if that is good or not in comparison to other blogs, but I wasn't comparing.  To me that was a big deal and in my mind it happened because I let go.  When we let go, we allow ourselves to sprint forward with purpose and passion making an impact on the world.

Favorite Quote #7:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most....  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us.  And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson, American author and lecturer

We are powerful, divine beings and we are all meant to impact and change the world in our own way!  So as we let go, we let our light shine.  As we shine, we give others the courage to do the same!  I believe that is exactly what has happened to me with this blog.  I don't mean to boast.  I mean to glorify my God for making it happen! 

Favorite Scripture #1:

But Ammon said unto him: I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom; but behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God.

Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.

The Book of Mormon, Alma 26: 11-12

That is exactly how I feel and that is how I want all of you to feel as well.  Awareness and letting go are our keys to wholeness and our ability to shine for the whole world to see!

Now here's another cool thing that happened.  On Sunday morning I weighed myself.  I don't weigh myself all that often.  In fact, I highly recommend that you don't.  While I still had my eating disorder mentality, I used to weigh myself all the time and if I didn't weigh less it would completely ruin my day.  So stop weighing yourself.  We are stopping the focus on our bodies and putting it on healing our spirits.  Now that I am more mentally healthy, weighing myself doesn't change my mood much anymore because I have let go of any attachment to what I weigh.  I weighed myself again this morning because I was feeling a little different.  I was down 5 lbs.  In 4 days, I had lost 5 lbs.  Now I hadn't changed anything in terms of my diet.  I'm still eating free of my food allergies and mostly staying away from dairy and gluten, but I have been eating like that for awhile.  So what made my weight drop so significantly?  I let go!  On Monday my mentor did the visualization with me that I just talked about.  I let go of the biggest block to my progression.  And as I let go of the mental and emotional weight of that negative belief and feeling, I let go of weight on my body.  Its true everyone!  All of this is true!  As we let go mentally, we give our bodies permission to let go physically.  It works and its TRUTH!

I hope I have said enough to convince you that we have to let go.  Stay tuned for my next post in which I will tell you HOW!  Because isn't that the question we are all asking?  How on earth do I let go?  I will tell you!!!  You're doing great!  The fact that you are reading these posts is a huge step in the right direction.  You are becoming more aware.  You are gaining more knowledge.  And knowledge is POWER!

be.YOU.tiful!!