Ep #321: Ignoring the Truth

Hi! Today I’m talking with you about ignoring the truth.

Sometimes, when we actually acknowledge the truth about something, we feel uncomfortable emotions just thinking about it.

And sometimes, when we acknowledge the truth about something, we are also acknowledging that we want to change it and know that changing will require discomfort and effort.

So instead of acknowledging these truths, we ignore them and maybe we pretend like everything is fine, when it’s really not, or we tell ourselves half truths or lies that make it easier for us to do the easier things rather than what we really want to do that’s going to be harder, and maybe we just hope that the truth will change on it’s own. Without us putting effort to change it.

But depending on the circumstance, it’s usually unlikely that it will change.

So instead of facing the truth, and doing something that will actually help us feel better, and doing something that’s more challenging, and doing something that will change the truth, we ignore it, do nothing, or do the opposite of what we truly want to be doing, and nothing changes.

There’s a few ways that ignoring the truth keeps people stuck in binge eating and stops them from having their ideal eating habits and it’s important that you’re not ignoring the truth in these ways.

So let’s talk about them.

Starting with ignoring what’s true about where you are now.

One of my group members awhile back wasn’t feeling motivated to do the work to stop binge eating. As we were coaching, it became clear that the reason why she wasn’t feeling motivated was because she was telling herself that she’s comfortable where she is. Her eating is okay, her life is okay, how she feels is okay.

And since she didn’t see a problem, then she didn’t have desire to change.

So I told her that if where she is isn’t a problem, then don’t do the work to change. Just stay where you are doing what you’re doing.

And then it started to come out. That’s when she started to say “buuuuut…” and then share why she doesn’t want to stay where she is.

She started sharing the truth about her current circumstances, how she really feels, how the way she’s eating is really affecting her, all the things.

The truth about how uncomfortable she is where she is.

And when she acknowledged that truth, she felt the desire and motivation to change.

As long as she kept telling herself that she’s okay and comfortable, she wasn’t going to do anything. But when she acknowledged the discomfort she’s experiencing, she wanted to do something.

So she did. She got back to work to make the changes she wanted to make.

I also had another group remember recently experience something similar where she wasn’t being totally honest with herself about how her eating was affecting her so she wasn’t doing the work as much as she wanted to.

People do this sometimes either when they are trying to justify not doing the work, they’re telling themselves it’s all okay so they don’t have to do anything about it and don’t have to put in the effort, or, they’re scared to acknowledge it because they’re afraid to do the work.

They’re afraid that they’ll fail or they’re afraid that it will be too uncomfortable.

So if this is something you’re doing, if you’re ignoring the truth about the discomfort you’re experiencing due to your binge eating, are you afraid to do the work? Or do you just not want to?

This is important for you to acknowledge, the reason, because then you’ll know what you need to do in order to feel desire to do it.

Either you need to work through the fear or just simply acknowledge the truth.

Acknowledging the truth about your discomfort will provide you with desire and motivation. When you see that where you are is not okay, you’ll want to change it. But, there’s a caveat to this.

It’s not going to create the desire and motivation to change if you’re in self-pity about your disomfort.

If you’re acknowledging your discomfort and are just focusing on it, thinking you can’t change it, thinking this is just how it is for you, and feeling bad for and about yourself, you’re not going to feel motivated to change. You’re just going to feel some version of sad.

But, if you acknowledge the discomfort and are solution focused, and are focusing on at least one thing you can do that will help you to change, and believe you can make small changes that will eventually compound into bigger changes, that’s when you’ll feel the desire to change and feel motivated.

Sometimes people don’t want to acknowledge the truth about their current circumstance and their discomfort because when they do, they get down on themselves.

That’s not at all what I’m suggesting you do here.

Getting down on yourself about what you’re not happy with is optional and it isn’t going to help anything.

Being solution focused and committing to changing is what will help.

Use your discomfort as a fire under your butt to get you moving.

You acknowledge that you’re uncomfortable, you acknowledge the truth, you acknowledge that you do want to change, and now, let’s go. Let’s do something about it.

So if you’re not wanting to do the work to change, make sure you’re being honest about where you are now and whether you’re really okay with where you are.

Then there’s the fear piece of it.

You might be afraid that you’ll fail or you might be afraid of the discomfort that comes along with doing the work and changing.

About the failing thing, if you choose to do nothing, you’re failing at changing already and have no chance at succeeding.

If you do something, you’re at least giving yourself the opportunity to succeed.

So you can either do nothing because you’re scared and fail at changing or, you can be scared and do it anyway so you actually give yourself the chance to change and succeed.

You might think the worst thing that will happen if you do fail after trying is that you’re back where you started but really, if you learn anything, if you make any kind of little changes, if you really put your all into trying to change, you can never be back where you started.

Doing this work, any part of it, will change you in some way, and will move you in the direction you want to go, even if just a little bit. So you can’t really be back to where you started.

People think that if they’re back to bingeing they’re back to where they started but if they built any skills, learned anything new about themselves, did anything successfully, they are changed in some way.

So even if you’re scared, do it anyway. Do it scared. Give yourself the opportunity to change.

And if you’re scared of the discomfort, work on experiencing discomfort a little bit at a time.

In last week’s episode, I talked about building emotional endurance. Listen to that episode if you’re afraid of the discomfort.

But what I want to say here today in this episode is that you don’t need to jump into a huge amount of discomfort. You don’t need to try to do things you don’t feel ready to do or try to do a bunch of uncomfortable things all at once.

Start with one thing that feels doable.

Start with feeling a little bit of discomfort that you’re okay with feeling. And the more you experience discomfort, the more comfortable you will become with feeling discomfort.

And it’s important that you dip your toe into discomfort because change is uncomfortable. Even change that you want to make.

