Some Days, I Fight Myself. I StruggIe. I Self-Sabotage.

Some days, I fight myself. I struggle. I self-sabotage. I know I’m doing it, I can see and feel myself doing it, and I can’t seem to stop. Thus, the fight. Me against me. Against everything that is good for me, and especially everything to do with healthy eating. One of the drawbacks of working from home is accessibility to the fridge, the pantry, and of course, those delivery services that pop up with enticing emails throughout the day!

To an emotional eater, that’s catnip.

“So don’t subscribe to them,” you will tell me. “Don’t use them,” you will advise.

But I have had to these past months with my little “inconveniences” that have kept me unable to drive to the supermarket and shop, and to prepare meals the way I normally would.

“Stick to the salad place nearby,” you will admonish. Indeed. And most often, I do. And then I don’t. And the disappointment is, well, wretched. My anger at myself, precisely where I am today.

Struggling to Stay the Course

I have struggled with my resolve this week. My healthy eating resolve. And I’m angry and disappointed at my behavior, my giving in, my emotional hand-to-hand combat in which I lost ground. Most days, I managed to make it until three or four in the afternoon — that’s when what I think of as the “crazies” hit — all I want is something sweet, something comforting, something pleasurable to eat. If I can make it through until about six or seven, then I will be fine. Cool, calm and collected. Content with a salad, chicken, a good yogurt for dessert.

But I can’t always make it through; sometimes when I am fighting myself, I lose. I give in to the cravings, to the crazies that come on hard and fast and are only beaten back by something that tastes good, by immediate satisfaction over longer-term kindness to my physical and mental health.

Kindness to my physical health? That’s clear enough. I most definitely have to get some weight off, weight that any doctor would agree should come down. As for my mental health, when I am undisciplined, when I feel like the refrigerator is controlling me and not the other way around, I don’t like myself. And that isn’t even taking into account the extent to which I don’t like myself when I look in the mirror.

Part of what I see in that mirror is my mother, and as much as I loved and admired her – and I did – I was also afraid of her, appalled by her, and wished she could’ve been less about herself and kinder to the little girl who sat in the kitchen at her side, watching her sob and overeat and sob and overeat. Month after month, year after year.

All there is, after a day when I haven’t won the battle, the fight between responsible me and child me, is to get up the next day and start over. Try again. Try to change something so that when the crazies hit in the afternoon, I am stronger, a less vulnerable target.

Yesterday, I was less vulnerable. I was deep in writing and editing and they protect me; I ate “normally” and without worrying too much about what I was eating (a good thing), and I realize that part of my relative ease was this: My back was feeling more human than it had been for most of the week when I was eating poorly and comforting myself any way I could. Less pain? It’s easier to stand up and fight for a healthier self.

But that’s an excuse. And I told myself — and you — no more excuses.

Women and Self-Sabotage

I wonder about self-sabotage sometimes, why I can go years without fucking with myself or fucking myself up; yet there will be other periods of time — weeks or months, and all too much of the past three years — when every day feels like a struggle, a fight between the good, strong, adult me and the destructive, cruel, mother-resembling child who won’t allow me a “win.”

Women are not strangers to self-sabotage; this Psychology Today post reminds me of the reasons we undermine ourselves and more importantly, how we might stop. Describing self-sabotage as a self-perpetuating cycle of failure,

… three of the most important [reasons for self-sabotage] involve your thinking patterns, fears you may have in intimate relationships, and the tendency to avoid things that are difficult or uncomfortable.

Reason two, above, is not relevant to me at present. But the first and third reasons?

Starting with the third, who doesn’t wish to avoid what is unpleasant or uncomfortable? Though I must say, my iron will and New England work ethic generally carry the day on “unpleasantness” when it comes to items that are not touching emotional baggage. Still, I suspect that both the first and third reasons are messing with me — and have done for years.

Faulty thinking?

Psychology Today goes on, explaining faulty thinking and referring to a “familiarity heuristic” as follows:

… when we are under stress … When our brains are tired, we resort to old habits and ways of doing things, even if they don’t work well.

In other words, what is familiar. Old patterns. Even if they are hurtful, unhelpful.

I learned self-destruction at my mother’s knee from a very young age; I bore witness to her slow self-harming through food, her cycles of mood swings, her bingeing and dieting, her unhappiness and self-hate. I’m not looking to blame her; I am only acknowledging my cognizance of the patterns and habits ingrained from my earliest memory. Behavioral patterns. Emotional imprints. And words from her, when she was angry, that felt as if they were damning me to follow in her undeniably painful footsteps.

Intimacy Issues? Fear of Rejection? Imposter Syndrome?

The second reason for self-sabotage, according to Psychology Today, addresses fear of intimacy (and sabotaging relationships), associating damaging behaviors with a fear of rejection. As I said, this isn’t part of my struggle these days, though ruminating has me assessing two important relationships with men, and wondering if they were self-sabotaging — afraid to fully trust, to ever let down walls and let a woman — me — get close enough for true emotional intimacy.

The third reason for self-sabotage is all about “procrastination and avoidance.” I am not a procrastinator (unless you’re talking about house cleaning), and not an avoider in any excessive or unusual way, though the word conjures my apparent denial — for months — of the damage inflicted by my mindless eating.

As the post continues, presenting examples of how we may procrastinate and avoid, this is the element that applies to me:

… you may feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task or feel like an imposter who doesn’t have what it takes to succeed.

Indeed, many days I feel like this is the story of my writing. Not writing or editing I may do for a client — I seem able to pull out all the stops and make magic happen when it is for someone else; I cannot seem to give myself that same degree of commitment.

Thus, the notion of the “imposter syndrome” rings all too true — my perfectionistic tendencies that are part of this challenge, and the critical voice that says I will never be good enough — very much leading the charge.

Worse, and more to the point this morning, I certainly feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of losing weight and then keeping it off, and I’m struggling. Really struggling. This is about my health; I’m an adult, I know how to do this, but every day the temptations are many and the damn fight is exhausting.

And I wonder what is behind the weight gain itself, if an old pattern of destructive distraction had a hand in the game — a distraction from facing the difficulties of starting over, again; how painful it can be and has been, how tired I am. How much harder it is to start over as I get older.

Knowing the Battlefield, Knowing the Fight

But I’ve been here before. I am, I know, my own worst enemy at times. That too is a pattern I recognize from childhood and adolescence, and part of a lifelong war that has raged and subsided in me for decades.

I know this battlefield all too well. Shouldn’t that help? Shouldn’t that make overcoming the adversary in myself easier?

We all have demons, don’t we? We all self-sabotage at times, don’t we? We may self-sabotage in little ways for brief periods of time, or more significant ways for too damn long. In either case, we have only one choice as far as I am concerned: We pull ourselves up by the proverbial bootstraps, we remind ourselves that we are strong, and maybe we have a cheering section of sorts that helps, that rings out its chorus of “you can do it” whatever the “it” may be. Everyone needs a cheerleader, right? Sometimes, we need to cheer for ourselves, which may be a tough habit to develop and tougher to maintain.

But we must.

So we tell ourselves we must and we can. And we get on with things. A new day. We fight the good fight whatever it may be. We stand up straighter and grab onto perspective and remind ourselves of what is good and working in our lives. We tell ourselves that we are strong. We focus on a win. Someday, a win. And if that seems too impossible, too vast, too out-of-reach, we focus on a manageable goal. One positive next step. One day, resolve intact.

 

You May Also Enjoy

• Starting Over. Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?

• When a Hard Look Is in Order

• Everyone Needs a Cheerleader

• My Formula for Losing Weight Over 50: No. More. Excuses.