Satisfaction.

In this month's Advice, etc. article in O mag, Martha Beck, the resident life coach extraordinaire writes about what lies beneath. "A designated issue dominates our psyches so that other troubles can go unnoticed." It's that one thing, our mind tells us, that if we could just get it under control, everything else would just be fantastic. She goes on to say "Consciously, you want more than anything to be rid of this dilemma. Subconsciously, you depend on it." The first thing that comes to my mind is my weight. It has been, except when I've been in shape or had it under control, my designated issue for as long as I can remember. So what would happen if this issue just went away?
When I went to see Dr. R, she told me that it was no longer an issue. She said, there will be no more dieting, no more calorie restriction, no more cleanses or cutting this and that. YOU ARE DONE! She exclaimed - and you know what? For a while there, I was. I could feel my body relax, my brain took a break from the obsession and I naturally stopped eating when I was full and just didn't eat when I wasn't really hungry. I was better able to identify the emotions or events that made me think I was hungry. Contrary to this article, though, all my other issues did not just come flooding in to overwhelm me. Or perhaps they did, but as noticing them was not my intention, I just went with it - probably worked it out in therapy, took a walk, or with a pizza.
While I put business cards into folders with tiny slits in them and collated marketing materials, a task that gives me agita to no end, I thought about my new life without my designated issue. A life where I have a fabulous job making tons of money writing for a fashion magazine or some other female focused publication, I wear the best clothes of the season, have my little apartment and travel the world with my fabulous man-friend. What I realized, my friends, is that I am not satisfied. Not at my job and certainly not in my personal life. I know that to chage I have to make different choices, I cannot expect different results from staying in the same routine, but there is something so very very scary about letting go of that designated issue. Dr. R. even said "there is no way you would be a size 4, you would totally freak out from all of the attention, that's why you keep self-sabotaging yourself." Here I was thinking that I would LOVE and I mean L.O.V.E. all the new attention I assumed I would get if I were a hot little size 4 hottie. I guess my current situation speaks to the opposite, though. This place that I'm in physically right now is a cumulation of the repeated choice to hide hide hide in front of everyone. Being a stage manager and wearing only black and working backstage, being a writer, an observer and reporting on what I see. Maybe I'm not as outgoing as I think I am. Maybe I'm just using a bunch of noise and laughter to keep others distracted as I crawl farther and farther back into myself - for fear of being rejected, unaccepted, un-love-ed....hmmmmm.