Pause #17: Identity Focusing

Identity Focusing: A gentle yet powerful aide to working with unwanted repetitive thoughts and behaviors and sustaining and nourishing your true self.

I worked for eleven years at a residential treatment center for people who overeat. The people who came there were experts at losing weight and were dedicated to trying new ideas that might help them loose weight again. Maintaining weight loss was the problem.
Some important things I learned from my experience there was that one of the biggest challenges facing people trying to make change are the myth of will power. The myth is that “people don’t change because they lack will power.” The misinformation is the belief that we are our thoughts and emotions. The truth about who we are according to an ancient Spiritual tradition is that the sensation we feel in our bodies when we are excited, joyful, passionate, feeling pleasure or that poignant stillness- that who we really are. That sensation holds the whole of our gifts and talents, our knowingness and our ability to relate to ourselves and with a non-judgmental curiosity, open heartedness. It is also our access to communication with the whole of creation. *

Lydia had driven to the center from several states away and had car pooled with another participant from her area. One night after dinner they were walking back to their accommodations and on the way Lydia’s friend Beth ask her if she wanted to spend some time together before they went to their rooms. Lydia told Beth that she had a business call to make and couldn’t do that. Two more times Beth asked again, each time Lydia said, “No.” When Lydia stepped inside her room and closed the door she had a sudden overwhelming urge to eat. This was very confusing to her because she just finished eating and could remember the food being satisfying – she had felt full. Nevertheless, she still had an overwhelming urge to eat. Lydia had a bag of pretzels in her room just in case she got hungry. As someone with a history of binge eating, Lydia knew that if she opened the bag of pretzels she would end up consuming the entire bag.

When she came to me for a Focusing session the next day, she told me how for ten minutes she struggled and agonized over how not to eat the pretzels. Would she hide them under the bed, throw them in the trash can. Finally she thought of the incinerator outside and threw them there. She felt very proud of herself for not eating the pretzels but was still quite perplexed about why she got so hungry right after dinner. She analyzed the situation in her head over and over again. Was it because she had exercised so much since she arrived at the center was it because the foods were new and different? Maybe she got enough volume but no enough calories. Her circling thoughts were about food, things she was doing to loose weight and what kind of will power it might take to succeed this time.

The next morning when we started her Identity Focusing session I invited Lydia to close her eyes a moment and to think of a place in nature that she loved. I encouraged her to use her senses to give life to this memory, to remember the fragrances, the textures, the colors, the sounds. And to give herself permission to bask in this memory. I asked if she were able to do this and she nodded yes. Then I asked her to notice how it felt in her body to have that memory so present. She said peaceful. I asked where she felt that most in her body. She reported – “All over my body.” Then after a moment more … “aaah, a little more in my heart.”

At that moment Lydia was experiencing the truth about herself. With that sensation in her body she had momentarily uncovered and was experiencing the true Lydia, the part of her that had access to her wholeness, her passion for life, her talents, her sense of purpose and her ability to be open to hearing what her body’s wisdom had to say about how and when she had given her power away to patterned thinking and feeling and in this case eating.

Starting there I then asked her if she would close her eyes again and place herself inside her room the night before right after she closed the door. After a moment she nodded yes. Again I asked her to use her senses to bring this memory to life. When she reported that she had a strong sense of this memory I asked again for her to notice where she felt that memory in her body. She was surprised at the question but took a moment to sense in her body. Then she said in her throat.

I asked her to invite a word, phrase or image that best described what the sensation in her throat felt like. Her first response was “tense.” I then asked her to take that word “tense” and hold it next to her throat to see if that word matched what she felt in her throat. The Identity Focusing process really allows people time to slow down and notice what’s really happening in their bodies in a non-judgmental and curious way and gain wisdom from its knowledge. Then she said, “perhaps constricted is a better word.” I repeated “constricted” back to her for her to hear and again to listen for resonance between the meaning of the word and what she felt in her throat. She was quiet for a moment. Then her eyes flew open she said “FORCED, it feels forced – I know what happened!”

She proceeded to tell me how right before she left home for the Center she and her mother had a fight and she had felt forced. This was an old painful pattern between her and her mother. And when Beth had asked the third time for Lydia to do something with her that last evening Lydia felt forced.

The wisdom that surfaced from the non-judgmental curiosity toward the sensation in Lydia’s throat was the lost conscious connection between the painful pattern that exists between her, her mom and eating. Early on in our lives we learn by watching the adults around us that it’s not safe to trust our aliveness our passion for living our delight. And we learn to exchange our true identity – that sensation we get when we feel joyful, delighted, excited for patterned responses. And our patterned responses serve us well. They faithfully repeat their messages whenever they are triggered.
At some point Lydia learned that to cover the pain of feeling forced in relationship to her mom- eating was effective at numbing the pain. At that point she gave away a piece of her self (her joy, her peace, her exuberance) in exchange for an automatic pattern that included thoughts, emotions and behavior. Over time the pattern became second nature... continued in Pause #18