I got really triggered with body stuff this week.
People around me are losing weight, taking Ozempic, intermittent fasting or devotees of some new fitness pursuit.
Stay in your lane, I told myself for the hundredth time.
But this time it didn’t work. A switch flipped. Surely, I could do better in my body?
Suddenly, I felt terrible. My heart felt heavy and sad, a sense of hopelessness creeping in. My body felt all wrong. My previously comfortable clothes seemed ill-fitting and inappropriate.
I tried to call myself back from this familiar brink, but I was too busy peering over the edge, at a utopia that doesn't exist.
I longed for the high of a new eating plan or the potential of a complete body transformation. I wanted “before” and “after” pictures, waistbands drooping off hips, the powerful feeling in control.
If I could have those things, then surely I would feel whole. I would no longer doubt myself or question my worth. As if a perfect body translates into a perfect life.
It’s like my eating disorder mindset hibernates inside me, spontaneously waking, staggering about and bellowing out cranky roars. The obsessive thoughts scream.
It's time to get serious. Regain control. Buckle down. Take the bull by the horns. No more excuses.
There is a strange comfort in adhering to some external mandate. There is a sense of relief in abandoning our own murky self-guidance in favor of something seemingly more certain.
This still happens to me despite my commitment to not oppress my own self and body.
This still happens to me even though I’ve sworn off dieting.
This still happens to me even though I know my healing path is through Intuitive Eating.
This still happens to me despite really loving my body.
This still happens to me.
Body Obsession as a Coping Skill
I’ve noticed a pattern: I’ll be going along, feeling good, unconditionally allowing myself, deepening my self-love and then BAM. Roadblock.
Sometimes it’s a speed bump. Other times it’s a ten-car pile-up.
Doubt grabs me and won’t let go. Shame surges up from the depths, shrouding me in a black fog. My worth wobbles on shaky legs.
This is a hard way to live, ripping off scabs before any true healing can occur.
Most often, I meet my conditioning with the confusion that is its goal. I lose touch with myself, with my truth, with all I hold dear. I am thrown backward so fast, it’s like being in a wacko game of Shoots and Ladders.
Overcome, I grasp for something to combat the feeling of powerlessness.
Nine times out of ten, I veer onto the body shame highway.
I’ve watched it over and over.
I feel creatively frustrated and start obsessing about how my pants fit. I’ll be upset over an interaction and criticize my reflection in the mirror.
I will stay silent when I need to speak up and then bemoan the cellulite on my thighs. I’ll feel sad or angry and will nitpick everything I ate that day and decide it was too much. (According to a muddled heap of every diet edict I’ve ever heard.)
It’s rarely based in reality.
But by then, I feel so terrible about my body, I cannot think of anything but fixing the problem of my body.
It’s taken me years to realize: this is the whole point.
Obsession as a Coping Mechanism
I have made my body - and its perceived failings - the scapegoat of my life.
And in so doing, I let myself off the hook from dealing with the situations, emotions and dynamics that need my attention.
What a perfect, horrible synergy of my embedded conditioning and my desire to escape the pain of life. (And shout out to diet culture for its helpful hand!)
It’s creative, I’ll give it that. It’s also really fucking destructive.
I obsess about food and my body instead of dealing with discomfort.
It’s a grand distraction.
I’m so crafty with it, enacting my defense mechanism before I can even register something is amiss.
Keeping it on the down low, below my awareness, I achieve precisely what I intended – a smooth emotional transaction, a shaving off of barbed wires before they can get close enough to pierce me.
It’s control I seek. Something firm to hold to soothe my mind.
A coping mechanism.
The Addictions of the Mind
All of us have things we use to cope with stress, emotions, change and just the ups and downs of being alive. Some are healthy and helpful, some are destructive and harmful.
When coping skills become compulsive and our brain and body become dependent on a substance or behavior, addictions are formed.
