Geneen Roth (pour ceux qui lisent l'anglais)

Je reçois la newsletter de Geneen Roth et pour ceux qui lisent l'anglais, je pense que ce serait bien de vous la faire partager dans ce post dédié à Geneen Roth.


The Gift of Kindness

Recently, I drove into in a nine-story parking garage in San Francisco, and after I finished my errands, I couldn't remember where I'd parked. My husband, who was in away at the time, had called just as I pulled into the space, and I was so happy to speak to him that I didn't write down the floor or space number. Although I'd parked in this same garage hundreds of times, and although I'd always parked on the same floor, in the same section, it now seemed as if my car had disappeared. During the first 20 minutes of schlepping from floor to floor, I was the model of equanimity. "It's here somewhere, sweetheart," I said to myself. "You'll find it soon." But then panic set in: What if my car was stolen? What if I had to stay here until every other car was gone so that my car would be obvious? I was tired, hungry, and probably a teeny bit more hysterical than the average person.

Then, two women in a white car pulled up. "Are you getting out of your space?" they asked, eyeing my shopping bags.

"I would if only I could find it" I said, sounding desolate. "I've lost my car.”

"Would you like to get in? We could drive you around and help you find your car."

Before the driver could finish her sentence, I nodded my head, said thank you, and leaped into the backseat. For 40 minutes, we carefully examined every single car on every single floor. We'd inch up on each silver sedan, hopeful, excited, only to find it wasn't mine.

After 42 minutes of searching, I began to question my sanity."Maybe I didn't park in this garage after all," I muttered. "Maybe I took my husband's ca and not mine," I said in a semi-whisper.

My twin saviors remained cheerful, although I am certain they were wondering if they' picked up a vagrant lunatic. When, at the end of the 45th minute, we found my car, I began squealing with delight and relief.

"Let me give you something," I said. "Anything. Do you want my earrings? My coat? My firstborn dog?."

They laughed. "Your parking space would be enough," they answered in unison.

As I was driving away, I was ecstatic. Not only because I was actually able to drive away, but because what had been an incredibly stressful situation was tempered by such unexpected kindness. Now, weeks after the incident, I am still awed by my rescuers' patience and willingness to postpone their errands to help a stranger. What could have been a disaster for me produced a multitude of gifts, as disasters often do. Often, when the worst happens, the best shows up as well. If I (and you) look around, the evidence is
undeniable.

I think of a man my friend Catherine knows who was just diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS). Soon, his hands and arms and legs will no longer work. But he keeps telling Catherine that the anticipation of the loss has heightened his awareness of all he has. He says, "If I didn't know I was losing my ability to move, I would never have found an appreciation of the simplest things." Every time he lifts one of his children, he is aware that his arms are still working, that he can smell their hair, kiss their cheeks. And when he makes sandwiches, he says, he is amazed at the wonder of each micromovement: taking the lettuce out of the refrigerator, spreading the mayonnaise, slicing the chicken, cutting the bread. "I've made a million sandwiches in my life, but I don't think I noticed making any one of them."

Obviously, given the choice to have Lou Gehrig's disease or be healthy, he would still choose being well, but since he doesn't have that choice, he is finding the blessing forged by the pain. The truth is that we can never know the greatness that will come from any loss until the loss is upon us. It's the loss itself that brings the good things we have into sharp relief.

For those of us who struggle with weight, there seem to be no kindnesses or blessings in the midst of the battle. It's not because they aren't there; rather, it's because we don't look for them. We expect all good things to start when we finally lose all the weight we want.

Let me say this right now: There are blessings in the middle of your frustration over food and weight; there are victories that live at the center of every defeat. Look for them now. If you don't, losing weight will not make them any clearer to you.

One after another, my students have told me about the times in their lives they've lost weight, hoping that their new thinner body would make everything they wanted possible. In fact, almost all of them wanted to lose weight because they were convinced it would change something fundamental in their lives: their feelings of self-regard, their willingness to be kind to themselves.

Then they discovered that when the weight changes, feelings don't.

Here's what I know: What you are looking for you can find now. You can find kindness and blessings in the heat of the struggle. In fact, that's when you're most likely to find them. I would not have learned that people can be so caring and generous if I hadn't lost my car in a parking garage and accepted the surprising gift of kindness from strangers.

Try this little exercise: Think about how you might be blessed now, no matter what you weigh. Do you feel joy about the little things, like braiding your daughter's hair; taking time to answer your son's question about caterpillars becoming butterflies; holding your husband's hand when you're at the movies? Do you feel a sense of victory when you aren't mean to yourself for eating too much or give yourself a pat on the back for passing up the irresistible cinnamon bun that calls to you at the mall?


This seemingly Sisyphean task of weight loss could be your best opportunity to learn how to be your own savior. Now is the time to be kind to yourself when you fail and congratulate yourself when you do the right thing, before you're as thin as you want to be.

