The Shadow Thoughts

Last nights post started with a confession about how hard it's been to admit to myself what I've been thinking and feeling lately.  I made that comment and meant to return to it but got wrapped up in other thoughts and went off in a totally different direction.  I made that statement knowing I was working my way towards writing about my recent thoughts about beauty.  But the post started getting too long and I never came back and tied it all together.  I said these thoughts don't represent who I want to be and so I've been pushing them away.  I've been really haunted (haunted is a good description of it) by the issue of physical beauty.  It has been wearing on me to the point that it's just about to make me nuts and I wish it would just leave me alone already.  But trying to push the thoughts away only makes them more intense.  Although I could say I've been trying not to give power/energy to my thoughts about physical beauty and instead focus on aspects of inner beauty, the truth is, pushing those thoughts away is focusing on them and therefore giving them energy and power.

I hate that physical beauty has even been an issue for me lately because that's not who I want to be.  To be concerned about physical beauty seems shallow.  When the thoughts arise I find I tell myself I want to be better than that and then I shove the thoughts back into the dark.  What I realized this week, and what made me start writing the last three posts, is that our "shadow thoughts" are just like our "shadow selves": the more we push them away, the more we try to cut them out of us, the more we deny they exist, the more frantic, energized, and intense (not to mention frequent) they become.  Moments of peace only come in those moments we choose to own them.  I'm not there yet.  I haven't yet owned my thoughts about physical beauty.  I still feel uneasy about them.  I'm still afraid that admitting I have those thoughts makes me shallow, superficial and bad.  Because that's not who I want to be or how I want to be perceived I have not been comfortable with the issues that are currently wrapping their tentacles around me and pulling me down into the airless depths.

That long, two paragraph introduction and I still haven't mention what exactly it is I've been thinking.  See, I told you it was hard to admit and voicing what I think, putting it into words, letting someone else know, is a form of admission.

I have never felt like one of the beautiful ones.  That is probably true of many of us.  Living in a place where we feel truly beautiful is hard work especially with society constantly throwing its ideas of beauty in our faces.  I’ve had a pretty twisted relationship with my body.    I was overweight as a child and my feelings about being overweight and wanting to be thin led to a spiral of self-loathing and self destructive behaviors that I wasn’t able to begin pulling myself out of until my late 20s/early 30s.  I’ve carried comments about my weight around with me for over 20 years.  I started my first diet somewhere around 8^th grade and I think I’ve probably been dieting since then.  Even when I say I’m not on a diet who am I kidding…more than likely I’m secretly on some type of fucking diet.  And the sad thing is I don’t know that its gotten better for young girls today…maybe its even gotten worse.  There is so much pressure to be thin.

There are times when we view ourselves and life from our wounded places, from the skewed thinking and bad information we pick up along the way.  When I was younger anytime I looked out at the world everyone seemed thinner than me.  I saw myself as the fat girl and even though I wasn’t very overweight that’s the way I began to see myself.  I was a lot heavier then my two sisters and most of my friends.  I remember looking at pictures of myself with my family and thinking my mom was so beautiful and my sisters were so tiny and I was the fat one.  I still find I compare myself to others just trying to convince myself I'm okay.  Even after I did loose weight and was no longer heavy I still wrestled with my body.  My body changed and yet my thoughts about my body didn't so I've struggled to see my body and my beauty from a place of truth.  I still tend to see both from those wounded places. 

I don't practice the same self-loathing behavior I did at one time in my life. I've stopped hurting myself, started to embrace myself more, and I've stopped wanting to erase myself.  But now that I'm staring down the face of 35 some of those issues are creeping back in.  The need to be thin has worked its way back into my thinking.  The fact that I'm aging, my body is changing, and I'm more aware of where I'm heading as stirred my body issues and re-ignited my fears about not being thin enough and pretty enough.  My very distorted ideas about beauty have resurfaced over the past few months and I'm both ashamed and embarrassed.  At some point in my life, when I was struggling with my body, I began to believe I was bad for wanting to be thin, that I was bad for focusing on appearance because I knew the truly important beauty, the real beauty, came from within--our inner or spiritual beauty.  And so I started concentrating and focusing on spiritual beauty, the beauty that is lasting, which was a very healthy and healing thing to do.  But thoughts about wanting to be thin and beautiful would still creep up occasionally and I would get angry at myself because I thought I was supposed to be better than that.

So here I am.  I’m turning 35.  I’m realizing my body is aging and that I’m not getting any younger and all those thoughts about physical beauty are making me crazy.  For a long while know I’ve been working on owning my beauty.  The mirror meditation Liz led a little over a year ago had a big impact on me.  It required I sit with myself, look at myself, and acknowledge myself as being beautiful.  But I have to admit something.  During that time my focus was still inner beauty and I never really sat with my body.  I pushed the physical away in favor of the spiritual.  Instead of looking at myself I think I looked beyond myself, within myself.  Some may think that’s what we should do.  We should make the spiritual our focus because it’s what lasts.  I know I’ve believed focusing on the spiritual is good while focusing too much on the physical is superficial.  I’m not saying that I believe we shouldn’t exercise and eat right and pay attention to our bodies.  What I’m saying is I started focusing on inner beauty to heal what I thought about my body and while that was a really good thing I also think the more I pushed my body and my feelings about my body and my thoughts about physical beauty away, tried to cut them out of me, the more they stalked me.  I placed my focus on inner beauty and yet became anorexic as a teenager.  I tried to put all my energy into spiritual beauty and yet had a bout with bulimia in college.  I tried to concentrate on real beauty and not worry about physical beauty and yet my issues with my body still exist.  I have worked to re-define beauty for myself by making it something larger than being thin and pretty and yet here I am heading towards my 35th birthday and dealing with resurfacing distorted thoughts about beauty.  In other words I've been pushing my body away, pushing my thoughts about physical beauty away, and yet the harder I push the harder they push back.

I feel like I’ve written these three extremely long posts and still not nailed down what I’m trying to say.  I feel like I’m talking in circles but haven’t gotten to the point, like what I need to say is so simple and I'm drawing it out and making it a lot more complicated than it really is.

Comments

[jenica]

"We should make the spiritual our focus because it’s what lasts"

isn't it so much easier to say that, than to walk away from our pre-conceived notions of who we are and what we look like? it's painful really.

i think that so much of it comes from the way that we judge others as opposed to how we judge ourselves. i look at you and see a calm and beautiful woman, i see you as intelligent and eloquent, talented and artistic. i don't notice any of the things that you feel insecure about. think of how you view your closest girlfriends. you wouldn't ever jump to notice their faults and shortcomings.

so why do we do it to ourselves?????

[nikol]

i see you, michelle, and i'm sending love to the hurt places, to the places where it felt better as a child [and still sometimes does] to self-loathe than to feel the hurt and the old wounds... and i'm sending protection to the places where you still feel the craziness surrounding this deep hurt, i'm sending gentleness and protection and love and good bonding to those places... and i support you exactly where you are in any given moment, i support your process at your pace... your words and your spirit are beautiful... and i just love you...

[acorn]

Maybe you could try the mirror exercise again, on a good day.

I think you're gorgeous inside and out. However I can relate. Turning 35 was a biggie for me - that was the age I thought I should have reached every goal I'd ever set. It's vital but so hard to be gentle on ourselves at these milestones.

[darlene]

its like my thoughts and past and issues have bounced out of my head onto this page. its funny because here i am again, six months before i turn forty and am determined to diet my way to some mythical body before i turn because somehow if that happens then everything will be wonderful. and then i remind myself that everything is wonderful so why do i still feel this need to go backwards ... thoughts i have been struggling with and yet can't articulate. maybe i should try to journal it out.

am right here with you ... i so understand ... xo

[Elizabeth]

oh Michelle, it breaks my heart-- it really does-- if only you could see as I see you-- RADIANT and UTTERLY BEAUTIFUL. But I totally understand where you are coming from and I think part of the reason it is so hard to write out the feelings is that they are so deeply embedded and warped into our very sense of who we are it's almost impossible to follow the thread to its source as it keeps looping in and out and over and under all of our mental and emotional wiring.

keep up the detective work-- you WILL find the words and we will all be freed by them

[kristen]

"I hate that physical beauty has even been an issue for me lately because that's not who I want to be."

For a long time I fought this - the side of me that is so consumed with how I look. And at closer to 44 than 43 (gulp), I seem to be more focused on my physical than necessary.

As I get clearer and better about myself mentally, I find that my physical self has become more important - as though clearing away all that mental crap has paved the way to how I represent physically.

I have so much more to say about this, but I don't want to clog your comments.

Standing next to you sister, holding your hand. xo

[chocolate covered musings]

you very eloquently write about something that i still struggle with myself. i am still not sure how to deal with my negative body image. sometimes i can accept myself for the beauty that i am - reminding myself that i chose this body in this life for a really specific reason and wanting something different is to be out of alignment with my true essence.

so much to think about. thankyou for writing this. you give me so much to think about here. again i offer you whatever support i am able to give you.

(oh, and when you get a minute, please email me your postal address?)