Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle

A Program of Recovery from Weight Related Problems
Going for the 3 increases: Increase of Health; Increase of Happiness and Increase of Energy

Chapter 1: Getting Started on Your Balanced Lifestyle

V. Letting Go of Control to Gain Balance in Your Life
Since you are, like I am, a person who has had problems with maintaining a healthy weight, had a poor body image, had a poor relationship with food and had not been able to maintain a healthy exercise program in your life then you also have a major problem with control.

As a group, people like us tend to be over critical, over judgmental, exact high standards and expectations of others and are severe perfectionists. We tend to be quick to see faults in others and are quick to blame them for the imperfections we see around us. In order to maintain our sanity in life, we immediately, when faced with a problem involving another person or place or thing will try to fix or take care of it, so that it can be corrected the way we want it to be so that we will be happy and content with it. We will offer unsolicited advice to others on what to change in order to fix or change the situation which is a problem for us. Better yet, we will do it ourselves to fix or take care of it. After all we rationalize, "If you want it done right, then do it yourself." We tend not to trust others to do things which we are dependent on them to do for us. As a result of our over control modes, we experience a great deal of stress, anxiety, exhaustion, depression, anger, resentment and fatigue which are all emotional triggers for our eating. We often nurture ourselves with food because we experience others as inadequate in the meeting of our needs.

This controlling mode focuses the attention on other people, places, things and conditions and keeps the focus off of ourselves. It assists us to become invisible to the world and to ourselves. It gives us a false sense of being important since we are fixing and taking care of things which others have failed to do "good enough" by our standards or expectations. The "self" becomes lost in our powerful expression of criticism, judgment making, perfectionistic taunts and expectation and standard evaluating. It is a statement to ourselves that: "I must have the outcome I want or else!" It also is a statement that: "I must have control of the situation, if it is to come out the way I want it to." It makes it impossible to ever delegate out responsibility to others to assist in achieving the outcomes desired. The controlling mode is a mask behind which we hide so that we do not have to take care of ourselves and the powerful problems over which we have failed to be successful or triumphant.

The amazing truth about controlling behaviors with people like us, is that when it comes to taking care of our need to put balance into our lives; to change our relationship with food; to work on improving our self-image; to heal our self-esteem; to grow in love of our bodies; to let go of the power of guilt in our lives; to increase our level of healthy exercise; to work at letting out our anger in a healthy way over things which frustrate us; to identify our unhealthy and irrational thinking and to nurture ourselves so that we grow in self-love and self-respect, we become immobilized. We do not take control. We become obsessed with the belief that: "I will never be able to fully achieve the outcome I want, so why try!" We become overwhelmed by our fantasy of how it ought or should be, that we do not have the energy to take control of the situation to change it. We come up with all kinds of excuses why we can't do it. We plead helplessness. We become withdrawn from the problem. We act in irresponsible ways around the problem. We procrastinate. We claim we are "too busy" or "don't have enough time." We become the very thing we criticism in others. Our self-esteem takes a beating because we at some level know we are avoiding doing the work we need to do, to get our lives into a healthy balance and we become riddled with shame and guilt for not taking "good enough" care of ourselves. We do the ultimate giving up of self-control by dropping out of programs like this because of the implied rules and pressure to take care of ourselves in healthy ways. It is almost like we are fighting the sense of being controlled by another person (the author of the text or the leader of the class) to do something, even if it is good for us. The rebellion and resistance we throw up to efforts which are good for us results in us not being successful in healing ourselves. This is crazy and a waste of emotional and physical energy.

The goal of letting go of control over other people, places, things and conditions is for us to be able to: "accept life the way it is rather than how we want it." By letting go of control of others, we can begin to refocus on ourselves in healthy ways. By not criticizing, judging and blaming others we can begin to lighten up the rules and restrictions we have placed on ourselves. We recognize that the control of others is our defense mechanism to cover up our self-criticism and blaming ourselves for having our lives so out of balance. By not holding on to our perfectionistic needs for others we can begin to free ourselves up from the need to be so perfect. We can learn to accept ourselves as human beings who are subject to making mistakes, experiencing failure, making slips or even relapsing. By not exacting high standards and expectations on others, we can become more self-loving and self-accepting of ourselves for who we are rather than who we want ourselves to be. We can begin to say we love our bodies now at the beginning of our program of recovery rather than to wait for the end when we "should be able to say it because the body will be just the way I want it to be in order for me to say it is beautiful." By setting standards which are realistic for ourselves, we might be better able to accept the need to give up our "fantasy" Swiss bank account bodies and accept the reality of "reality based" bank account bodies. By no longer needing to feel the burden of taking on other's problems to solve, we are free to focus all that energy on ourselves. We will no longer need to look to others to reinforce us for being "good people" who do so much for so many others. Instead we will be able to give credit more to ourselves and reinforce ourselves for doing such "good deeds" for ourselves. We will be able to let go of the need for the approval and recognition of others for what we do in life. We will be able to approve of ourselves for being who we are unconditionally. We will be able to keep focus on ourselves and our need to get and maintain our lives in balance as we let go of the need to be so overly concerned about how every body else is doing. We will be able to laugh and enjoy the saying of WGAS (Who gives a shit!) every time we regain our focus on our personal efforts. By letting go of our need to be concerned with other's problems, concerns or difficulties, we will be more centered on ourselves when we attend the program meetings or are doing our lifestyle balancing work at home, at work or in the community.

