White Picket Fence Counseling Center Newsletter Archives

Making Friends With the World

When you’re dealing with an eating disorder, you may feel very isolated and separate from the rest of the human race. Relationships can be difficult, and healing some of your patterns may be a central theme in your recovery.

Here’s a different slant on working on your relationships: How can you be more social and friendly when you’re out and about in the world?

Set this as your intention in the morning, and think about the opportunities you may have ahead of you. For example, if you tend to walk by yourself over the lunch hour, ask someone to come along. If you usually keep to yourself, make eye contact with the people you pass, or even say, “Hi!” Practice saying, “Yes,” when someone invites you to do something social.

If you have a serious social phobia or agoraphobia, you can get help for that. If, like many of us, you’re simply feeling hesitant and unsure of how other people will respond to you, start small. I predict that once you’re being friendlier, you’ll get on a roll.

Be a good friend to the world by being an attentive listener – whether it’s two minutes to ask the cashier at the grocery store how her day is going, or half an hour to hear out a co-worker who’s having a hard time with something.

Strive to be an upbeat influence on the conversations you have. Avoid gossiping or talking about other people. Change the subject if a conversation is focused on something negative.

When you make friends with the world, you create positive feelings that ripple forward and come right back to you. You’ll attract more love, friendliness and support from other people, and you’ll boost your self-esteem with the knowledge that you’ve made someone else’s day a little brighter.

Be Your Own Best Friend

Relationships can be challenging, and are often at the root of emotional issues and addictions. While you’re doing some of the work to repair and rebuild your relationships with others, you can start by being your own best friend.

It’s very empowering to know that we can not only take of ourselves, but that we are complete on our own without needing someone else to fill anything in. Being that comfortable with oneself starts from the self-awareness from having looked within. Journaling, therapy and 12-step programs are all excellent ways to accomplish that.

This process will also help build acceptance – first for yourself, and then also for others. It’s a way of validating whatever thoughts or feelings come up, and then working on healing or changing them. This way, nothing – and no one – has to be “wrong.” It just is what it is, until it is something different.

The title of this blog post was inspired by a book I’ve had for many years, called How to Be Your Own Best Friend by Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz. They have some really neat suggestions, including:

• Having a “bedroom slipper day” – my version of this is allowing yourself a day to just be at home, not pushing yourself beyond what is healthy for you
• Seeing the source of happiness as being within, not outside of ourselves somewhere (a good reminder)
• Just as the title says: Being  your own best friend is the ultimate friendship; liking yourself, feeling fulfilled and true to yourself

Your Body is Your Friend

When you have distorted or unhealthy body image, it can cause you to want to harm yourself instead of love yourself. So before we move on to look at how to be a better friend to yourself and others, let’s talk about how to understand and start to heal your body image issues.

One of my favorite tools for self-awareness is journaling. When you put pen to paper, no one will see what you’ve written unless you choose to show them. This creates an atmosphere of safety and honesty that can lead to some powerful insights and discoveries about yourself.

You can find ready-made workbooks or journaling prompts about many different topics, or you can simply ask yourself a question at the top of the page and write down your answer.

If you really want to get to know yourself, join a 12-step program. It doesn’t need to be one related to food – choosing a group like Al-Anon or Clutterers Anonymous may be less intimidating, while still giving you access to the self-awareness and growth that come from working the 12 steps.

Therapy is another useful tool for understanding the body image issues that are affecting your relationships with yourself and others.

Gentle movement choices like we discussed recently on the blog are important forms of self-care that can create a self-nurturing relationship with your body. Things like yoga, relaxation and massage can all help you feel better in your body.

Choose your clothes carefully. Do the fabrics feels good against your skin, or is anything constricting or irritating you? Do your shoes support you in comfort as you move around, or are they too tight or worn down?

Do you make an effort to feel good about your appearance, choosing clothing and accessories in flattering colors and shapes? Do you practice good hygiene and take an extra few minutes to brush your hair?

In that same article about movement choices, I also mentioned my father’s advice about putting on my “tennis whites” – looking the part really did make me feel more confident and comfortable in my own skin – and as a tennis player!

When you can learn to treat yourself better at the most fundamental level of body care and awareness, you’re well on your to being your own best friend. We’ll talk more about that next week.

The Love of Friendship

People say love a lot, especially at this time of year when Valentine’s Day is approaching. Instead of focusing on red hearts and romance, let’s instead look at the love of friendship. Friendship requires kindness and compassion, qualities that are also very important in how we relate to ourselves.

The more freely we can express kindness, compassion and friendship, the more harmoniously we can live together as humans, and the better we feel about ourselves.

Relationship problems are commonly an underlying issue behind disordered eating and other substance abuse problems, problems at work, and difficult emotions such as depression, frustration and anger.

If our relationships with self and others are more peaceful, we feel better about ourselves and there are fewer reasons to use an addictive substance or act out.

One approach to improving our relationships is to investigate the “love languages” that the other people in our lives are speaking, and how those compare to the love language we use. The concept of love languages was presented in a book by Gary Chapman, as I described in an earlier blog post about building relationships:

The premise of The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman, is that we all have different ways of expressing ourselves in relationships. We learn a love language as we grow up, but then we may learn other ones as we grow a bit older and independent of our families. People will automatically give love in the way they're used to receiving it, or in the way they like to receive it, and that can lead to misunderstandings, hurt feelings and conflict.

Chapman's five love languages are: words of affirmation (kind, loving statements about the other person), quality time (spending time together and being attentive to the other person), receiving gifts (small or large, gifts that are meaningful to the person receiving them), acts of service (taking care of things for the other person) and physical touch (small gestures, sexual intimacy, massages or a simple pat on the shoulder).

Do you know which love language you speak? More importantly, do you know how the other people in your life feel loved? Are you being a kind, compassionate friend to yourself and others by using their preferred love language?

Over this month, we’ll look at how being a good friend to yourself and others can enhance your recovery from an eating disorder or unhealthy behaviors around food and exercise.