So you need to be willing to experience some discomfort if you want to change.

There is a worksheet that I have my group members fill out in my program and one of the questions asks if you’re willing to feel worse before you feel better.

It’s important that you are willing because acknowledging the truth might be uncomfortable, feeling emotions you haven’t allowed yourself to feel before can be uncomfortable, not following through on your destructive habits can be uncomfortable, and doing anything new and different can be uncomfortable.

So when you actually face these things and do them, it might be more uncomfortable than just doing what you always do….which when it comes to binge eating is going to result in discomfort anyway.

So at first, when you first start doing the new things, you might feel more uncomfortable than when you just avoid doing it and eat. But, the more you do it, the less uncomfortable it will be. You will get used to it. And that’s when the changes will happen.

If you are unwilling to feel uncomfortable, then you are also unwilling to change.

That’s just how it is.

So little by little, experience more discomfort, discomfort that will result in change.

So that’s one example of ignoring the truth – ignoring the truth about your current circumstances and how uncomfortable you are where you are.

Another truth people tend to ignore is the truth about eating a lot of food, or about eating more food.

Instead of telling themselves the whole truth, they tell themselves half of the truth.

The whole truth would be that eating a lot of food will feel good for some time but when it becomes too much for the body, when you start feeling full but you keep eating, you’re not going to feel good afterward.

But the half truth that a lot of people tell themselves is that it’s going to feel and taste so good. That’s it.

And it’s true, it will taste and feel so good but, the whole truth about eating a lot of food is that you won’t feel good anymore.

And it’s important that we acknowledge this truth because if we don’t, we’re going to keep thinking that eating all that food will just be an enjoyable thing and so we’ll do it. We’ll intentionally eat a lot of food or we’ll keep eating more and more thinking that more is always more good feelings.

But if you do acknowledge the truth then you’ll feel less of a desire to eat beyond a moderate amount, beyond full, and beyond what will feel good in your body. And if you feel less of a desire to eat a lot of food, because when you tell the whole truth it really is less desirable, then it’s easier to stop eating.

Now, I’m not saying to make eating joy foods less desirable, you don’t have to do that. Desire them. Eat them. But, it’s the quantity that matters.

It’s the quantity that you need to tell yourself the whole truth about.

Be honest about how you will feel. Be honest about what you’ve known to be true about bingeing in the past.

And another truth to not ignore, don’t ignore the truth about what you really want and what matters.

Too often people tell themselves it won’t matter if they keep eating or if they binge. They tell themselves that what they really want is to eat right now.

But that’s not the truth.

And sometimes they don’t want to tell themselves the truth, that it will and does matter, and that they don’t really want to be eating right now, because then they won’t be able to eat so easily.

It won’t be as easy as saying it won’t matter, eating, getting the pleasure, and continuing it….until of course you experience the opposite of pleasure when you keep going and don’t stop yourself until you’re way too full.

When they tell themselves the truth, that it does matter, that they really don’t want to eat more, then it’s not so easy to just do it.

So they ignore the truth.

But although ignoring the truth may help them to more easily get the pleasure they’re wanting in that moment, it’s stopping them from getting the ultimate pleasure of really feeling good, not being too stuffed, eating how they truly want to be eating, being in integrity with themselves, and creating their ideal eating habits.

Ignoring the truth is going to stop you from getting what you want the most.

It’s going to keep you in discomfort, and the discomfort will be there, and will keep coming up whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

And another truth that too many people ignore that needs to stop being ignored, is the truth about what they’re capable of, the truth about the successes they’ve had, and the truth about what is possible for them.

I see too many people ignore what they’ve done well and instead focus on what they haven’t done well and on their fails and mistakes.

Too many people ignore their successes and just want to talk about all the things they’ve done wrong.

It’s not helpful. It’s just making them feel bad.

So don’t ignore the truth about the good stuff.

You have had successes, you have done good things for yourself, and there is no good reason why you can’t stop binge eating.

You might want to tell me all the reasons why you can’t stop binge eating but, tell me the truth about why you can.

You might want to tell me all the bad things you’ve done and the times you’ve failed but, tell me the truth about the times you’ve done well and the times you’ve been successful with not bingeing.

If you spend too much time focusing on the bad, you’re going to feel bad, hopeless, demotivated, and defeated.

But if you spend time focusing on the good, and truthfully, there is good, then you will feel more optimistic, hopeful, maybe even empowered and more confident.

Anytime someone comes to me in my groups telling me all the reasons why they think they can’t do it, I help them turn it around into the reasons why they can.

And those reasons are true.

Don’t ignore them.

With all these examples, ignoring the truth is stopping you from changing.

And there’s so many more like the truth about your body, the truth about the foods you like to eat, the truth about who you are a person.

You might think it’s true that your body is disgusting but there’s also the factual truth that your body is a human body. Which truth do you want to focus on?

You might think it’s true that there are good foods and bad foods but, there’s also the factual truth that the food is food.

And you might think it’s true that you’re a failure or a bad person but, there’s also the factual truth that you’re an imperfect person just like the rest of us or the truth that you’re simply just a human.

Which truth do you want to focus on?

Don’t ignore the factual truth.

It will be so beneficial for you to focus on and think about the truths that feel neutral or good because being so negative about them isn’t going to help you.

So stop ignoring the factual truths and the good feeling truths. You deserve to feel and it will be beneficial to feel neutral or positive because your emotions will drive your behavior….and neutral will drive neutral, positive will drive positive, and negative will drive negative.

And stop ignoring the truth, even if it feels uncomfortable and even if you’re scared.

Go through the discomfort of the truth so you can get to where you really want to be.

Alright, that’s all for today and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye bye!