Weekend at a Geneen Roth Workshop aka Awareness Is a Bitch

Spent the weekend in Seattle at a Geneen Roth workshop. It was very worthwhile. There’s far too much in her work to cover in a day and a half workshop, so obviously, she had to pick and choose what would be covered. She focused on having us figure out what we really wanted, how food has helped us, dealing with “the voice,” and finally, she touched on the food guidelines. It was all just way too fast and barely scratched the surface, but I still got a lot out of it. I know her approach doesn’t work for everyone, a little too new age-y and light on the implementation details, I’ve seen many say. But for me, she’s right on track. There was very little that I couldn’t relate to during this session (which was fairly impressive – 850 women in a big hotel conference room!). But I did have a couple of real light bulb moments.

The first was during a guided visualization she had us do on the second day. It involved visualizing a buffet table filled with foods you desire and deciding what to eat and then imagining how you feel about it. The interesting thing for me is that I actually couldn’t visualize the table. Why? I have NO idea what foods I desire. I know what I’m “supposed” to eat because it’s healthy or low calorie or whatever. I know what things I want to eat because they are “bad” or forbidden. And I know that more often than not, I don’t enjoy those things half as much as I think I will once I get them. And sometimes I don’t enjoy them at all. But I don’t have a clue what I really truly enjoy and desire. I could not picture a single food item on the table. And as a result, my mind kind of wandered and I actually dozed off. I suppose my brain was like “well, there’s nothing going on here, may as well take a little nap!”

The second was a dawning realization about how much resentment I hold and how numb I have become. It’s easy to say I didn’t have a traumatic childhood, I didn’t suffer abuse or tragedy or whatever, so I have no reason to be an emotional eater. I have no right to be screwed up. And yet, I am, really. Without going into too much detail, I will say that I recognize the level of disappointment I’ve felt in my lifetime, and I realize how I’ve basically closed myself off to protect myself from feeling anymore. And that distances me from others. But every time I try to venture out and dip my toe in and test the waters, it seems like I am disappointed again, and so I retreat even deeper. And I turn my feelings down another notch. Food is not necessarily a comfort to me, but it is a distraction. Don’t want to do something? Have a snack. Don’t want to feel something? Have a snack. Don’t want to be disappointed? Distract yourself from having any desires or expectations or feelings about anything or anyone by eating. I suppose the only blessing is that it’s not my only distraction. Otherwise I might well weigh 1,000 pounds. But there you have it.

Now the hard part. Figuring out what to do with that realization. Realistically, I don’t know that there’s much I can do to stop the people in my life from disappointing me. So, I have to figure out how to be okay with it without closing myself off to people and experiences that might not disappoint me. Well, I guess that’s what this year is all about.

For now, though, I guess I should be glad for what bubbled up during the workshop. It’s not exactly what I expected and not the happiest realization, but it’s progress and that’s how we get from A to B.