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 6: Impact of Abuse on Problems with Body Image and Weight

III. CHILD Work to Release Role of Martyr in Your Life
Cavepeople could have felt sorry for themselves because they were victimized by Mother Nature. If they spent a great deal of time in the self-defeating mode of being martyrs about how miserable their lives were, they would have let their guards down and not done the necessary things to insure their survival against the onslaught of Mother Nature. They were not given the leisure time to sit back and moan and groan about how bad a deal life had dealt them. They were too busy struggling for their existence. They would have looked down on individuals who felt sorry for themselves and who sat back wishing that life could be better to them. They would have thought it a waste of emotional and physical energy to complain about how bad it is because they were too focused on being successful in their quest to overcome the odds. In the cavepeople's' culture there was no place for martyrdom. They all knew Mother Nature victimized them and they were more concerned in preserving their rights to health, reasonable happiness and energy. So too with you who have been abused both overtly and covertly, you cannot afford to lapse into self-pity and inactivity due to the miserable status you experienced in your past. You cannot afford to fall into a state of "holding on to" your problems of the past which immobilizes you to do something proactive now. You need to recognize when you are falling into the Martyr Role and take the self-nurturing steps to pull yourself out of it. You need to do CHILD work to rid yourself of the negative, toxic force of martyrdom and replace it with the energizing force of self-love, self-deservedness and self-healing. You need to recognize when you are playing the martyr before you can successfully extinguish these behaviors. Before proceeding with the CHILD work, we first need to look at the symptoms of Martyrdom.

In Overcoming the Role of Victim and Martyr, in Tools for a Relationship, the descriptions of Martyrdom are contained. What follows are some symptoms of Martyrdom to assist you to identify when you fall into the Martyr Role as a result of the abuse and neglect you have received in your life. The Martyr role is a self-defeating and self-sabotaging role which keeps you off track from implementing the Balanced Lifestyles Program in your life. It is a role of self-hatred and self-abuse. It sets you up to treat yourself as unkindly as any of your previous abusers.

Martyrs recognize that they have or are being abused and choose to remain in the situation. This is especially true in this program. If you recognize that you are being self-destructive and abusive to yourself and still do nothing to correct this then you have become a full martyr and need to correct this by self-nurturing love for self and solid healthy self-direction.

Martyrs let others know that they have been or are being abused and choose to remain in the abusive situation. You may be very vocal to others how awful your life is or has been. You may have a script. which you freely tell others, to explain why it is so difficult for you to change your lifestyle and that it seems impossible to correct the circumstances so that you can never experience the 3 Increases of this program of health, happiness and energy. You are so busy telling everyone how awful life is that you spend no energy in redirecting yourself to love yourself enough to take the necessary steps to change your relationships with food, exercise and handling your emotions in foodless ways.

Martyrs knowingly set up situations in which they will continue to be abused. This "set up" is a prediction or prophecy of failure, which they unwittingly play an active role in making it become real. If you say: "I cannot love myself fully just the way I am," you are setting up failure for yourself in this program. You will never be successful in this program if you cannot eventually look at yourself in the mirror and say: I love you just the way you are." This is not a diet program which promises quick weight loss. It is a program, which encourages you to change your relationship with exercise, food and handling emotions, and as a result you will not experience a quick weight loss which in the past has made you feel "good enough" about yourself to help motivate you to work harder at losing weight. The focus of the Balanced Lifestyle Program is not on weight loss and getting thinner, it is on learning to love yourself enough so that you will give yourself the gift of increased exercise, decreased fat content in your meals and foodless ways of coping with your emotions. You need to work more on self-nurturing exercises such as CHILD work to help you overcome this martyr role of self-negation and self-hatred.

Martyrs seek sympathy for their plight and seek support, advice and help from others to change their circumstances and yet seem stuck in their current course of action and seem unable to solve their problems. If you are seeking support from your support system in your efforts to change your lifestyle and yet find yourself in a "yes ...but" response to the advice and help they offer you are probably stuck in your Martyr Role. You find it difficult to swallow much of the information contained in this program and yet you continue to attend or read this book. You feel justified in making yourself available to the help and support offered in the program to give you a sense of "I am doing something about my problem" and yet are taking no direct actions to implement the program in your life.

Martyrs resort to badgering, nagging, scolding, threatening, belittling, antagonizing and verbally putting down themselves for not doing the things necessary to turn their lives around so that they can stop their self-abusiveness, self-destructiveness and self-hatred. You cannot motivate yourself to change your lifestyle by negative admonitions. You will only be successful in implementing a change in the level of exercise, decrease in fat content and healthy emotional coping if you are self-loving, self-forgiving and accepting of your personal humanness. To overcome your self-hatred you need to accept that you are "good enough" right now just the way you are and begin to "give yourself some slack" and "get off your own back." You will find it difficult to use the "diet mentality" of humiliation and derision to be successful in this program. You will need to learn to self-nurture and love yourself to become successful in changing your lifestyle.