The Cleveland Clinic’s list of addiction is comprehensive: substances (alcohol, drugs, caffeine, nicotine) shopping, food, sex, shoplifting/risky behaviors, gambling, exercise/dieting, viewing pornography, playing video games and internet use.
The tendency to avoid abounds.
But these are behaviors whereas obsession and rumination are states of mind (with impacts on the body).
It makes me wonder – can certain inner states become compulsive, even addictive?
The Oxford Dictionary defines compulsive as: “resulting from or relating to an irresistible urge, especially one that is against one's conscious wishes.”
The Hidden Payoff
If we use destructive brain looping as a coping skill, how do we stop?
Meditation? Mindfulness? Hypnosis? Brain rewiring? Psychedelics?
Maybe. But for tools to work, we need to address the origin of the problem.
The payoff.
It seems crazy, right? I’m sure no one who obsesses about food or their body size would say there is a payoff for doing so. Most could catalog the pain, shame and damage such a preoccupation creates, the endless suffering it causes.
The same could be said of all compulsions. So why do we do them?
Because in some way they serve us. They help us. They fulfill a need we have.
In my case, the hidden payoff of body obsession to avoid emotional pain. Sure, it creates pain to do it, but it’s a known pain, a familiar pain. In the realm of gambles, it’s a safer pain than the yawning unknown of all possible pain.
It makes me wonder how many other mind states bear the hallmarks of compulsion.
What about shame and unworthiness? They keep us small and protect us from taking risks. They, too, create suffering but serve us at an instinctual, survival level.
What about anxiety?*
Anxiety is a reflexive, powerful mind state that loops on fear and terrible future outcomes. It robs us of presence, wreaks havoc on our bodies and is fueled by the unbearable weight of uncertainty.
Which is why I wonder if the compulsive need to play out every potential pitfall is, in part, an attempt to feel some level of control over the uncontrollable.
It’s that idea of if I don’t worry about this, who will? As if someone needs to be awake at the wheel to prevent bad things from happening.
I am no expert on anxiety, nor the myriad factors that create and propel it. But I do find it curious that one of the consequences of anxiety – similar to shame and unworthiness - is a sense of paralysis, a reason and “valid” excuse, to not show up in our lives.
Only we know the answers for ourselves. It’s worth asking ourselves, with great compassion, if we are using habituated mind states to avoid, limit or cope with the very real challenges of being a human on this planet.
Self-Compassion and Meeting Our Needs
This realization of how body obsession serves me is humbling but also freeing.
Identifying the need that a destructive pattern fulfills allows us to attend to that need directly and without harm to ourselves.
If your roof was leaking, would you go outside and yell at the clouds for dropping rain or search for the holes in your roof?
Without this identification, we can expect the behavior or pattern to persist. Even with meditation or mindfulness practice.
Because, unconsciously, we will do whatever it takes to get our needs met. Especially the core needs of survival, safety and belonging.
The goal is to own our needs, to fix the leaky roof rather than rage against the rain.
We do this with self-compassion, holding ourselves close and gently asking what we need. Then we do our very best to give it. We deserve this. We are the only ones who can give these things to ourselves. It's time.
This is how we create wholeness.
This is how we create self-trust.
This is how we heal.
The truth is, my body obsession has nothing to do with my body or negative body image. It has to do with my desire to escape from painful feelings. My topic of choice happens to be my body. Someone else might have a different vulnerability based on their history, experiences, conditioning and individual tender spots.
I don’t know about you, but I like knowing this. It feels less personal, somehow.
In other words, my body isn’t the problem and never has been. The problem is my fear of pain and what it will do to me. (More on this coming soon.)
What might our energy be freed up for if we weren't spending time avoiding the uncomfortable parts of life?
It takes some crazy, bad-ass courage to walk through the dense forest of the self. But what initially seem like threats are often not. In the words of Taylor Swift, “the monsters turned out to be just trees.”
*Of course, anxiety disorders and obsessive compulsive disorders also originate inside the brain and the experience of them does not fit the profile I am outlining. This theory is not meant to discount anyone’s experience.
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