Yesterday I was watching The Biggest Loser on Hulu while cleaning up the kitchen. (I'm late so this is old news to everyone) My kids were coming in and out from the playroom and across to the bathrooms. I was cooking, cleaning, organizing. Just living life.
At minute 55, Ada squirmed under doing well. It wasn't just that she was embarrassed in the spotlight, or that she didn't want a target on her back. She had lost ten pounds. Ten. Jillian was, putting it delicately, pissed off. Jillian said, "Ten pounds should have been your breakthrough."
They got caught up in this cycle, that is best described as extremely unhealthy. Jillian verbally beating Ada up, to help her realize how sick it is to seek out a killer beat-up in the gym to have a 'breakthrough' or more likely punish herself for being successful. Ada set herself up to be a failure.
Ada has a terrible backstory. I'm not arguing against that. Yes, it's her parents. Yes, she's overweight. Yes, she's seen herself as a failure to cope with her brother's drowning.
But something happened to make me realize something. My daughter walked in.
I turned it off. She asked why. I stumbled a bit before realizing and saying, "She's just not a healthy thinker. I don't want you to hear that."
miss THANG said, "Then why are you watching it?"
Indeed.
I don't need additional chronic thought processes fascinating my brain. I don't. Just like I suddenly realized I don't want my daughter hearing someone pontificate about WHY they hate themselves. I've got plenty of imagination and damage of my own. I don't need more.
It also struck me, in that moment of explaining to my precious daughter, that I don't want her to further play into the 'Victim' role. The sob story. The repetitive line playing on a loop. I'm bipolar, my daughter is degenerating before my eyes, my husband lost a job, we have to move, my kids might change schools a lot, my kitchen is packed, . . . exhausting isn't it?
What sticks in my head is that, TEN POUNDS has nothing to do with it. Neither does missing a workout, eating a donut, or being too busy to shower let alone cook. Absolutely nothing to do with the track playing in my head.
My thinking and my history and my actions are completely separate from my emotions. I deliberately choose to meld them all together. As excuses, justifications, as suppressants for the here and now.
Deliberate choices.
I want to deal with real emotions in the appropriate time. I want to get a better feel for how big this is in my life, because I've got a feeling this is at the root of my problem this time around. If it hasn't been for longer than this cycle.
So, do you have recommendations to get the victim role out of my head?
*photo credit
"So, do you have recommendations to get the victim role out of my head?" No, cuz I think the same way. I have asked WHY ME a lot lately. I know things could be worse, but I feel I deserve better.
ReplyDeleteI guess the only thing I can say is hang in there. :-/ Things could be worse...we both have lots of love in our lives and I try to realize how lucky I am to have that. :)
The only thing I know for sure, is that it's a choice, just like any other thing.
ReplyDeleteI once heard a psychologist say to someone, "You're grown up now. You can either be a perpetual victim of your childhood or you can MAKE THE CHOICE that even though bad things have happened they will not define you. You can move on in a completely superior direction, but you have to choose that and stop blaming."
That was some years ago, adn though it was not addressed to me, it has always stuck with me.
I have no words of wisdom here but I love what Helen wrote. That speaks to me.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if I wrote it here, but a friend of mine teaches about the "itty bitty shitty committee" in our heads, and learning how to fire them.
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, I've learned that the victim role, or any other role we constantly put ourselves into, is constantly re-inforced by our actions.
She calls it the "cycle of recreaction". In other words, we keep doing the same kinds of things in order to produce the same kinds of emotions we are attached to.
Emotions create chemicals in our brains. In the very same way that drug addicts are hooked on external chemicals, we also get hooked on the internal chemicals our brains produce when a specific emotion occurs.
No matter how much we "say" we want to change our actions, we have to realize that at the core of it all are emotions, and the physical addiction we have to their chemicals.
Lots of technical stuff. But for me, the knowledge that my lymbic brain will actively try to sabotage me by causing me to create situations that make me feel like a victim....well that just pisses me off that my brain will act like my own enemy.
That knowledge has actually caused me to stop dead in my tracks in the middle of "victim" situation and ask myself: how did I precipitate this? Could I have done something different to produce a different result?
Yep I could have. I have halted a "victim" pitty party and told my hubby that I was just not in the right frame of mind. I was coming at the situation from being a victim and I didn't need to.
And yes I will do something different. For me, that is the first step to changing the addiction I have to being a victim.
Hope this makes sense....
Yeah, what Helen said. Also this, which I came across yesterday and which really spoke to me:
ReplyDelete"Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: it is only poisoning you, nothing else." ~ Paulo Coelho
And finally, realizing that it's not so much about "never" doing this or that, or "always" doing this or that, but rather catching ourselves sooner...and being forgiving of ourselves when were not perfect...knowing that it's impossible anyway.
Blogger is not my friend today. This may be the second comment you get. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteVictim role. I got tired of it. I wanted something more for myself. It was holding me down. So I made the decision to be a victim no longer. I think (in some instances - like mine) the victim role needs permission to flourish.
ReplyDelete