Martyrs fear taking risks to change their current life situations because they are comfortable, habituated or submissive to the situations and believe that a change would be worse for them than the abusive and self-destructive situations in which they currently exist. You may be so afraid of what your life would be like if you gained the 3 Increases of this program of health, happiness and energy that you would prefer to stay "status quo." You fear the possibility of new relationships once your life gets into balance and you fear that you will be hurt by these new situations. You are afraid that your body will become more attractive to others and are afraid of the sexual implications this has for you. You have become accustomed to being invisible and insulated from others and are fearful of the exposure and attention. You have become used to "being put down" and not accepted by others and are afraid of the possible acceptance and compliments of others. You only know negative about your body image and weight and are not ready to accept a new lifestyle, which no longer contains negative comments about body image, and weight which have the power to make you feel badly about yourself. You need to alter this and begin to nurture yourself to be open to the promise of healthy changes in your life.

Martyrs have a story line or script about themselves, which is stereotypic, habitual and automatic. They rarely change their tales of woe. One can meet a martyr several years later and find them suffering from the same fate they were experiencing years earlier. You have been involved in chronic efforts to control your weight, reduce your food intake, increase your level of exercise, change your body size and cope with your emotions in healthy ways. You have repeated these efforts over and over with little long lasting effect or change in your life. You now have a chance to change your tale and re-write your life script. You can free yourself up from ever going on a diet again. You can let go of the "diet mentality" of deprivation, starvation, negation and humiliation. You can live a life of increased health happiness and energy by changing your relationship with food, increasing your level of exercise and handling your emotions in food-free ways. You can let go of the dwelling over the abuse you have received and focus more on your positive strengths and potential. You can free yourself of the "yoke" of being a "victim" of life into being a "winner." You can get out from behind the insulation and shield of your fat and weight and take on the challenges of life in a new leaner healthier more visible way. This choice is yours. To make this possible however you must grow in self-love.

Martyrs mask their self-defeating martyr behaviors with an aura of willingness and desire for behavioral change however their insincerity is easily perceived by others by the lack of behavioral change, which takes place. If you are telling others "how wonderful this program is" and are still not implementing an increase of exercise, changing your style of eating and not dealing with your emotions in healthy self-loving ways, your behaviors and lack of change in your life tell on you. After being in this program or using this book for the last six month, you cannot hide that you are not implementing this program fully in your life. By this time there could be outward signs of change of increase in your health, happiness and energy levels. For some of you there could also be some weight loss. There is a joke appropriate at this time. Question: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is one, but the light bulb has got to want to change. You might be the light bulb who is so stuck in your Martyr Role that you really do not want to change and are afraid you will be "called on it" by others who recognize this as well. You have a choice. You can end the quest for the change of your lifestyle or you can begin the process of learning to love yourself more through CHILD work and work harder at accepting and loving yourself unconditionally just the way you are so that you have the emotional energy to take the steps of increasing your exercise level, reducing the fat content of your meals and coping with your emotions in foodless ways without the sense that your are being punished or suffering deprivation by doing so.

Martyrs are "professional help seekers" who make the rounds of paid and volunteer "helpers." They seek out counselors, consultants, doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, personal trainers, diet programs, health clubs, fat farms, acupuncturists, hypnotists, aroma therapists, massage therapists, self-help books and programs, 12 step programs, eating disorder clinics and treatment programs and anyone else willing to listen to their tale of "woe" and willing to help them. Unfortunately, they ignore the assistance, advice or direction they are given. This results, frequently, in these "helpers" giving up in frustration and discouragement because of the chronic resistance and "yes...but" attitudes of the martyrs. Being "light bulbs unwilling to be changed" makes martyrs difficult people to help and assist. Often it takes time to determine the motivation level of a person before it becomes apparent that they are "unwilling light bulbs." Once identified however, the martyr experiences the helpers backing off and suggesting alternative places for them to get the "help" they are "asking for." Helpers finally do give up on people who have given up on themselves and are not open to accepting the challenge to take a risk. In this program you are a stuck martyr if you are still resistant to taking the risks to: love yourself unconditionally; let go of your shame and guilt for how your body has become; let go of your perfectionism that your body must be "good enough" before you can accept yourself the way you are; allow yourself to be visible and open to the world without the insulation and protection of fat and accept that your worth is based on what is "inside of you" rather than on "what you accomplish" or "how you look." In this program you are a stuck martyr if you are unwilling to: take the responsibility for your own self-acceptance and self-love and put boundaries between you and the people who abused you and upon whom you have been emotionally dependent for their recognition and approval; admit and accept that you are a human and are subject to mistakes, lapses, slips and failure and are not expected to be perfect in your efforts of lifestyle change and get out your anger about your idealistic beliefs about the way life should be rather than the way it really is. If you are not able to try to implement the measures outlined in this program by now, then you must seriously ask yourself if you really want to change your lifestyle at this time. Maybe you need to heed the Chinese Proverb that states: When the mind is ready the Teacher appears. Your mind and heart might not be open at this time to the redeeming, hope filled messages of this program and you might need to take a break for such readiness to happen. Maybe, the "teacher" available in this program is not the one, which your mind currently needs. The problem with seeking out a new teacher, for a martyr, is that they often "shop" for the "special healer" who will heal them with the least amount of effort and work on their own part. They want easy answers with easy solutions to implement. They want "quick fixes" to lifelong problems. They want to blame the helpers and programs for their lack of success because: somehow they have been misunderstood; their special needs have not been met or they have been picked on because they questioned or refused to heed the advice or direction given them. Martyrs often believe that their needs are special and distinct from everyone else and for this reason they justify a program not working for them because their problems have not been addressed sufficiently in the program. The truth is that if you are a "willing light bulb" who is fully self-motivated, the "teacher" does appear in this or other programs because you, in your motivated state, are able to individualize the messages offered to your own needs, personality and temperament. The key here is to love yourself enough to give up your Martyr Role and take the steps necessary to change the negative conditions in which you are currently living. Only you can make the decision to change and do the work necessary to effect this change in your lifestyle. What you will need to do if you continue in this program is to work on nurturing yourself enough so that your mind will be a" willing light bulb" which is ready for this " change."

