Setbacks

I had a big setback last weekend. I'm still trying to analyze what happened.

I went out of town to a convention and I was nervous regarding how I would eat. My trainer gave me permission to not exercise, since I would be doing a lot more walking around the city and convention center. But what really worried me was eating.

I've been eating a ketogenic diet for the last 4-5 weeks. I'm not sure how long it took me to "adapt," but the little ketone testing strips I use indicated that I was in ketosis for roughly 3-4 of those weeks. I didn't want to lose ground as the scale (used infrequently!) was indicating weight loss. My clothes felt about the same and the mirror certainly wasn't reflecting weight loss, but I had faith that I was doing the right things - and I trust my trainer.

But I'm not good with trusting myself. I am definitely a "when in Rome" kind of guy and being on vacation is a chance to let my hair down (figuratively, since I'm bald). Knowing all of this, I decided to plan ahead. I prepped a bunch of food that I could eat and carry some of it around (yes, I was carrying around bacon in my backpack for 3 days!). I knew that I would be going out to eat with friends, so I decided that I needed to look for the best options - salads, meats, etc., and just stick to those. I decided to look at eating out, but choosing healthy options, as my treat - instead of my usual idea of a treat - eat as much of whatever I want while eating out!

And it seemed to work! I was feeling pretty good about everything - feeling good about my preparation, about my execution, about my restraint in restaurants, etc. Looking back, I was probably feeling too good.

I need to interject something here. For most of my life, I haven't felt very good about myself. When I "mess up" or make a mistake, it usually stems from a place of feeling bad about myself, or feeling sorry for myself. The idea is based on shame - I do bad things, because I am a bad thing. But there are times, when I fall victim to a pretty classic "temptational justification," i.e., "just one won't hurt..." And this usually happens when I'm on an upswing. It's usually when things are going great. I'm thinking to myself, "hey, I'm doing pretty great right now. I can handle indulging in just a little bit of (fill in the blank). It's not going to effect me too terribly, I mean, how can it, when I'm doing so well...?"

So when I had a largely successful trip, I was feeling really good about it and I got lulled into a false sense of security. (Those of us who are shame-based/traumatized - ok, maybe just me - aren't great at differentiating pride from confidence. In other words, I won't allow myself to feel good about myself, because that is prideful and pride deserves to be punished...) Well, I decided that since I'd had great success, that I was going to allow myself one treat on my last day. I knew it would kick me out of ketosis for a day or two, but hey, I was doing so well that I was certain I could regain ketosis in a day or two as well, right?

So I sought out the perfect treat and I found it in a little gelato shop. I told myself that I would not be neurotic about it. While I knew it wasn't the right thing to do, I decided that I was just going to enjoy it and then let it go. And boy howdy, did I enjoy it!! I was walking down the street on cloud nine. I ate slowly and savored every bite. It was nearly a transformative experience. I was going to go home the next day feeling like a winner! ...or so I thought.

While I was driving home I kept mentally replaying difficult scenes from my life. I didn't even realize what was happening at first. It was probably two to three hours into my drive when I realized that I didn't "feel right," but couldn't identify why. So I did my best to do some self-talk and tell myself that I was okay and that I was safe and that everything was going to be ok. It should have worked, but it didn't. It seemed that my self-pity and defenses were up pretty high and didn't want to be pulled back down.

One interesting thing that happened was when I stopped in Grand Junction to gas up. I had the last of my prepped food to eat, but I really wanted a hamburger, fries and a shake. I decided to go to Wendy's, but on the way, I realized that I was not making a nutritional decision. I knew that I was making an emotional decision. I knew that my body didn't really want fast food, but my emotions did. In a completely uncharacteristic move, and what I can only attribute to divine intervention, I turned my car around and just continued driving. I ate the last of my healthy food and for a little while, I felt pretty good about making that decision.

But my emotions had not been appeased and it wasn't long before my previous feelings of being unsettled, or not feeling right, intensified and my thoughts turned to self-shaming thoughts. I berated myself for anything and everything. I beat myself up for being me, i.e., weak, pathetic, a loser, fat, ugly, etc.

After eight hours of driving, I made it home just in time for dinner. At this point, I think I had given up. I didn't have the energy to do anything good for myself or the will power to restrain myself. Even though I made it a point to eat healthy food first (e.g., meat, salad, etc.) I then proceeded to go down pretty hard on some pasta salad, baked carrots/potatoes, bread, chips and salsa, pie and ice cream, etc. It felt so good to give up. It felt right to give up on myself. I had blissfully checked out and it seemed that all my bad feelings had finally gone away - as if filling my belly had filled my emotional needs.

You can jam a round peg into a square hole and pretend that "it fits," but it doesn't fit...

I went to bed that night feeling physically satisfied, but emotionally burned out. I'll just summarize the rest of my week: depression, sleeping late, pulling a muscle in my neck that was painful, avoiding people, self-hatred and negative thoughts and round after round of promising to eat healthy and then binging on whatever I could find...

So, it's not been a great week for me. Actually it's been a pretty shitty week. Which is so strange because I was so worried about the time I would be travelling, when it turns out that all of that time actually went pretty great. It was the time immediately following that somehow triggered a shame spiral. I think I have something inside me that won't let me be happy for myself. It's as if I sunk into a shame spiral BECAUSE I had such a good weekend! As if there is some internal sensor that says, "hey, you had a great week, and you were really successful, but you aren't allowed to be successful - or too happy, so we need to re-balance that out with some self-pity..." It's as if I was punishing myself for being happy about having a successful weekend. No, it doesn't make logical sense, but that is because that is shame-logic at work and proof that I have more work to do.

Maybe the worst part is that I know why. I know exactly why I feel this way. I know exactly how this faulty-shame logic started. I have been through some really traumatic experiences in that I was sexually traumatized by two different neighbors in two different neighborhoods about three years apart. But you know what's crazy? As damaging as that was (and it WAS damaging), I suffered a greater trauma by not having my dad's attention. I was neglected by a man who was supposed to love me more than anyone. I was rejected by a man who was always in the next room, but didn't have time for me. Whatever he was involved in was always more important than me.

That is how I learned that I was worthless. That's the only explanation possible for why he didn't spend time with me. I was so bad, so ugly, so fat, so stupid, so broken, so disgusting, that my own father didn't want anything to do with me. I don't deserve to have anything good in my life because I'm not worth it. The adult in me acknowledges how wrong those statements are, but I wasn't an adult when I was neglected. I was a child and I wasn't capable of understanding why my own father wouldn't pay attention to me. The only "logical" explanation was that I wasn't worth it. That child still lives within me. That child is still hurting from not having his dad's attention. And the soul of that child is starving - starving for attention, starving for affection, starving for his father to hold him and tell him that he's important to him and that he's worth his time and attention. Starving to be told that he's okay and that everything is going to be okay.

Is it ironic or completely apparent now why I use those phrases to comfort myself when I'm not feeling right. "You're okay. Everything's going to be okay." The problem is, because it's coming from me, I don't believe it. I feel stuck because these are things I need my dad to say to me, but he's not here to do that. So how do I get that need met when he's not here to meet it?

How am I ever going to move forward with my life, when these missing pieces keep holding me back. It's like my life has been one continuous round of me trying to move forward, but then having a major "setback." But is it really a setback, or me just trying to move beyond my painful past and getting yanked back by a tether that won't seem to break?