Facing Your Shadow Could be the Key to Unlocking Your Weight Loss
As someone who has struggled with my weight for most of my life I can tell you that the key to unlocking my success in the area of weight loss was facing the pain and grief I had carried in my shadow.
I learned a lot about myself losing 100 pounds. I have learned to surrender to and accept that I have my own addictions...
Just saying the words "I have addictions" is new to me. Four years ago I would have never said that. I would have rather had my fingernails ripped out than say those words.
Why?
Because in fighting my mom's addiction to alcohol for the first 25 years of my life I put my own addictions in my shadow.
For me, addiction feels like a sneaky snake. He hides in the shadows and strikes at his unsuspecting victim, unleashing his venom into them and transforming his victim into a raging bull - Destroying everything.
Addiction was my enemy and must be fought at all costs - for him to exist in someone meant something was wrong with them. For him to exist in me meant something was wrong with me.
By refusing to acknowledge that I, like my mom, have the sneaky snake of addiction within me, I had allowed him to slither freely in my shadowlands.
Only by facing myself in the mirror and acknowledging my unwanted parts could I see this.
Facing My Shadow
Before I embarked on my weight loss journey I spent nearly four years working through and healing the grief I carried from my Mom’s battle and death from alcoholism in 2007.
I also had to face the pain I had buried deep inside from being abused as a small child at the hands of my Mom’s addiction. The pain I so clearly carried in the many pounds around my waist.
At some point, this work brought me an awareness of my own addictions.
My addiction to numbing out pain with food.
This is a coping mechanism I developed around age eight or nine - When the overwhelm and trauma of my mom’s alcoholism were just too much for my young developing mind to comprehend and handle.
At first, when my awareness shined a light on this painful truth I felt immense sadness and shame.
"How could I let myself develop an addiction"?
I had fought my mom’s addiction with everything I had only to have it show up within me.
Shame would have me push this truth away through renunciation; Through pushing myself with my other addiction - Fixing myself, which in the case of my health manifests through extreme diets and exercise.
This other addiction has always led to burnout and then going off the rails by numbing out with food.
See a pattern?
The last four years of healing work brought my awareness to my shadow. To my addiction to numbing out and fixing.
However, despite all the healing work and all the awareness it was not until about seven months ago that things began to really change in the area of my health and fitness.
They changed because throughout 2022 I began to shift from just having an awareness of my addictions to actually bringing true acceptance and surrender to them.
Surrendering to the truth about my addictive tendencies created a space to hold myself with compassion and love.
Radical Acceptance - Embracing My Truth With Love
The last seven months of my weight loss journey have taught me something.
Awareness alone is not enough.
We must also hold ourselves with compassion.
There is a duality between awareness and compassion…
Awareness allows us to see our addictions and weaknesses...
Awareness allows us to become present to the feelings that come up...
Awareness allows us to see the underlying desire...
Compassion keeps us from taking awareness to a place of shame and renunciation.
Compassion allows us to hold what our awareness brings with love.
It allows us to be with what is.
For example, compassion allows me to say to myself:
"It makes sense you really want that pizza; It sounds really good; It smells really good; It would taste really good..."
Compassion allows me to be with my desire without pushing it away.
However, compassion alone is not enough either.
Compassion unchecked would have me indulge my desires or wallow in self-pity and despair.
Awareness keeps our compassion in check. Awareness keeps us from indulging in those desires just to feel good. Awareness keeps us from dwelling in self-pity and despair.
We do this by bringing our awareness to the consequences and suffering that indulgence of our desire or dwelling in our self-pity would bring...
In the example of pizza, I bring awareness to the shitty way I would feel tomorrow if I ate it...
And then, I let myself make a choice at that moment...
I recently found that when presented with the consequences of suffering simultaneously with feeling desire, the desire tends to dissolve. It losses its grip.
Which tells me what?
In my example above - I didn’t really want the pizza. I wanted the way the pizza would make me feel.
And when I held that desire compassionately and presented myself with how I would feel the next day ~ I didn’t have to push the desire away anymore. It just naturally dissolved.
A space was created for me to cultivate the feeling I was seeking internally without some external addictive substance like pizza...
This duality between awareness and compassion is called “Radical Acceptance” and it is the key to recovery from all addictions.
Before radical acceptance can be possible we must do the hard Emotional Work of shining the light of awareness on our shadow. We must be willing to face the truth we are avoiding and experience the pain and grief that are waiting for us there.
