When Low Self Esteem Leads to Intractable Obesity

Obesity has become one of the of the more challenging of health conditions around the world. Although there are many approaches to dealing with it few, in my view, ever address its unconscious driving forces; poor self image and low self esteem. These two emotional factors initiate and perpetuate the tendency towards obesity.

They are also exacerbated by the condition thereby setting up a vicious negative spiral from which many find it impossible to extricate themselves. Doing so means having the courage to face the deeper emotional roots of poor self image and low self esteem and permanently release them from the unconscious mind and body. So what are these deeper emotional roots?

Well, this is akin to asking why anyone would ever have a poor self image or low self esteem. Many of you might think it's because of all of those societal messages that subtly and not so subtly invalidate your inherent attractiveness as a human being. Well here you would only be partly correct. The problem actually began well before you were ever exposed to those messages.

You see, many individuals, carry negative memories from early life in the unconscious mind that they identify with and with which are associated negative messages about who and how attractive they are. These memories consist of traumatic events as seen through the eyes of a child that essentially leaves them feeling unwanted, unloved, neglected, bad, ignored, invalidated, defective, deficient, inadequate, useless, and ugly and so on.

Worst of all when an individual complacently accepts as truth and identifies with these internally stored messages they are left with no other option but to dislike who and what they are. Negative feelings of low self esteem, poor self image and low self worth become constant painful internal emotional threats that must be parried and pacified in order to feel comfortable, at ease and peaceful.

The need to keep these painful feelings at bay leads to the adoption of numerous strategies, i.e. often classified as addictions, all of which attempt to suppress, bury or distract one's self from feeling and becoming incapacitated by the negative feelings. The individual who learns to use food as a pacifier at an early age may continue this compensatory approach to the internal pain eventually culminating in obesity.

This strategy which attempts to bury emotional discomfort also leads to a partial desensitization to the physical discomfort of the obese condition itself. The awareness of this discomfort which is supposed to act as a self regulatory mechanism then fails. Sadly the approach to coping with the emotional turmoil is also untenable because the emotions don't go away they only go underground temporarily. What's more they become accentuated by the emotional repercussion of being obese.

So the individual is faced with a growing onslaught of negative emotions as well as the health problems of the obesity that result. So what is the solution to breaking this cycle?

Well it becomes imperative to completely erase the original early unconsciously stored negative memories behaving as what I call "emotional landmines" and which drive the internal emotional turmoil. In other words one must permanently diffuse the negative emotional charge that emanates from these memories. The only way to do that is to completely eradicate the memories themselves. So what does that mean?

Well it effectively means one must effectively "erase the past" as it is stored in the person's consciousness. Although there are many modalities that attempt to simply decrease the emotional charge of such negative memories it has been my experience that that alone will not yield permanent results. It's much like the metaphor of the weed growing in the garden, unless one pulls it from the root it will simply re-grow.

Over 10 years ago while working as a psychiatrist I learned this sad fact and it completely changed my view of many of the "therapies" I had been employing until then. It also sprouted a powerful new insight as to how one could completely and permanently erase negative memories from the mind/body. This new insight evolved into a powerful new coaching modality that is able to challenge many of the beliefs we have about why the past cannot be erased.

It turns out that negative memories, while stored in a person's mind/body tend to deplete them of what I call their Life Force Energy. This is experienced in many ways but one of note is a deep feeling of emptiness that individuals desperately need to fill in order to avoid feeling like they are going to fragment or disintegrate emotionally. Individuals with obesity simply happen to choose food as their solution to this inner feeling of emptiness.

Unfortunately the only thing that will fill it is their depleted Life Force Energy. It turns out that this process as it erases the offending negative memories from the mind/body it causes a spontaneous return of this vital energy to that mind/body. The individual experiences this as feelings of wholeness and completeness. In other words the driving force for all the over eating disappears thus breaking the cycle.

Now, I must give a simple word of caution here. This process, albeit simple and straightforward doesn't happen all at once rather it is an evolutionary journey to wellbeing and happiness. This is because such individuals often have many negative memories of early life that must be erased. So in effect what is experienced is a progressive accumulation of self empowerment, self esteem, enhanced awareness and self control. As they begin to feel "filled in emotionally" their need to fill themselves with food externally disappears.

Nick Arrizza MD, a former Psychiatrist and Medical Doctor is an International Life, Executive, Organizational Tele-Coach, Author of Esteem For The Self: Restoring the Divine Holographic Energy Field With The Mind Resonance Process® (MRP) and the developer of the powerful Mind Resonance Process® (MRP).

A Free 1 Hour Introductory MRP Telephone Consultation is available upon request. (You will be asked to cover your own long distance telephone charges)

Email: drnick@telecoaching4u.com
Web Site: http://telecoaching4u.com