James Ballantyne

Tag: comfort eating

  • What if the story we live by, is a story we cannot tell?

    Something happened to you

    Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault

    Something happened to you…that wasnt your fault….and you had to do something as a result that you cannot talk about.

    Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault…and you coped in life with self soothing strategies…that you cannot talk about either.

    Something happened to you….that wasnt your fault….and everything since has been about staying silent about it…silent….and hiding all traces….protecting it….protecting yourself…from what happened to you.

    Something happened to you, by someone who is dominant, powerful and sometimes insane, and bewilders you from any kind of action, and you can’t share it, for recrimination.

    Something happened to you…..that you dont think anyone will believe.

    That wasnt your fault.

    That wasnt your fault.

    (even if their insanity causes you to take the blame)

    It was something done to you, when you..when I.. was a child, when I was powerless, when I was dependent…

    That set so many patterns of life in motion….

    And a story that had to remain silent.

    We live by stories.

    We all have a personal narrative, a myth, a sacred story to believe, a story to live by.

    David Macadam says in ‘Stories we live by’ that by having this personal story we then accept, reject information to fit it, or expand our story to fit the new information.

    That was one of the things I learned when I was doing my Masters in Theology and Ministry at Durham, the psychology elective that I did with Dr Jocelyn Bryan.

    In 2017, doing my Masters, I didn’t have a story I lived by, not one I wanted to talk about, it was far easier, a defence mechanism, to use my brain to disect and critique the process of story making, story telling and consider how theology, story and drama all fit together, whilst I was feeling, well, I wasnt feeling anything, just dying inside. Even the Christian story that I believed , I had critiqued and was full of doubt of it.

    Yet.

    That sacred myth that I doubted had to do a lot of work, to hold me somehow when my psychological self was a scared, wounded, abused little boy.

    The story that I was actually living by, twas a story of shame, a story of abuse, for fear, a story that I didn’t want to acknowledge.

    That was the story I was actually living by…

    Because it haunted my every step.

    It was the story that had power over me.

    It was the story that consumed.

    It broke me into a thousand pieces every day, causing…

    One trip to eat extra food every day

    One more hour watching TV news

    Three more glasses of wine

    One more hour on twitter staying distracted.

    One more week watching Friday night soothing comedy.

    One more piece of bread, then another, and another, and another

    One more football match to overlay drama with drama

    One more piece to write to stay busy

    Another long bike ride.

    More work to do, fill the diary.

    One more anything

    To run…

    Filling an ache.

    Because I was so not actually ok, that I could barely say the words, let alone say I had needs, because, that would mean being in a safe enough place where my needs were validated, even if I could articulate them.

    One more coping mechanism

    One more denial of my self

    One more day to mask and pretend.

    One more day when I couldn’t share, just keep going.

    Survival isnt a story, its fragmented existence.

    One more self soothe

    One more ‘fix others, im not important’ moment

    One more hope of change, living a story of ‘conditional okayness’

    Fear, alone, isolation.

    The story I lived by, for too long, was a story of shame, fear, anxiety and survival, and masking this so that no one could ever know.

    Shame.

    Ends.

    When stories

    are told

    in

    safe places. (Brene Brown)

    Yet.

    Shame stories

    Held

    me

    for too

    long.

    It was a story I couldn’t tell.

    It was a story I held in silence.

    It was a story that I had no control over.

    It was a story that wasnt mine.

    It was a story of what someone had done to me.

    It was a story of my coping mechanisms because of that childhood abuse and the follow up behaviour, including relationships.

    My life, was someone else story.

    My lifeless life was someone else’s story.

    How I had adjusted to be for someone else.

    How I had given away myself.

    Actually thats so not true. Because I had never had a self. Self was broken from birth.

    When real

    stories

    of us

    being alive.

    get hidden.

    There was a story I was living by. But it wasnt a story about me. It was a story about how my life was orientated around the fear of someone else, and that I was a bit part player in my own life.

    It takes so long for someone to feel the main player in their own story

    Spiralling into an anxiety I couldn’t never acknowledge. Tears hidden, as breakdowns occurred in car journeys all alone to Coldplay songs, and reduced priced Tescos wraps scoffed.

    In avoiding the negative, we only encourage it to recur (John O Donohue Anam Cara)

    I look back and realise how barely I even existed.

    To do self care, to have needs, to accept love, to do quiet, to give myself any permission, to feel power…all deemed unimportant, selfish or impossible, so invalidated all of them.

    So that story began to change.

    Or, my relationship to my story did.

    As i began to realise what was done to me, wasnt my fault.

    As I began to realise how I had been trapped in emotional contagion.

    As I realised that change on the inside brought a sense of worth, and change on the outside…

    As I began to realise how I hadn’t been loved, just stolen from.

    As I began to realise, how I had survived

    As I began to realise the damage, yet also the inner strength and resolve I had to get myself to where I have got to.

    As I began to work through every brave step, and own the bravery of it all.

    As I began to realise who I am, and who I am not

    As I began to connect with my story, to dig deep into it all, and realise myself in it all. I had ran from a past I had to connect with, to face, to love for my self strength in it all.

    As I took loving myself seriously, and self compassion, and self care, and just undoing the critical voice of inner torment. I had to love myself in a way that I had only been able to love others.

    As I began to realise my own…sense of worth….sense of love…sense of being me, wounded in many parts, but not entirely broken, and capable of love.

    As I started to be my own story. I started to be able to own the story, to make this story about me, to connect the dots, and also now, to be able to be excited about the blank pages ahead, waiting for their colours to emerge.

    As I started to write it down, and realise I wasnt alone.

    As I realised that there was life beyond it, beyond it all.

    But at the time, the story I wasn’t able to tell was the story that I was living by.

    What if the story we live by is one of abuse and the shame of what we do to cope, and the silence of both of these things?

    For, It’s not what happened to us often…it’s the silence and hiding for so long. It’s navigating a life around the shame. Thats draining and energy sapping.

    Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way, not forever.

    Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to stop living the story that others wrote for you.

  • Men, Why do we find it hard to love our bodies? (Part 1)

    Trigger warning ; Childhood abuse, self harm, spiritual abuse.

    I saw this from the beautiful Kat Shaw Artist yesterday:

    Her work is incredible to predominately female audience, on the female body, healing and self image. I always love it, I love this one too.

    Yet it provided me a question;

    How many times as a Man have I been encouraged to love my body? Or to ‘love the skin’ I’m in?

    Mentally arrive at your own answer here too, how many times have you heard this about loving your body as a man?

    I hope it’s a lot, but my guess is it’s not very many.

    And what was your response when you heard it, who said it to you?

    Clearly this question was in my subconscious as when I woke at 2am this morning, and the bulk of what I write next started to take shape, and I think that this might be a series of posts on this.

    Let’s start at the beginning, what were the internalised messages, as a boy, that you received as a child, in regard to your body?

    Mine were the following.

    1. Nakedness was shameful. A story that was repeated ad finitum by my psychotic mother, to encourage shame, was the story that she and my friends mum found me and my best friend naked under a carpet rug, aged around 3, two innocent little boys. But this story was told with glee to embarrass and shame.
    2. My body could be hit as punishment. Whether her hand or his slippers, thats my body taking it. Taking the punishment my voice and mind caused through being said to be too clever or cheeky.
    3. My body could be made to feel pain deliberately in a controlled way to either create attention, or alleviate other pain – such as biting my nails until they were septic, scratching, picking spots also pulling out my own hair.
    4. Pain also got attention, I hid having verrucas for a week (I didnt know what they were on the balls of my feet, just lumps) after the horror and inconvenience of this ( I loved swimming) I clearly remember how enthused my mother was when it came to getting needles and tweezers out on a daily occurrence to supposedly deal with, but also inflict serious pain. ‘You know your mother likes to get the tweezers out and be the pain doctor’ as my Dad stood by and watched this bizarre scene.
    5. My body could be denied warmth and love as this was what was the norm, so I would lie in bed and feel deliberately cold, not deserving of warmth, or forcing all pain into my head and asking it to numb the pain. Self punishment of my body for a time when id been made to feel guilty about something.
    6. When there was a possibility that I would need braces to alleviate my crooked teeth and as the Dentist said ‘ to help him feel better about his smile and looks’ my mother said that ‘we’ll not worry about this and Im not travelling 12 miles a week to get them set up, checked and done, thats too much effort’
    7. No praise of anything I did that involved physicality, or softness of touch, hugs, love, in fact… this is what I gave my abusive mother…
    8. Clothes and looks didnt matter as a Man, Mum would control what my dad would wear and I as a child wore the most embarrasing clothes.
    9. My body was someone else’s to dictate and destroy, to shame and enact pain on.

    Most of these were from under the age of 9. I think the braces I was 11.

    What were yours?

    Other messages about my body came from church and school, and also inferred from other places too.

    They were all internalised in the context with above.

    Some of the things about the body, I heard that became implied in church were the following:

    1. The Body was weak and prone to temptation
    2. The Body was fleshly and dirty, compared to the spirit, the soul
    3. Jesus’ body was crucified, so that was ok, bodies are disposable, his mind and soul elevated
    4. The body is mortal, the soul is eternal, so only focus on the eternal
    5. The body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, but barely attention given to what this actually means, except to use it to pray and read the bible, but it is just ