October | 2018 | Geneen Roth

Published October 24, 2018

Stop and Smell the Roses

You know that tight little knot we sometimes call our life? Often, all it takes to remind us that life is infinitely spacious, luscious, and forgiving is resting our eyes on something beautiful. The autumn sun splashing through the dining room at 3 in the afternoon. Your grandmother's lace tablecloth. A 100-year-old oak tree. A seashell. A piece of turquoise.

A friend of mine is teaching a course on beauty. She says that we put so much emphasis on function and efficiency that we forget to surround ourselves with beauty. Beauty relaxes our soul because, like a poem, its purpose is simply to be. For the joy of it. For the expression of it. Just because.

Beauty does not further us along in our careers, help us to relate, or instruct us in how to be kind or successful or thin. In our time-crunched, self-important, goal-oriented worlds, beauty reminds us that not everything can, or should, be measured, weighed, or entered into electronic calendars.

When you're not hungry, beauty is better than a piece of cheesecake. Better than mashed potatoes. Better than a burger and milkshake and french fries.

We have the capacity to feel wonderful and expansive, not because we have met our goals for the month or because we have accomplished something big, but just because we are alive. Beauty reminds us of that.

Years ago when my husband and I moved to the country, I spent hours flipping through gardening catalogs and picking out roses with names such as Mister Lincoln, Pure Poetry, and Sheila's Perfume. Then we cleared the space for a garden and planted a few kinds that looked like angel faces and smelled like joy..

When the flowers started to bloom, I was thrilled. But then I got used to their splendor and stopped seeing them. I'd dash out to the garden for a few minutes in the summer, cut some roses, and dash back in the house, where I'd spend the rest of the day on the phone or in front of my computer, working.

Eventually I realized that I was missing the ongoing feast in front of my eyes. I wasn't allowing the beauty of the roses--which was part of the reason we'd moved to the country--to affect me. It was as if, as the Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön says, I were "sitting at the rim of the Grand Canyon with a bag over my head."

It doesn't matter how much goodness or beauty we have in our lives if we're not taking it in. Many of us are so focused on the "getting" part of our lives--what we want that we don't have, what still needs to happen in our lives for us to be happy, how much weight we need to lose to fit into that dress--that we forget to focus on the "having."

We forget to see, absorb, or allow our-selves to be affected by the staggering amount of beauty around us. We're like hungry ghosts seeing only an empty table when there is actually a feast in front of us. It's everywhere. It's called "my life as it is."

My friend Barbara used to say, "What most people consider necessities, I consider irrelevant. What most people consider luxuries, I consider necessities." Most women consider taking a break for beauty a luxury, not a necessity. Like Barbara, I maintain that it's an absolute necessity.

To break the routine and often unkind ways we treat ourselves, we have to create new habits. We have to treat ourselves with unaccustomed grace, with kindness, tenderness, and a great deal of humor. We have to realize that we are hungry for beauty, not just for food.

In the beginning, taking a beauty break will seem alternately frivolous and difficult. It will seem like too much trouble. But remember that depriving yourself of appreciating all the good things you already have in your life is also a habit.

When I talk to my students about taking in the beauty around them, they will say things like "but my mother is dying" or "my child is ill" or "my best friend was just diagnosed with cancer." Others will talk about their credit card debt or the job they just lost or the partner they have yet to meet. To all of them I say: "I'm so sorry you're in pain, but do you think it will help the situation if you ignore the ongoing feast that is also your life? Will you help your recently diagnosed friend or your dying mother if you starve yourself of beauty?"

The truth is that the more you deprive yourself of reveling in the beauty that's all around you, the less effective you are at whatever you do and the less you have to give anyone--including yourself.

I recently read that we Americans are so busy multitasking that we are doing 31 hours of work in each 24-hour period. And if your goal in being alive is to get as much done as you possibly can, then talking on the phone while e-mailing a business associate and IM-ing a friend is a worthwhile way to spend your energy.

But if you have the teeniest feeling that you're missing something in all the busy-ness, I have a suggestion for you: When you're hungry, but not for something to eat, take a beauty break. The effort itself will prompt you to really look, to bathe your eyes in it. Don't stint. Don't be ashamed. Beauty nourishes; it fills you up. Light a gardenia candle. Gaze at the sky. Rediscover the painting you bought 3 years ago and have not truly looked at since.

Beauty is fluffy, buttery, creamy, silky, rich, exquisitely sweet, whole-body food. It feeds your eyes, ears, heart, skin, and soul all at once. And it doesn't have any calories.

Published October 23, 2018

Binge Trance

Last week, when I was at a gas station filling the tank, washing my windshield, checking the oil, and adding little whooshes of air to my tires, I noticed a woman in the car next to me eating a piece of pizza. And then another. And then the entire pizza. After that, she ate a box of donuts and a carton of ice cream. I wanted to walk over to her and say, "Oh, honey, tell me what's going on...." Then I remembered that when I was bingeing, I would have run down anything that stood between me and food. So I decided to preserve my life and not interrupt the Binge Trance. Still, I couldn't get her out of my mind for the rest of the day.

