You can’t make me!!!!
I love this blocker as it sounds so much like me, and I would think there is an element of this in everyone.
When we were children most of our life was determined by other people. Our parents and other caregivers, our teachers, other leaders, church, and society all had a say in how we behaved.
For some of us, those authority figures were very strict and had very clear rules for how we were to behave. The time we went to bed and got up, what we wore, what we ate, and when. If we questioned it, we were probably told something like – “do it because I say so” Or maybe it wasn’t that blunt, but the message was still “Do it my way because I know what is best”, and so we complied. It was the way things were. (or maybe we appeared to comply, but like me, I would read under the blankets with a torch)
Now we are adults.
We have complete control of our lives, and we can choose exactly what we do.
We can choose to stay up late; we can choose to have cake for breakfast and drink lots of coffee and watch scary movies. And this is how many young adults behave once they are out of their parent’s household and it is fun – for a while.
But now we get tired if we stay up too late. We are gaining weight and feeling low in energy from the poor diet. We are not getting all our work done, and spending way too much time scrolling TikTok reels. Who is going to tell us to stop?
We must become our own parents. We need to lay down rules for ourselves.
So, we check out a diet that looks good, and we believe will work and go and buy all the ingredients we are keen on for a few days, or even a few weeks, then we find that we are craving more junk food than we were previously.
We stay up late, even though we know that tiredness leads us to crave sugary foods. So, we have set an alarm to tell us when to go to bed, and when it chimes, we ignore it.
We read about how good exercise is for us in every area and think we really must incorporate this into our lives, and then we don’t.
What is going on here? Why are we not doing the things we want to do and know to be good for us?
We are rebelling against our parents!!!
We are all made up of three parts – Adult, parent, and child.
The adult is the one who understands what is happening and knows what is good for us. The adult studies out what we need and goes and buys healthy food.
The parent is reminiscent of our parents. We can hear the old messages; we sometimes say the same things to our children. That parenting is part of us, no matter how much we disagree with how we were brought up.
And our child is exactly that. The child. The little person who wants what they want, and they want it now. They do not like to be told no, and they are willing to sneak around any rules that are put in place.
Even though the parent is now us, the desire to rebel is still there.
When we set up rules for ourselves to follow, we are also setting up the child to rebel. We are old enough now to say to the parent – “You can’t make me.”
Have you ever felt like a push me, pull me? This is an animal in the book Dr. Doolittle, and it had a head at each end and kept trying to go in opposite directions at the same time.
Is this what dieting feels like for you?
You eat healthy all day and then eat a whole block of chocolate or a tub of ice cream.
You exercise every day for a week and then not at all the next week.
You get up early a few days and then your late nights catch up with you.
You write your to-do lists every night but then forget about them the next day.
How can you stop the rebellion?
A big part of growing up is becoming aware that our parents did the best they could with the knowledge that they had, and some had very little awareness of how to parent. The way they were parented affected them. The times and events around them affected them. Even the best of parents did not get everything right.
It can feel ungrateful to voice complaints against our parents, especially when we understand how much they tried and most wanted the best for their children, but most of us have at least a few things that we feel our parents got wrong. There were rules we disagree with, or we are upset at the punishments we received or how unfair some of the accusations were.
My oldest son is addicted to coca cola and he says it is my fault because when he was a child I was very strict about no sweets at all. We ate a very healthy diet, and he didn’t know about junk food until middle primary school going to Mcdonalds’ parties. So he says because I was so strict he has had to rebel and drinks soft drinks all day!!
The rebellious child now needs a voice.
They want to be heard and cared about. And this is where EFT tapping is wonderful. This is how we can safely voice our feelings, our anger, our hurt, and all the things we thought were unfair. Say them, express them, let them out. We can yell and scream or write it out. If there is anger and hurt you can punch a pillow, or scream into the air, anything to let the feelings go.
The healing of the feelings is in the expression of the feelings.
Keeping feelings bottled up does not make them go away. We need to let them out. Anger is a common one for most of us to keep bottled up and it expresses itself in so many unhealthy ways. It can be anger at others for trivial things like a person in the traffic in front of you not letting you in. Or you are angry at a spouse and instead of saying what you really want, you go and eat.
If you find yourself always angry then it probably has nothing to do with what is happening right now and stems back to things that happened when you were a child. With a little bit of effort, this old anger can be released, and like magic, all the current anger and accompanying behaviours, like overeating go away.
Is this your weight loss blocker?
Think how it feels when you set a rule for yourself. Do you agree and follow through or do you find yourself as a push me, pull me, and pull in opposite directions?
If you would like to discuss this further book a free 30-minute chat and can unravel what is really going on. https://kaybayly.as.me/askmeanthing