We must be willing to see our pain and grief as life’s teachers ~ to receive the lesson awaiting us on the other side of it.
I’ll close today with the moment I first shined the light of awareness on my truth. It was the moment that I began my process of receiving the lesson held in my pain and grief.
This was the letter I wrote to addiction. The intention of this letter was to separate my Mom from her addiction ~ through the process of writing the letter and separating my Mom from her addiction I was finally able to see addiction in myself.
Letter to Addiction
December 2, 2020
Addiction,
Fuck you. I fucking hate you. You do not deserve to have a “dear” in the salutation because you are the worst. You took everything from me. You took my mom, you took my childhood, you took my twenties, you took my dreams, you took my traditions, you fucked it all up.
Under my sadness, I am filled with anger. I feel it in my bones.
I try to understand why? Why did you have to get in the way of my mom’s healing? She was a beautiful soul. She had beat you, why didn’t you just stay away?
When you are suppressed you are like a sneaky snake, creeping in the background and waiting to strike. When you unleash your venom you transform your victim into a raging bull. Destroying everything.
Your thirst is unquenchable. My mom lost everything feeding you. She sold my violin to feed you, she sold her wedding ring, my dad's wedding ring. She spent her half of the divorce money on you.
You caused my mom to lock me outside in the snow. You turned love into hate. Right now I feel anger rising in me. From my chest radiating out. My eyes are squinting, my face is burning.
When I feel overwhelmed by the pain you have caused, I numb out and check out. I distract myself from you, from discomfort and pain. I endlessly scroll, if a device is not accessible, I endlessly think, scrolling through thoughts in my mind. I can eat without thinking. Where scrolling is numbing, eating feels good, for a minute.
I am afraid of you. Afraid of you slithering into my life, my spouse or my kids, into me. In my teens, I avoided alcohol and drugs because I feared you were in me. In my twenties I binged and partied playing with my edge, going far enough for you to be a threat but not far enough for you to creep in. Keeping in Control.
Control is my addiction. The place you have slithered in. I plot and scheme to keep my world safe and comfortable. Taking risks and living big would mean leaving this safe space and giving up control.
I have fought you my whole life. The battleground has not always been the same. Sometimes it was within me, sometimes it was with others.
When I was little it was a literal battle for my safety. Defending myself from the raging bull you transformed my mom into. I had to navigate the craziness of my mom’s ups and downs. I was sent messages like “I love you, go away”. I became anxious, walking on eggshells, and hyper-vigilant to emotional cues. My dad was the safety net from the battleground you created with my mom, I became the golden star to get his attention, so he would take me with him.
When I was a teenager the battleground was my will against my moms. She had supposedly recovered from you, but really you just migrated from alcohol to control. She controlled her world to keep you away from her and from me. Little did she know you were in the driver's seat the whole time.
In my twenties, we faced off fighting for my mom’s life. She ultimately lost her “control” and alcohol came creeping back in after 13 years. The raging bull was back. It destroyed everything. Our family, my mom, our traditions, everything.
Desperately I fought you for my mom. I got her into rehab, but she relapsed. I brought her into my home, only to have her relapse and have to drive her home. When, in the last year of her life, she went missing, I got adult protective services involved and she was put in the state hospital, only to check herself out. Finally, in the last week of her life, I begged her to get help, to dry out, only to have her die trying.
After her death, I unknowingly allied with you as I became addicted to controlling my world to avoid failure.
The thought that I could let you trick me like that makes me feel shame, sadness, and anger. Anger at you, anger at me. Time fucking wasted. Part of me wants to go back and redo my twenties and early thirties. I could have been someone great. I am filled with deep regret over the time wasted controlling my world.
Not anymore, I’m done letting you run my life. I choose presence, awareness, and love. I have dug, and continue to dig up the pain you caused. I have felt the sadness you have brought, let the anger I have held back come out. I have more to feel, more anger to let out, but I am not going to avoid you or the feelings you have brought anymore. I surrender to control, I can not control control, so I will just be with it.
-Matt
Wow!!! you did go deep. But I disagree with one thing you wrote. You said that if you could go back, to your 20s or 30s… That you could have been someone great. I think you already are and have been someone great. I know your grandpa would be very proud of you! I AM very proud of you! You have done amazing things in your life so far! You’re a great dad and you continue to keep traditions alive. Keep working on this amazing journey. I love you! Oh, and by the way, I kind of think you’re great ( in case I didn’t make that clear!😉)♥️♥️