Make it Happen March.  I have seen this everywhere on blogs and Facebook today.  I decided to embrace that myself.  So I am going to make things happen in March.  The first thing I am going to tackle is my emotional eating.  Not just talk about it, but talk about it and do something about it at the same time.  So I pulled out my book from the binge eating group I attended a few years back called The Food and Feelings Workbook by Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed.

I reached page 23 in the book in the last three years.  I did the first few exercises and the “Food & Feelings Pre-Assesment”.  In the Pre-Assesment I circled a 10 (scale 1 to 10) on questions that note I acknowledge that these changes won’t happen overnight and I may need help from a support group and/or a therapist.  I do understand those things clearly, but I think I am afraid.  Whenever I sat in a therapists office and anything regarding emotions I wasn’t ready to discuss came up, I no longer made time to see that therapist.  Or suddenly money was an issue.  With the support group, I was always using the excuse that it was too far and at a bad time of day (both were true: 30 min drive and at 10am on a Monday). But if it was that inconvenient how was I able to make it to the groups until it was time to share a project I had not even attempted because it dove too far into emotions I wasn’t willing to face.

It’s time for me to stop running.  Time to sit down and sort through all these different feelings and emotions I am afraid to look at.  Right now, I recognize that I need to get back to a therapist, however I don’t have the time each week available to dedicate to seeing one, which is truly necessary in getting everything I need from a therapist.  I will make that a goal for the future.  For now, this blog will be my therapist.  Feel free to share your thoughts and feelings here as well.  But keep it positive and/or constructive.  Negativity is what got me and many of us to the places we are at in our lives.  Negativity isn’t about to help one bit.  But I do recognize that sometimes others could see something in what I have written differently than I have seen it.  I don’t mind hearing different opinions, I rather encourage them.

Here we go.

What is the purpose of MY feelings?

Yup, those feelings that bubble up now and then actually serve a purpose.  I have rarely taken the time in my life to think about what is causing different feelings I have shoved back down into my emotional cave.  The feelings well up, quite quickly at times, and I immediately try to ignore what’s happening and move onto something else so I don’t have to endure whatever it is that I may feel.  But there is a reason I was feeling something in that moment.

According to The Food and Feelings Workbook, “if we all have the capacity to feel, then feelings are neither accidental nor incidental and must have an evolutionary purpose.”  Our feeling are what help us make good decisions, and let us know what will make us happy and alarm us to what may harm us.

I followed along with the “Stop and Feel” exercise in the book.  I sat quietly and was relaxed and asked myself this question, “Are there any emotions I am trying to push away right now?” Then I wrote down this sentence that best described what I was feeling:

  I am feeling frustrated with myself and disappointed in where I am at in my journey and my life.  There is also this undercurrent of hate.  But I don’t know where that hate is directed.

Dude.  My heart was racing.  It started up again just from retyping this sentence.  There is something in that.  I don’t know why I can’t recognize where that anger is coming from.  It scares me.  I need to let that anger go, but I need to find out why I am so angry.  There is a reason.  My anger isn’t pointless.  After revisiting those feelings I am deciding to ask the same question, but focus on the positive.  I want to think about those things I am grateful for in my life.  I asked myself the same question and this is what I came up with:

I am feeling grateful for the love in my heart for my beautiful and healthy daughters.  I love and appreciate my husband, who loves me unconditionally.  I feel satisfied that I am able to provide for my family financially.  I am grateful for my friends and family who are supportive of me in all that I do. I feel thankful and loved.

That exercise put a smile on my face.  But during that exercise two things came up.  Two things that I am right now fighting back tears on.  Dammit.  The whole point of this is to let these feelings out so I can see what they are.  Understand what they mean.

Why did his face pop up when I was writing about being thankful for family and friends?  I don’t want to waste my time or my freakin’ emotions thinking about him.  He’s doesn’t even deserve these sentences on my blog, but I am going to have to face the anger and resentment I have against my father one day.

I know why my grandmother came up.  I miss her with every ounce of my heart.  I wish she was here right now.  I wish she could have met my husband and Zoe.  I wish she could have seen Riley grow up into the amazing young lady she is today.  But she’s not here.  Fucking cancer.  She was honestly the bestest friend, grandmother, mom anyone could have in their lives.  My friends all embraced her as their own grandma.  She was one of a kind.  Gah.  It hurts, and it’s been almost 12 years.

Me and Grandma snuggling. Her favorite thing to do was snuggle her grandkids.

Well, the “Stop and Feel” exercise certainly did as advertised.  I felt something.  I let the emotions out.  A lot of them, and I am still here.  Nothing catastrophic came from feeling.  The next step for tonight is to keep those feelings in mind when I inevitably find myself in the kitchen.  I am not hungry.  My senses want to be dulled, and since alcohol and drugs are out, my brain wants food.  Not tonight brain!  We are growing stronger, and tonight we will just embrace these feelings, however painful they may be.

XOXOXO!