Are you carrying too much in your life, and does food play a role in you carrying what should no longer be (never have been?) carried?

If you carry less, can you then put food out if the job of crappy life manager?

How So Many Of Us Ended Up Carrying Too Much

NB Just about everyone is carrying too much in lockdown. To a certain degree this is just a fact of life. We need to work out (a) what is a result of lockdown and inevitable eg homeschooling and (b) what were you carrying previously that is an expression of shame that doesn’t belong to you, tolerating what can no longer be tolerated.

#1 Women are socialised to be caretakers

#2 If you are an empath, not just vampires but just about every non-empath will try to get you to carry their pain at times (genuine and  non-genuine pain)

#3 Shaming. More and more, I am convinced that inappropriate shaming is at the heart of most people’s compulsive eating.

Shame is the fuel that powers carrying too much, that turns you into the porter-donkey. Appropriate shame should trigger action (compensating for having acted below your standards) eg apologising for shouting when you are stressed. People misidentify inappropriate shame as appropriate and believe that they need to compensate. So they turn themselves into porter-donkeys. But the compensatory actions never lift the shame.

#4 Intolerance of uncertainty.

Life is inherently uncertainty, but we have all been socialised into working hard to obliterate that. We want X, Y and Z for the future, and it is too easy to let that wanting turn into ego-driven demands, and attempting to control what you cannot control. Remember that the ego is fragile and always looking to the external world to affirm it.

#5 Body shame = inappropriate shame (that is socially acceptable) for not looking like a Vogue cover star

Is excess weight a symbol of carrying too much? (eg in lockdown)

How To Stop Carrying So Much

First, accept that nobody else is going to magically say “Let me take the load off your shoulders!” I hear so many women constantly complain about doing 99% of the caretaking at home, in the hope that life will rearrange itself without them having to step into their power.

Either the people around you are vamipirishly getting so much out of you being the porter-donkey that they would never be that generous, or they are in a constant stress response and carrying a lot themselves. Or both.

Minimise inevitable (eg lockdown related or say you are a carer for a relative) excess baggage.

Find times to ringfence as holidays from being a porter-donkey. Diarise them, announce them, guard them as precious! Call them meetings if the people around you will not understand. These are indeed meetings... with your higher self!

Identify excess baggage in life that you no longer need to carry and work out how to rid yourself of some or all of it

eg getting other adults and older kids to share cooking and housework tasks

delegating at work if you are a manager (I have seen a lot of female clients stop delegating if their subordinates are lazy, incompetant etc, then eat chaotically to deal with their resentment)

The Body Confident Project is the antidote to cultural shaming.

Accept Uncertainty

The best way I have found to do this is to move my focus from fretting over the uncontrollable to what I CAN influence. At the time of writing, I am exploring the work of Dr Joe Dispenza and his book Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself. The idea is you work on developing the ability to shift from living in the past and future to living in the present, losing the ego and moving into a mental space of creation. Right now you can do the energy breath or search 'joe dispenza meditation'on Youtube. I find these to be more powerful than meditating alone.

NB Don’t be surprised if shedding unnecessary baggage feels uncomfortable. Accept that, it will get less.

The last word goes to Shrek...

And that's how you shed the excess baggage and become as happy as this fella!