It is important to recognize that the nature of the control issue is determined as to where we place our locus (place) of control in our lives. We either can place our focus on the External Locus of Control which is on other people, places, things, conditions or situations in our lives which impact our sense of being approved, recognized, wanted and loved. Or we have the choice to place our focus on the Internal Locus of Control which is on the inside of me. The internal locus is on my mind, heart and gut. It is on my inner spirit and inner personhood. It is on my self-worth, self-respect, self-confidence, self-deservedness in other words my self-esteem. When we focus on the external locus of control we give the externals the power over us and how we feel about ourselves. When we focus on the internal locus of control we empower ourselves to grow in self-love and self-control. When we are busy focusing on the internal locus of control we don't have the time or energy to focus on the external locus of control issues. By accepting that we cannot control the externals in our lives, we are accepting our powerlessness over them. By accepting our powerlessness, we are then able to let go of our externals as being the uncontrollables and unchangeables in our lives; once we have let go of the power we give to our externals then we are able to maintain detachment from them so that they no longer have the power to influence how we feel about them. After being able to gain detachment over our externals, we are then able to accept unconditionally all of these externals for what they are rather than for what we wanted them to be.

The LET GO System in the Self-Esteem Seekers Anonymous Manual. helps you to understand the letting go of control process. You first need to Lighten Pressure which is to do ALERTS about what is leading you to want to control and then to do ANGER over what you wish you could control but know that it would be unhealthy for you to try and then you do CHILD to nurture yourself for your guilt free releasing of the need to jump in and take control of an external in your life. Once you have accomplished this you then Exercise Rights which is to declare that the only thing you can control or change is yourself and that you will withdraw from efforts to control this problematic external in your life. You then need to Take Steps which is to stop trying to fix, change, rescue, enable, give advise, judge, criticism, set standards, exact perfectionistic expectations or correct the problematic external and allow this other external to experience the natural consequences of their own actions. You then need to embrace the words of the Serenity Prayer by Giving up the Need to control the externals in your life and to maintain a reasonably happy life, living one day at a time and enjoying one moment at a time. Finally you will Order your Life accordingly so that you maintain an internal locus of control and let go of the need to focus on the external locus of control.

Affirmations for Letting Go of Control as you begin your Balanced Lifestyle:

• I will maintain my locus of control on me.
• I will change and control only myself.
• I will grow in self-control.
• I will take the steps to let go of the need to control others in my life.
• I am important enough to work on changing and getting into personal balance and control.
• I deserve the efforts I will put into making the changes needed to get my life in balance.
• I will be able to let go of the need to control external issues which I want to change.
• I am the only one I can change or control.
• I only need my approval to be successful in my efforts to balance my lifestyle.
• I will let go of my helplessness in dealing with the changes I need to make in my life.
• I will make the time to make the changes I need to make in my life.
• I am always able to give myself the time and effort needed to change my lifestyle.
• I love myself enough to do what I need to do to change my lifestyle.
• I will work harder on focusing my energy on myself.
• I will do more reading and writing in the Tools for Coping Series.
• I will put more time and energy into my efforts to change my lifestyle.
• I will let go of the need to procrastinate about beginning to exercise more.
• I will let go of the need to focus on others in order to take the focus off of myself.
• I make a commitment to make my internal locus of control a healthy process.
• I make a commitment to empower myself by refocusing on my internals.
• I make a commitment to de-power the external locus of control in my life.
• I deserve to focus more on self-loving, self-nurturing and guilt reducing behaviors.
• I will reach out to others for their support to help me let go of my need to control others.
• I will let go of the need to use a mask of control to hide my needs from myself.
• I will let go of the defense mechanism of control of others so that I can change myself.
• I will redirect all of my fixing and caretaking energy onto me and my lifestyle needs.
• I will be able to fix and take care of my lifestyle change because I am a good fixer.
• I will establish healthy boundaries between me and others.
• I will maintain healthy boundaries between me and the others I want to fix and change.
• I will spend more time on me and feel guilt free as I do that.
• I have the right to fix and change only myself.
• I have the right to expect myself to work on me.
• I will keep the focus of my control efforts only on myself.
• I will give permission to my SEA's Buddies to call me on it when I get into a control mode.
• I will listen and give support to my SEA's Buddies without trying to fix them.
• I will let go of my critical and judgmental nature as I attend SEA's meetings.
• I will be free of my over control mode as I progress in this Balanced Lifestyle Program.
• I will allow myself to let others experience the consequences of their own actions.

With kind Permision
James J. Messina, Ph.D., & Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.Copin www.coping.org