Because it's not going to magically happen when you hit a certain number on the scale. I know this because not one student--not one--has ever, in 30 years, told me that she was kinder to herself when she lost weight. But every single student has told me the opposite: that when she gives herself what she wants most--treating herself with tenderness--no matter what she weighs, she already has what thin will give to her.

Ask yourself what the kindest thing you could do for yourself now would be. Something that doesn't require money or waiting for a result in the future. And when you know what that is, lavish it upon yourself. Because, unlike cars and keys and glasses, once you have it, you will never lose it.

Dieting and Bingeing, Budgeting and Splurging

At one of my retreats, a student said: "I am a saver. I get anxious when I spend money on myself. I grew up poor and have been saving pennies my whole life. It sends me into a frantic swirl to buy myself anything; I feel as if I need to save, save, save. I had wanted to see you at a retreat since 1999 and waited until 2007 to fly to California. Eight years went by and I didn't make myself or the expenditure a priority. I am the giver, the good girl with money. I have one pair of tennis shoes, and when they wear out, I will set a limit of how much I want to spend and shop until I find another pair for that price. My relationship with food is the same. I restrict and restrict, but then suddenly when I can't stand it anymore, I binge. At least when I binge I am not taking anything away from other people. At least I am giving something to myself. But the problem is that bingeing not only gives me something, it hurts me as well. I don't seem to be able to give myself anything without taking it away at the same time."

People binge on food or money because they believe they're not supposed to eat/have what they want. But just because you tell yourself you shouldn't eat six pieces of bread a day doesn't mean you stop wanting six pieces. And the more you tell yourself you can't have it -- the more you want, think about, and obsess about it -- the stronger the charge around the bread gets. Soon all you can think about is needing to eat that bread.

But something else happens as well. Since we are an inter-related system, it is virtually impossible to tell yourself something on the physical level that doesn't also affect you emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. When you tell yourself that you can't eat what you want, you also tell yourself that you can't have what you want. That you can't be trusted. That you're out of control. That what you want will destroy you. And in my experience of working with compulsive eaters for thirty-three years, no one can tolerate hearing this for very long without reacting to it by either restricting themselves further or giving up the battle and bingeing. Or both.

The reason why compulsive eating and spending (including the compulsive need to restrict both) is so difficult to stop is that the cure does not address the problem. Almost every compulsive eater I know knows exactly what, when, and how much to eat.

Calories aren't the problem.

Exercise is not the problem.

Food is not the problem -- it's only the middleman. It is the vehicle, the means, the transport for the internal sense of self -- of value and worth, of deficiency and scarcity -- to express itself.

The same is true with money.

Anäis Nin said, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." When you look at the world through the lens of not having enough, all you see is lack, hunger, emptiness. During the years we were invested with Madoff, I took countless walks with Matt during which I'd recite a litany of reasons why we didn't have enough money.


"What if you suddenly have to stop working?" I'd say to Matt, wringing my hands. "What if I have to stop? What if there's an earthquake and our house gets destroyed and the insurance company won't pay?"

Matt would take a deep breath, tell me that we had more than enough for any emergency, but I didn't believe him. I couldn't hear him.

When you don't believe you're allowed to have what you have or want what you want, it doesn't matter how much money you have in your bank account. You are always poor.

When you are fat on the inside, you could be five feet ten and weigh 110 pounds and you'd still feel fat. And not just feel. You'd still believe you were fat.

You don't have to be anorexic to have a distorted body image. I've worked with radiant, accomplished women who spent hours trying to convince me that a particular bulge on their thighs or ripple of cellulite on their arms needed to be eliminated because it meant something about their existence, their inherent value on this earth.

It wasn't the cellulite; it wasn't the bulge; it isn't the money. It's the meaning we give to them -- what we are convinced they express about our deepest vulnerabilities, fears, anxieties -- that determines the quality of our lives.

Most of us walk around like the beggar in the Buddhist story who spent his life sitting on a mat with his hand outstretched, begging for a few alms a day without realizing that a trove of gold coins was buried in the dirt beneath his mat. He never, not once, thought to look where he was already sitting.

When we see ourselves as beggars or starving-dog beings, we can't help but grope for more. This groping -- in conjunction with our blindness to the reality of the present moment -- is the definition of compulsion itself.

From Chapter 4, Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money.

Ask For Help


A few years ago, I was interviewed by a talk show host from a military radio station. She wanted to know about emotional eating during stressful times. Like deployment, she said. Like sending your husband off to war and not knowing if he’ll come back. She said that military wives feel as if they need to hang tough and buck up since, despite their hard work at home, they’re not the ones fighting the war.

She said that although women on their own find themselves having to do the work of two people, they believe they can’t ask friends for help and support because everyone’s in the same boat: stressed, exhausted, and alone. So food becomes their pleasure and solace. It becomes a way for them to have something that’s all theirs. Then she mentioned that Fritos were her comfort food and that nothing but the entire bag would do.

“How is that working for you?” I asked. “How well do Fritos provide comfort, love, reassurance?”

“They work,” she said. “For exactly five minutes.”

