Archives for September 2020

Today, I want to introduce you to her (even) less mature although somewhat more entertaining younger sister, our inner Rebel.

Both of these show up as disempowering voices within each of us.

No one is immune from them although they manifest differently based on our inherent personality and our upbringing.

It’s crucial to be able to identify the voices of our Critic and Rebel in order to be able to separate them from the voice of our authentic, wise, grounded, capable, rational self.

When we fuse with the Rebel and the Critic and allow them to dominate our thoughts, it feels like we’re off-kilter (at the very least) or spinning, completely unbalanced, and out of control (at their extreme).

We eat, drink, check FB, shop (whatever your addiction) to distract us from the incessant drone of the Critic, and the tension she creates.

In order to get a handle on those behaviors, we have to recognize when these disempowering voices start calling the shots.

When it comes to weight, no amount of rational “vowing to stop eating” or “starting a new diet plan” is going to override the wiring driving our conflicting behavior.

None.

Unconscious programming always wins.

That’s the way we’re designed.

That’s why every “new plan” ends just like every other “new plan” that came before. Wherever we go, there we are, as long as our Rebel and Critic are driving the bus.

Our Critic’s role is to keep us playing small, to keep us safely living just under our growth edge. She works in an underhanded, subconscious, passive-aggressive way.

She’s both a nagging, hopeless, “why bother” feeling and a tape running through our mind reminding us of all the “reasons” why we can’t do something.

She’s the reason Prozac exists. Depression, fear, and anxiety are her fortes. Imposter Syndrome is her specialty.

She keeps us spinning and “getting ready to get ready to get ready”. She reminds you that no matter what, we’re not quite good enough yet to leap.

Better take another course, check Facebook, update our Linkedin profile, stall a while longer…

As long as you’re paralyzed, you’re safe in her eyes.

She fully subscribes to the promise that the devil you know is way safer than the devil you don’t.

Our Rebel, on the other hand, is way more obvious in her undermining insanity.

Most women can identify her when she chimes in. She’s like the quirky friend that we avoid when we are “being good” because she’s oh so fun to be “bad” with.

She provides a welcome relief from the internal tension caused by the underhanded voice of the Critic.

Our Rebel feels like the sly grinning devil on one shoulder urging us to throw caution to the wind and just “Fck it”.

We can only (dysfunctionally) operate under the tension of the Critic for so long.

Then we cave to the Rebel’s urging us to break the rules (especially the ones we’ve set for ourselves because it’s usually our Critic that made the rules to begin with).

We all have our own unique Rebel but when it comes to women who struggle with weight, some of their Rebel’s favorite lines are, “You can start again Monday”, “Just this once”, and “It’s not fair”.

When we heed our Rebel’s urging to throw caution to the wind and deal with it all “tomorrow”, we experience momentary relief from the Critic’s incessant tormenting and her constant reminder that we’re “not yet good enough”.

But…

Heeding the Rebel’s urging to break the rules always turns up the Critic’s volume.

The problem isn’t so much in the Rebel urging us to “misbehave”, it’s in her ability to provoke our inner Critic.

And their dance continues…

Keeping us from ever quite achieving what it is that we truly desire.

This really unhealthy codependent relationship between the two inside our mind is what turns the Rebel’s “one bite” into the Critic’s “all or nothing thinking”.

This dance makes that one bite turn into a whole bunch of dieter’s drama that leads to one week, then one month, then longer “getting ready to get ready to find the willpower to get back on plan”.

It’s so easy to buy into their drama and lose our objective ability to step back and watch their BS for what it is.

We lose our ability to separate into our wise authentic mind because they hijack our rational frontal cortex.

When that happens, we follow them into their predictable disempowering spin over and over again.

So what’s the solution?

The first step is to recognize your personal drama triggers.

For most women, their triggers are collective stress like natural disasters, Covid, etc, the internal stress of hitting an upper limit, leaning out over your growth edge, getting triggered in that predictable yet disempowering way by your spouse, peer, boss, or a complete stranger, and coming up against a competing commitment.

Particularly persistent Critics are protecting us (although it’s a very misguided attempt at protection) from something that they believe will happen based on something that’s happened in the past.

The reason it doesn’t work to override their insanity with our rational brain is because the Critic and her misguided fear are not housed in the same part of the brain as our ability to recognize her craziness.

The Empowered Craving Freedom Method I use with my clients targets the unconscious programming of our Critic at its source freeing my women from their incessant cravings and frustrating behavior around food!

Want to learn more? i invite you to join my free Facebook group where I cover this and a whole lot more. 🦋

>>> https://www.facebook.com/groups/wildwomanwellness

I just had this happen to me yesterday. It showed up as an Upper Limit Wine Craving.

It goes like this…

We feel a tug and start to expand and grow in a direction that we know is an exciting and important next step.

We’re excited and on fire – the path opens up and seems completely clear, like how in the world did we not notice this before?

We start moving in that exciting new direction, typing a mile a minute, ideas flowing like crazy, we can barely write fast enough to keep up with the ideas coming through to us.

And while we receive this exciting new download, without us noticing consciously, the critic within starts to quietly begin her assault.

It’s predictable yet it never fails to knock us off guard because our critic knows every single weak point to stab and exactly how to dig the knife in and twist it around… because she is part of us.

She carries the imprint of every painful experience we’ve had to date. Her job is to keep us playing small, to protect us from outside criticism and harm.

In a twisted way, she protects us by attacking first.

In doing so, she keeps us hostage to our unconscious commitments and conflicting beliefs. These are our big assumptions that underlie and drive our entire approach to life.

My personal top two are, “Something could go wrong” and “I could be judged/attacked” (verbally, not physically).

My critic has collected a whole lot of evidence that both of these are very real possibilities. They’ve both happened many times.

Big deal, right? My rational, conscious mind thinks these fears are childish, that I should be way beyond them. My rational mind desperately wants me to bust through these damn fears that no longer serve me and freakin quit letting them hold me back already!

Unfortunately, my rational mind doesn’t call the shots that really matter here – the ones driving my behavior. Our willpower driven rational mind is responsible for less than 20% of our behavior actually and it’s not the irrational behavior that gets us into trouble because… well… it’s rational.

That other 80% though – the irrational crap – the behavior that directly conflicts with our rational mind’s goals…

As an otherwise empowered and high achieving woman, it’s this automated behavior bullshit that drives me nuts because I can see that this conflicting behavior is responsible for derailing my most well-laid plans time and time again!

I just flat get in my own way. We all do. And with the right tools, we can nip it in the bud.

Here’s a typical type-A, high achieving woman’s example: She wants to lose 20 lbs by summer (rational brain) but she keeps working late and not planning dinner (unconscious programming driven by a conflicting belief).

No amount of diet planning and vowing to get the weight off is ever going to override that conflicting belief (her equal or greater commitment to something else). That conflicting belief is actually driving her behavior.

Attempting to strengthen her resolve/willpower/drive – her rational conscious desire for the outcome is the way most of us go about tackling this.

Women say to me, “I just need to find the willpower”… like it’s a magical ring we’ve misplaced somewhere.

But…then that same 20lbs turns into 30lbs and last summer turns into this summer.

We’re still blaming our willpower and resolve but honestly, more resolve isn’t going to work or it would have by now.

It’s not a lack of desire to get the weight off that is causing the problem, it’s that she’s equally committed to a conflicting belief.

Next, she tries layering on some guilt and shame for being so damn weak. (We think, if we could just get mad enough at ourself, we’d change)

That only backfires 100% of the time too because now she’s stress eating to avoid her own self-induced own guilt/shame spiral.

So what’s the solution?

I’ve been doing this work for decades and the only thing that works consistently for high achieving women to move past this is dislodging that competing belief at its core. This is step three in The Empower Method – the path to permanent weight loss.

We use the familiar uncomfortable feeling we get to illuminate where we’ve hit an Upper Limit and instead of turning away from it (through food, drink, distraction), we welcome the information and we use it to diagnose a competing belief. Then we use 4 very specific tools to remove it at its core.

Anything else is just a bandaid and the next time you hit an Upper Limit or lean out over your growth edge, that familiar feeling, that quiet yet persistent attack from your critic knocks you right back down again and leaves you wondering… How the hell did I manage to get in my own way again?

If you’d like to learn the tools to recognize when this process begins and to finally get out of your own way starting with weight and food for good, reach out and we’ll have a quick chat to see if Empower Coaching is a fit for you.

If it’s a good fit, we’ll get started immediately. Your health and your life are waiting and there’s no time like the present to fix this for good!