Happy Thursday Divas! (11/7/13) Once again, here is that awesome and sparkly diva from Missouri, Ms. Justyna.... Hello again! Being a counselor I could not resist sharing with you a psychological theory that is different, yet possibly very helpful in our journey towards healthy living. Most weight loss approaches concentrate on two areas, controlling the amount of calories we eat and exercising. Undoubtedly they are very important, but why do some of us keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again? Even when we reach our goal, some of us struggle with maintaining our weight loss. Feelings and thoughts we experience, and how we deal with them are undoubtedly a factor. We eat not to deal with feelings that are uncomfortable or scary. We tell ourselves that just this one day, which often leads to a week, or month(s) of unhealthy eating will not matter. We convince ourselves that we will never succeed, so why even bother? We declare we are fat failures, so we decide to stop even trying, thus needing even more comfort that the food temporarily provides. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) was first developed by Steven Hayes, Ph. D.in the late 80’s, and has been practiced and researched throughout the world since then. I would like to share two things with you today: 1. Bus metaphor, first presented by Hayes in 1999, and adopted for clients trying to manage food cravings, by Nic Hooper, Ph. D, in 2013. “Imagine that you are a bus driver. You get to drive your bus wherever you like. This is much like your life; you get to move toward whatever value is important to you. So here you are, driving in your bus of life, and in the distance you see somewhere that you want to go, a place that you would love to get to. For argument sake, lets call it ‘weight loss’. And so you start driving towards this area. The problem is that as you start driving towards this area a number of passengers run to the front of the bus and start shouting at you. They are really scary, aggressive, persuasive, sneaky and deceptive. They try any way they can to make you drive an alternative route. Once you do change the route, the passengers go back to their seats and leave you alone. More often than not, you will heed the warning of the passengers, change your route, and drive aimlessly around the city. Never really moving towards that place that you want to be. One day you again see the goal, and start driving towards it. Once again all of these unwanted thoughts, feelings and cravings come to the front of the bus and start acting really aggressively. Prompting you to move away from your goal and continue drifting aimlessly. A few months goes by of driving around and never really going anywhere when you see the area of weight loss again. You start driving towards it. The passengers run to the front of the bus. But this time, instead of listening to them, you keep driving towards the place you want to be. As you do this, you begin to realize three things; Firstly every time you drive towards that special place the passengers show up. Whenever we start moving towards things that are important to us you can guarantee that the mind will have something unhelpful to say about it! Secondly, there is no way to remove the passengers or to make them stop in their aggressive ways. Unwanted thoughts and feelings are like this, it’s very difficult to get rid of them. Thirdly and most importantly; as scary, aggressive and persuasive as these passengers are, they can’t physically hurt you and you don’t have to listen to them. I want you to think about the thoughts and feelings that are on your bus. What do they look like, which one is the most powerful in altering your eating behavior, and are there times when you can drive your bus towards weight loss regardless of how much your mind is trying to bully you!’ 2. Huffpost Healthy Living article, “The Mental Spider That Claims to Be Us”, written by Steven Hayes. huffingtonpost/steven-c-hayes-phd/judging-yourself_b_1287737.html
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 15:32:47 +0000
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