Feeling adrift and at sea ...

Entering week 3 of my eating plan, I'm recognising just how strongly how one eats and thinks about food / eating provides a foundation for how one feels about oneself in the world.  I already knew this intellectually, but my experience over the last week has enabled me to embody this and experience it at depth.


Over the last week, there have been times when I've felt very ungrounded and uncertain about myself and things I was doing.  It felt like a loss of confidence.  Not completely, in that I still had a firm hold on, and confidence in, my counselling skills and academic work; they were my only internal anchors.  But outside of these two parts of myself, I felt on very shaky ground.  I carried an image in my head for a good few days of me being a little boat adrift on the sea.  

I began doubting things about my experience and tapping into a fear of "getting it wrong."  At first I couldn't work out where this 'fear' was coming from, but then it came to me ... because I've been eating in a different way with 'rules' to remember, I had a sense of uncertainty around this.  The 'good little girl' part of me desperately wanted to get it right and make no mistakes ... both for myself and also for the person who's supporting me.  For myself, I want to ensure I receive maximum benefit from the experience and hence have a strong sense of 'wanting to get it right.'  Having made a commitment to another person, I have a sense of not want to disappoint or let them down.  

Highlighting the importance of ensuring external support for oneself through times of change, it also helped me to know that this person was always there, available via a text message, which helped keep me anchored to the eating plan.  If I was unsure about anything I was going to eat, I knew I could always check it out. Trusting that someone else has the answers is hugely reassuring; knowing that someone is there takes away any sense of isolation and provides a sense of security in which to ground oneself.

I hadn't appreciated just how strongly I felt these pressures until I dreamed last night about disappointing, and letting down, someone I love.  On waking this morning, my shaky self-experiences of last week suddenly made complete sense ...

Because food is so central to life and living, having a 'fear' of getting things wrong with my eating left me with that same fear of getting things wrong across my life and how I was living it.

Another reminder of just how intimately our relationship with food / eating entwines with our sense of self and way-of-being in the world ...