Bingeing used to thrill me. From the moment I decided to binge, to the hunting and gathering of the food that would be its centerpiece, through the eating (um, inhaling) of those foods, I would be heart-pounding, eyes-gleaming enthralled.

A binge had the power to stop time. To stop everything that was disturbing me: the worries, the nitty-gritty tasks I was avoiding, the arguments I was having with a friend or family member. Bingeing was a way to sidestep my life and enter a world in which nothing existed but me and food. It was, as I've called it in my books, "a plunge into oblivion."

The hardest part of bingeing was, natch, when I reached the end. The last bite would be taken, and I'd be surrounded by the evidence of my romp (which was really more like a rampage) through the grocery store: empty cans, crumpled cellophane packages, torn cardboard boxes. I'd end a binge feeling unbearably full - and incredibly empty. Only now I had added another layer of pain to my list of pre-binge worries: my seemingly out-of-control relationship to food and my ever-increasing body size. The truth was that rather than take any of my pain away, I'd just doubled it by bingeing, and the resulting desperation was almost unbearable.

Having paid close attention to my many binges, and having been asked countless binge questions over the years, I think I've gleaned some wisdom that's worth sharing.

First, we all need to have built-in plunges into oblivion. We need to give ourselves permission to check out from the frantic, overwhelming pace of our lives. If you watch small children, you'll see that they race around madly and then collapse. They put out huge amounts of energy, and then they need to rest. We're like that, too, but we've forgotten about the downtime part.

We think we can be on the run endlessly and be fine.

Wrong.

The rhythm of exertion needs to be followed by rest. There is a time to run around and a time to plunge into oblivion. If we don't build the latter into our lives, we suffer. Either we become utterly exhausted or we sneak a plunge on the sly, sometimes while sitting in a car at a gas station. We grab time for ourselves by bingeing, and because we don't feel we're allowed the luxury of downtime, we end up hurting ourselves.

Downtime is not a luxury; it's a necessity. The food-free version could include reading, knitting, even watching soap operas. But if you are so tired that you can't imagine doing one more thing, what you should do is simple: nothing. Even for five minutes a day. If it's too outlandish to consider resting and either doing nothing or doing what you love, then it's time to take a second look at how you've constructed a life that includes everyone but you.

I also have some advice on what you can do when you find yourself knee-deep in the Binge Trance. Try to become aware of the part of you that is separate from the activity, the part that is witnessing what you are doing and saying, "Wow, I am sitting in my car at a gas station by myself surrounded by $50 worth of pizza and donuts - I wonder what's going on?" Pay attention to that voice at least as much as you are paying attention to the next bite. Be curious about what you are doing.

And at the very least, taste the food you are eating. My experience in bingeing - whether it's on two cookies or an entire cake - is that I am so caught up in getting the food in my mouth, I forget to taste it, to enjoy it. And as long as you are eating, you might as well enjoy it. If bingeing is the only time you give yourself permission to eat your favorite foods, why let the moment pass you by without noticing the crunch of those foods? Since binges are a way to give yourself something, let yourself receive it. The positive by-product of this awareness is that compulsion and mindfulness cannot coexist. Once you become aware of what you are doing, it's harder to continue with the same momentum.

What if you finish every last bite or drop? What do you say to yourself, how do you treat yourself? I have a three-word directive for coming off a binge: Be unspeakably kind. In the empty fullness left after bingeing, the "I can't believe you did this again, what's the matter with you, you are a failure now and forevermore" voices sense a place to step in. And when they do, they roar.

Don't let them. If they threaten to overtake you, imagine them, as a therapist friend of mine says, as teeny screeching mice the size of your thumbnail. Imagine putting them in a jar and covering it with a very strong lid. Since their squawking can't hurt you now, treat yourself as if you were doing your very best. Live as if you deserve to be here, regardless of what you have just eaten. And know that every time you remind yourself that you belong here, regardless of what you weigh, you are speaking the truth.

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Published October 9, 2018

The GPS from the Twilight Zone

The biggest obstacle to transformation is the critic in your head telling you it's impossible. What's the point? It says. You've always been like this; you'll always be like this. No one ever really changes. Might as well eat. By the way, what were you thinking when you wore those pants today?

People have called this inner commentator the superego, the internalized parent, the inner critic. I call it simply The Voice.

Everyone has The Voice. It's a developmental necessity; you need to learn not to touch a hot stove or walk into traffic. When parents, teachers, and other authority figures communicate instructions about physical and emotional survival, we internalize those voices into The Voice. Operative in most of us by the time we're four years old, it can be a valuable deterrent to unsafe behavior. But if, as we get older, The Voice steps in when we want to challenge the status quo or do anything our parents wouldn't have wanted us to -- from traveling to Asia (all that icky malaria!) to changing our relationship with food and discovering our true nature (Your true nature? It's you snarfing down potato chips!).

