sometimes....

[goddessfarmer]

Sometimes there are things that I don't feel comfortable posting even to my tightest filter here. Not because they would necessarily offend anyone, but sometimes because it contains information that I'm not at liberty to disclose or sometimes simple just because I feel like I am tooting my own horn, kind of like the reverse of whining. Life is good. I am doing things. Some of them are new. Some of the new things are things for which I've been very quietly preparing (sometimes so quietly I didn't know I was doing it.) Some are things I've been actively planning for some time.

Something I've noted more and more is that not only do I not use negative phrasing very much in my own speech and writing, but I am getting urges to comment on my friend's journals when they use negative phrasing. For example, someone started a post recently with "I hate my body". I find that statement not only unproductive, but actually a hindrance to changing the situation. For whatever a negative situation may be, the surest route to positive change is to embrace the problem at it's root, and find the right fertilizer to bring balance into the system. I know this is a simplistic statement, but personally, I've never changed anything by hating it. Find something positive to replace the "I hate" statement. Especially in the case of one's body, we only get one, so we'd better love and nurture it. Sometimes we have to exercise "tough love" and not eat all the ice cream ever, but without appropriate self-care, there is no way we can carry that to others. Happiness starts at home, in ours selves.

Comments

[ialdaboth.livejournal.com]

I think that body and soul are basically different names for the same thing, so that "I hate my body" is just the same as "I hate myself"--as Eliot says, soul is to body as cutting is to an axe.

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

My personal take is that body and soul are different parts of our organism, along with a third part, spirit. I think without healthy relationship of all three of these parts our body will wither/become ill. That's not to say that there aren't factors outside of soul and spirit that can cause harm to the body, but all three must be healthily nurtured for each to be free from dis-ease. "Body" is the part I can touch and feel: blood and bone. "Soul" is that indescribable "thing that is uniquely me" and yet also can connect so easily at the level of collective unconscious with that which is uniquely you. "Spirit" is that part of my being that brings the soul and the body together, it is my inspiration, my get-up-and-go, the spark that light the fire that illuminates my soul. When the 3 are united and working harmoniously together it is fairly easy to live in this human state that we like to call "happy". On a higher level, when the three become one, we may achieve nirvana.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

(sorry, that was me on the anonymous post previously. hadn't remembered to log in.)

I think that statements of the form "I hate my body", especially when made in a public forum, are sometimes very useful. For example, if the person stating that has nothing visibly out of the ordinary with their body, then the feedback she (i'm saying "she", since I think the vast majority of people who would make that statement are female) receives from people who care about her may cause her to learn things she didn't know before (her friends care when she makes statements like that, they don't think there's anything the matter with her body, they think she's beautiful or striking or whatever positive adjective applies to her).

Some people say it because they don't know anything else to say that would represent how they feel. Some people say it because they haven't thought about what saying it would mean about them, and their relationship to themselves. Some people actually do hate their bodies, and wish they lacked some physical trait that is hateful to them.

Some people say it simply to get attention, which may in itself be useful (it's hard to get attention if you're only talking to yourself...).

Not amazingly sure whether this has any point other than "their mileage may vary". :)

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

I think there are other, more constructive, words to use that could elicit a supportive response from one's friends and describe the feeling or problem. For example: I hate my body, I feel so fat today. (I could say this as well as you, don't feel picked on) to: I feel fat and I dislike this feeling. What can I do to feel better? or I have insomnia! I hate my body! to I am really upset that I have insomnia. So still expressing the feeling, but in a more constructive way.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Sorry you found what I wrote offensive. It was 3AM in the morning, I was exhausted and at that point I was hating my physical body because it's broken in so many ways and one of them was not letting me sleep when I was bleary eyed and falling down from exhaustion.

I don't hate myself. I'm quite happy with the person I am inside. I am a good and usually positive person. Unlike other people we both know, it's very rare that I post such a blatantly negative statement.

When I say I hate my body, I hate that my body is broken and has so many physical limitations. No matter how hard I try to overcome those limitations, no matter how hard I try to push on through, in the end my body is physically broken and it gets worse instead of better. I can't do the things I want to do, even the simplest things, like feeding myself, exhaust me some days. It will take me many days to recover from the the pain and physical exhaustion from the gardening I did on Saturday. And I hate that fact. I see this as a weakness and I hate being weak and having to depend on others.

Now maybe I could have articulated it better, but like I said it was 3AM and I wasn't sleeping.

As for doing something about it, I'm trying, but western medicine has failed me continually. As a woman with chronic pain, I am written off as looking for attention, its psychogenic, I'm drug seeking, I'm depressed and so on...
I'm working on alternatives and they seem to be helping, a year ago I was much worse. I haven't mentioned much of this on LJ because it is so negative, I keep it to myself mostly. I guess at 3AM my filters are a little weaker.

[chocorua.livejournal.com]

I don't think "offensive" is the right word for what GF originally expressed. It was more like "Maybe this will un-jam that zipper..."

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

Chocorua is right, I did not find it offensive. I understand that you do have a lot of physical limitations. Reframing how we think about those limitations can help us to cope with them and help work through the causes with a clearer mind. It was not my intent to single you out, either. I see this sort of negative thinking a lot. I also have seen, both in myself and others, how much we can change on the physical level by changing how we think about a problem.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

I find that statement not only unproductive, but actually a hindrance to changing the situation.

I have discovered that for myself, not expressing feelings is a bigger hindrance to change than anything else. Stating things in a positive way when I can is preferable, but if that's not where I am, I get more out of admitting I hate my body right now (or whatever) and moving on from that point than trying to force myself to express it some other way (or not at all, which is what censoring myself usually leads to). There has been *much* positive change in my life since I started letting myself say those things. Your mileage obviously varies, but I wanted to share another viewpoint.

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

No where did I say to not express feelings. My point is to think about the words we use to express them.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

No where did I say to not express feelings

I get that, and I didn't mean to suggest that you did. I'm saying that for me, that has been the result of policing how I express them, and I've been better off not doing that.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

I also want to say I completely understand that thoughts and words influence feelings; I agree with you on that. That's why I put serious effort into doing exactly as you suggest for several years. I see why that might work for some people - maybe even most people. But it worked the other way for me, because I was concentrating more on how I said things to myself than on figuring out what I was feeling in the first place, and that was more of a block to change for me than the negative phrases were. I went back to letting myself state my feelings however I wanted, but also trying to examine whatever came out. "I feel like an idiot." "It's ok to feel that way, but I'm not really an idiot" and later thinking about what made me feel that way and what I could differently was more useful than halting before the first statement to try to reframe it as something more positive.