Now that you have looked at the Martyr Role and identified the symptoms of this role which are true for you, you are ready to begin the CHILD work necessary to release you from this resistant Martyr Role. You first need to CALM yourself down and begin to place yourself in a relaxed state. You have already done the ALERT work to recognize that you have been abused verbally, emotionally and possibly physically and/or sexually, overtly or covertly, intentionally or non-intentionally. In the ALERT work you identified new messages for yourself which were intended to lessen the negative impact of abuse on your self-image, body image and self-love. You have already done the ANGER workout over the self-destructive behaviors which you have engaged in both in this program and in your life due to the impact of your being abused. You have identified what you need to do to correct this so that you can proceed with getting on with your efforts to change your lifestyle and seek out the 3 Increases in this program of health, happiness and energy. Now you are aware that your Martyr Role is making you resistant to getting on with the implementing of the Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle Program. You are now ready to address the Martyr Role which is keeping you stuck in self-hatred, self-loathing and self-negating. As you begin to work at relaxing yourself, sit down in a quiet place where you can become reflective and open to new messages. Visualize yourself in a three way dialogue with your inner voice (your inner child), your Higher Power (God as you know it) and your adult voice (you as you are today). Picture this dialogue occurring in a safe place offering you a sense of serenity.

Once you are calm with your visualization of your three way dialogue, begin to experience the HEALING which comes from this vision. Realize that you will never be alone in your struggles to: change your relationship with food; increase the amount of exercise in your life and address your emotions in food-free ways. You will always have your inner child and Higher Power there to assist you with staying on track and keeping your focus on the changes needed. Once you realize that you have a real healing team within you at all times you are then ready to proceed with the next step of the child process in which you will let go of your martyr role.

You are now ready to give yourself the next step by which you will INFORM your inner child, Higher Power and yourself of the promise that you are ready to make to yourself, on a daily basis, to let go of the Martyr Role which impedes your efforts to change your life. Use a script similar to this to INFORM yourself of this promise and use it on a daily basis in mirror work or affirmation work:

I promise you to let go of the need to be a martyr in the way I am handling the change of lifestyle I want to make in my life. I will no longer allow my self-pity and "poor me" attitude to block my efforts at fully implementing this program. I will no longer look for other people to solve my problems for me and take the responsibility to solve them myself. I will no longer allow myself to "look like" I want to change, if I really don't want to. I will no longer put the burden on my helpers and support network to motivate me to do the work. I will from this point forward take the responsibility to motivate myself. I promise you that I will be the "willing light bulb" who is "ready" to change. I promise you that I will be open to the "teacher" in this program to do what is necessary to turn my life around. I promise you that I will work everyday at learning how to accept myself unconditionally so that I can grow in self-love and accept myself just the way I am from this day forward. I will no longer allow myself to give the power of my recovery from food addiction and abuse over to my Martyr Role Script. I will write a new script for my life of hope, self-love, self-deservedness and self-determination. I will write a new script for my life of being a "winner" who no longer needs to be invisible and hide from others. I embrace the new changes coming in my life once my lifestyle changes and am excited about the opportunity to grow and adapt to the changes.

Once you informed yourself of your willingness to let go of your Martyr Role you will experience a sense of self-LOVE and will be able to DIRECT yourself to take the steps necessary to begin to do what the Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle Program suggests you take to change your lifestyle.

You will need to do this Martyr Role Release Work at least once a day for the next month or two until you are finding the power of the martyr script lessening. Maybe at this juncture in the program you are deciding to take a break to allow yourself to increase in "readiness" to hear the "teacher" in the program. If so. Good Luck and come back only when you are ready. If you have decided to look for a new "teacher" at this point, Good Luck also. Remember however, that the onus or burden of proof lies in your own personal motivation to change so examine that before you go back to "shopping" for the answer to your life's problems. This CHILD work will assist you, who are staying in this program, to proceed with the next step in addressing your abuse issues which is to LET GO of the survival behaviors which you have developed over time to cope with the abuse.

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