My writing over recent months has been sporadic at best, and I now start my blogs with some kind of apology about why it has been so long between blogs. No apology today, I have had nothing to say for a bit. I could bang on about how much I weigh this week, which I might, as it is connected to the title of todays blog.
I normally write blogs when something good has happened or when I am going through stuff and need to make sense of it. Well todays blog is a bit of both really. From a work perspective the past year has been a rocky ride, and I have felt very uncertain for a lot of reasons. Some of that uncertainty is generally due to the state of the NHS mixed in with the internal wranglings of a big organisation. This creates a heady mix of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and instead of this just being what is going on around me, it is directly impacting on my work and life, and it has up skittled me if I am honest, or more accurately had, I think I am getting myself on more stable ground in recent months.
What did I start to do differently to create more stability? I might have mentioned in my previous blog about my weight loss journey, that during the summer I was started to feel quite overwhelmed by everything that was going on. This was affecting my physical and mental health. Then someone who worked in our Organisation, just a few years older than me died suddenly. That stopped me in my tracks, at first I did not take any action, I just got more anxious, and felt more helpless, and guilty for not taking care of myself, I could feel myself circling the drain. Then we went on holiday to Morocco with the boys, it was a lovely holiday spent with the family, but all the way through I felt anxious and had to fight off panic attacks on a daily basis. On the flight back I felt so unwell and was terrified I was having a heart attack, I was having a silent panic attack. When I got back I decided to start to take some action. This could not go on. You will remember that one of my unhelpful coping mechanisms is eating. This was the thing I was going to tackle, overeating has been an issue for me for as long as I can remember. I have made plenty of attempts in the past and always failed. This time I needed it to work. I started to control my calorie intake. Progress was slow, my emotions were still all over the place, I was trying to not eat without addressing the underlying reason for my overeating. It still felt like I was denying myself something good rather than choosing a more desirable alternative. I was struggling I needed to go back to the drawing board. I needed to simplify things and feel in control. For me that was deciding to go on Mounjaro to take positive action on my weight, to allow me to feel physically better. Since then I have been able to take control of my relationship with food. I could not do both at the same time, and when I tried I just felt helpless and a failure, which added to my anxiety and sense of self worth.
I am just about to start my last pen of Mounjaro, so just 4 weeks to go. I started it in September and I have now lost just shy of 3 stone. I am feeling healthy and able to tackle one thing at a time and feel comfortable with that. By taking action I have recognised that I do not need to change my relationship with food. The work I have been doing on myself is changing my relationship with my emotions. I have been writing about this stuff for years, recently I have realised that understanding and accepting your emotions is not just a single action, it is something that happens continuously and requires regular attention. After each life event our emotions can sneak up on us and knock us to the floor, we will then always reach for what comforts us. Food has always been one of those things, and in fact it had become a habit and I will use food to keep me happy to fend off negative emotions. What I am doing now is going back to Dr Susan David’s emotional agility and understanding where my emotions are coming from accepting the the reason for the emotion and sitting with it, identifying what need the emotion is highlighting and tackling that, rather than covering that emotion in sugar and carbs. Like I said this is fine for a while then something will sneak up on me again. So whilst I am doing this work I am changing my eating habits, and enjoying flavours that I would not have paid much attention to in the past so now my comfort food choices are more varied and are not just biscuits, crisps and chocolate.
When you are feeling overwhelmed and out of control, it might be time to do a quick inventory of your life. I like to use the acronym PERMA. If you are a regular reader you will recognise the work of Martin Seligman. From his research he identified these 5 conditions as essential to a fulfilling life. Go through each condition and give yourself a score out of 10, any scores of 5 or below require attention, if you have more than one pick the most important one for you and decide what you can do to improve that score.
Positive Emotion: Do you experience positive emotion on a daily basis? Laughing at something that is funny. Experiencing happiness or joy in something or someone.
Engagement: Do you do something just for the joy of it that engages you, it might be a hobby, exercise, or meeting with friends and family? How often in a week do you feel engaged?
Relationships: Do you have contact with someone? That does not always have to be physical it could be via phone or computer. Someone that gives you positive emotion.
Meaning: Do you have a sense of purpose? It might be your job, your hobby or it might be your role in your family or friendship group.
Accomplishment: Have you achieved something recently, it can be as simple as baking a cake, running 5k or losing 3 stone (:-)?
Decide which one you need to attend to first and do that one thing, when you have done that, reassess and do the next thing, and notice the difference in how you feel.
As ever I am happy to talk you though it just message me through whichever platform you are reading this blog through.
Connected Coaching 