Do you negotiate with yourself? Make deals? Body, if you do this, I’ll give you that?
As if we’re somehow separate creatures. Though then again, with our component thinking, feeling, being parts, we kind of are separate creatures sharing one poor out-of-luck body.
But I digress.
Since I can’t wait for you to respond, I will continue as if you had agreed with me (oh, suddenly the megalomania of it! Love it! In my head you are all suddenly puppets and I’m in charge! Oh, shit. I’m in charge? I don’t want to be in charge! Don’t you dare be my puppets. You had better all be free thinkers evaluating your own perspective of my ramblings. If you’re not, I’ll, I’ll…make faces at you and be most disappointed.) Where was I?
Oh, yes, so I negotiate with myself. This week was about food. My knee still isn’t up to snuff and there have been many opportunities for lovely eating extravaganzas. It’s a simple equation and it wasn’t working in my favour.
So I started negotiating with my body about this sugary, fatty food habit and how for the health of all of us it really needed to slow down.
Can you guess how that went? Exactly, body snickered in my general direction and flipped me the bird.
But here’s the trick, I didn’t tell the body what I wanted and walk away thinking that it would magically listen to me and do what I say. And I didn’t ignore the insults and walk away.
I sat down with me and let me emote all over the place. I asked myself the question of why I wanted the food.
And then I FELT the answer. I don’t know about yours, but my body doesn’t talk in words. It talks in desires and emotions and feelings.
How did it feel about my healthy food plan? Pretty fucking pissed. How dare I simply assume that giving up the tasty treats was okay? Don’t I know that it likes the extra weight?
Do you? I asked. Why do you feel that way? And do you remember how it felt when we were in shape? That the workouts were hard, but how good it was afterwards?
A very reluctant agreement. Further exploration of feelings and needs and desires. Slightly better agreement.
It’s an on-going discussion. But isn’t that the way it should be? A shared multi-level experience of living.
Happy negotiating!
~Abysmal Witch