For the five gleeful minutes before she starts to eat — those five minutes when it occurs to her that, Oh goody, I can open up a bag of Fritos — she has something to look forward to, something she knows will give her a bit of peace. And then of course there are those other 30 seconds — the first few bites, when everything disappears but the crunch and the salt and that soothing feeling of something filling the mouth. But then the magic of the Fritos disappears, and soon she feels terrible about herself for eating the entire bag.

“So what would happen if you didn’t eat the corn chips?” I asked.

“I’d walk around feeling exhausted and drained,” she said.

“And — the million-dollar question — what if you decided to give yourself something different, something pleasurable that wasn’t salty and crunchy? What could that be?”

Even if you’re not a military wife, I’m sure you’ve asked yourself this question. And the usual answers — take a bath, take a walk, take a nap, soothe yourself with music — don’t seem to cut it, especially with children underfoot and/or a life with many challenges. From that vantage point, it’s easy to feel that eating is the only option. So what’s a girl to do?

A girl can think again. And look harder. There is always at least one thing you could do besides eating, something that would take better care of you than food does. (How do I know this? Because food is a physical substance, and a physical substance can only fill physical hunger. It cannot — and was never meant to — provide the things that only other people can provide, things like love and contact and comfort.)

I asked my radio host why she wasn’t turning to her neighbors for help. Why, if they were all in the same boat, couldn’t they support one another by trading off child care? She said that asking for help was just not something they did.

“Why not?” I asked.

The only answer she could give was, “Because.”

That would be a fine answer, I said, but only if you were perfectly happy and didn’t want to change. Only if you prefer to keep using food as your drug of choice. If you want to change your relationship with food, you need to change the way you think and the way you act.

We all want to change the way we eat and, of course, change that number on the scale, but we don’t realize that wanting to change what we do with food means changing what we do without food. And often that means taking a risk. Breaking out of our routines. Doing something we’ve never done before. Questioning beliefs we’ve taken for granted, such as “I am supposed to do this alone” and “Asking for help is a sign of weakness.”

Think about the events in your life that send you running for the Fritos. Is one of them a situation in which you believe that you are not supposed to ask for help? If you didn’t eat in that moment, but decided to ask for exactly what you need, would you still feel that need to eat?

Giving myself permission to ask for help is a process I’m still trying to master. For example: I was in New York visiting my mother who, at 78, had just had complicated back surgery. When the doctor told us that she’d have to undergo another procedure six days later, I was scared — at her age, more general anesthesia was something she didn’t need. And since my usual pattern is to believe that the first sign of discomfort signals catastrophe (a sore throat equals throat cancer), I knew that I needed to fly to New York immediately to be with her.

My husband, Matt, was about to leave for Canada to attend the funeral of a cousin. He asked if I would like him to come with me instead. “No,” I said, “go and be with your family. I can handle this myself.”

Each day, I would leave the hospital exhausted and depleted. I’d head around the corner for a cup of soft-serve “diet” ice cream (if you can call a bland, tasteless, cold, low-carb, low-fat mixture that you eat with a spoon ice cream). Then one day, I talked to a friend who said, “And why exactly did you tell Matt that he didn’t need to come? Wouldn’t it be wonderful for you if he were here? Wouldn’t you be less inclined toward cold, tasteless concoctions if he flew here to join you?”

And the answer was yes, yes, yes. Just thinking about Matt’s coming to New York relieved and comforted me. Yet even though we’ve been married for over 20 years, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could ask him to come. My unspoken belief was that it’s okay for me to ask him to change a tire since I can’t do it myself. But if I am merely anxious, tired, and frightened, if it’s not a life-or-death emergency, I should be able to tough it out and buck up on my own.

Haven’t I learned by now that it’s all right to ask for help? Yes, I have learned that, but I don’t always remember. If only we learned deep lessons right away, learned the first five times, learned the first 50 times, or even the first 500 times. So this time, I learned again. I realized that the courageous move in this case wasn’t handling things on my own. It was calling him and asking him to come and be with me.

My mother came through her second surgery and healed well. Matt arrived, and my consumption of cold, tasteless foodstuffs ended (though I did eat some delicious lemon ice cream for dessert one night). Turns out that my radio host and I had a lot in common. In order to stop using food for comfort, we had to risk doing something uncomfortable.

So, go ahead. Take a risk. Do something differently. Keep learning, as I keep doing, that if you want to live the biggest life you can, asking for help is sometimes the bravest thing you can do.

Merci Lizzie! Très bonne idée.
Je lis Women, Food and God en anglais en ce moment, et j'ai vu que la version française allait arriver bientôt en Europe, je suis sûre qu'elle fera des heureuses.

lizzie! a écrit:

When you are fat on the inside, you could be five feet ten and weigh 110 pounds and you'd still feel fat. And not just feel. You'd still believe you were fat.

Aïe, c'est tellement vrai !

Merci beaucoup lizzie pour avoir tout retranscrit ici :)

Dommage que je ne comprenne pas l'anglais