Within two hours of welcoming students to a retreat on using food as a doorway to their inner lives, I ask them to list 10 criticisms they've hurled at themselves since they arrived. "Just 10?" someone usually asks. Then I introduce the concept of The Voice. I ask a few people to read their lists out loud (using the tone in which The Voice usually speaks to them). Some things I've heard: "I can't believe I came to another thing on weight." "What is wrong with me for thinking I could wear a sleeveless dress?" "My toenails are disgusting." "I'm wasting my time and I should go home."

Sometimes The Voice says you're trying too hard, and sometimes it says you’re not trying hard enough. But its main message is always the same: Your impulses can't be trusted. Listen only to me. Otherwise you'll die a failure.

You probably wouldn't let anyone else talk to you the way you talk to yourself. You're inured to insults from this inner critic who sounds so much like you that you believe it is you. You think you're telling yourself the truth.

For example: You're happily humming along with your morning routine when you pull on an old pair of pants. But you can't get your right leg into the designated hole. The Voice says, Look at you! You are pathetic. Your thighs are the size of the Rocky Mountains. The Voice says you should be ashamed of yourself, and you agree. Look how I've let myself go, you think. The Voice says, Bad bad bad. You think, Bad thighs! Bad me! In minutes, you've ricocheted from getting dressed to feeling worthless. And yet not one thing has changed since you awoke feeling spunky, feisty, irreverent.

Early in your life, The Voice kept you from being rejected by those upon whom you depended; it protected you by convincing you that trusting yourself was dangerous. But now, despite its former usefulness, it's rendering you incapable of acting with true discernment.

After my students read out loud as The Voice, some feel sure that it's an exact replica of their parent's voices, and that nothing short of an exorcism will rid them of its harangues. Even if you were lucky and your parents were kind, loving and attuned to your needs, The Voice is installed in your psyche -- and must be challenged. Because even the most attuned parents see their children through biased lenses. They pass on their own definitions of success and love, which inevitably are sometimes out of sync with their child's needs.

Whatever your parents were like, The Voice is almost always irrelevant to who you are today. It treats you as if you were a child and leaves you unable to contact your own authority. Think of The Voice as a GPS from the Twilight Zone. When you follow its directions, you spend your life trying to find streets that no longer exist in a city that vanished decades ago.

How do you free yourself from The Voice? You begin by becoming aware that it exists. One good way to do that is by listing the ways you've berated yourself and reading the insults out loud in the voice of The Voice, the way my students do. Next, you work on disengaging from The Voice -- understanding that it isn't you. You can begin to separate from The Voice by remembering a time when you knew the delight of being happy for no reason, a moment when The Voice was silent and you were your essential self. I tell people who haven't experienced themselves without The Voice that they need to act as if they deserve to take care of their bodies, as if the possibilities they long for do exist. Living as if creates a bridge to a new way of being.

Another way to banish The Voice -- or deal with it successfully -- is to talk back. My retreat assistant Loren says that when she was first learning to disengage from The Voice, she needed to speak to it in ways she was not allowed to speak to her parents. She had to say things like, "Go Away! Pick on someone your own size!" She had to use foul language. And since anger wasn't allowed in her family, it was both shocking and liberating to tell The Voice to go stuff itself. After mustering the courage to defend herself from The Voice's cruelty, she felt relief, and a sense that she was occupying her body again instead of being controlled by a clone.

When you stop believing The Voice, when you know it isn't you, when you talk back to it (The Voice says, You are selfish and shallow, with a dry, withered heart and an elephant-skin-neck and you say, Uh-huh, right, so what else is new? or Honey, sounds like you need a couple dozen margaritas) -- you are free. You have access to yourself and every thing The Voice pretends to offer, but doesn't: clarity, intelligence, strength, joy, compassion, curiosity, love. When you stop responding to the continual comments on your thighs, your value, your very existence, then you can ask yourself if you are comfortable at this weight; if you feel healthy, energetic, awake. And if the answer is no, you can ask yourself what you could do about it that would fit into your day-to-day life. What you can live with, what you can maintain. What feels good, what stirs your heart. And you can give that answer in your own voice.

If this article resonates with you, you can learn a whole new way to relate to food – and explore the foundation upon which you build your life and your relationships – at my next 6-day intensive retreat in Pacific Grove, CA this November 5-11, 2018.

You’ll learn the tools of inquiry, body-sensing, meditation and the Eating Guidelines that are the basis of the journey itself. Rather than getting rid of your conflicted relationship with food, you will become aware of what’s standing in your way. You will learn to welcome what is already here, contact the part of yourself that is fresh and alive, and live the life you truly want.

Space is open (but filling quickly) at this life-changing retreat. Join us. For information, call our retreat manager Judy Ross at 703-401-0871. Or click here: https://retreats.geneenroth.com/fall/

Stop and Smell the Roses

Binge Trance

The GPS from the Twilight Zone

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