Ever feel like your eight year old self?

 

Every now and then a smell, a meal, playing with my son, something during a seemingly ordinary day will awaken this sense of a previous self.

 

Sometimes it feels like grief. Sometimes it feels like joy. And all the time I’m paying attention so that I can either heal it or honor it ... or both.

 

Every person you’ve ever been is still living inside you and when one of those people has some thing unfinished, unresolved, or disconnected they’ll always be provoked by something that’s happening in the present. And it will affect how you engage in the moment. 

If you are under the assumption that any of your “problems” are about food or exercise I assure you it’s not about food or exercise. Your food and exercise is determined by choices and habits but what then is directing your choices and habits? Hint: it’s all those people you’ve ever been.

 

Being forced to “clean your plate”, having to finish one food to get to the one you really wanted, being handed cookies or crackers in the midst of a tantrum, and being forced to eat things you didn’t want are all things thing are still directing your choices and habits about food.

That’s why we need to go back and reparent ourselves to finish, resolve, and reconnect.

 

Neuroscience, which deals with how mental processes function within the brain and developmental psychopathology which deals with how experiences, especially painful ones, impact the development of mind and brain have shown us over and over again that mental and emotional health aren’t just pieces of the puzzle but the whole framework. Even though you aren’t actively thinking about these experiences when making decisions they are still directing your habits and choices. In fact, it is because you are not actively aware of the affect of these experiences on your mind and body that they have even more power over how you are living and being.

 

This is not about fault. I am in no way suggesting you blame those who raised you for your troubles. Not only were they most likely doing their best, and most likely passing down habits they themselves learned, it doesn’t matter who is at fault. Even though we are not at fault for some of our experiences we are still responsible for them and the choices we actively make moment to moment, day to day.

 

It comes down to paying attention. Instead of judging all of your “bad behaviors” get to know them better. Pay attention to where they came from. If you find they are attached to a painful experience spend some time there, reparent yourself by giving yourself the message, the love, the lesson that you needed to hear. Sit down to dinner with your eight year old self and have a nice long talk about how you are the authority of your own body and that no one knows your body better than you. Have a good conversation with all the people you’ve ever been about how you all would like to be treated and how you’d like to take care of this body and your whole self. And while you’re at it, go ahead and put dessert on the plate with dinner. Eat dessert first if you want. 

 

And just like that you’ll watch how you choose to engage in any moment change before your eyes. Habits that felt impossible to break disintegrate on their own. Beneficial health behaviors that felt like pulling teeth begin to happen with ease.

 

Healing is magic.

 

Melissa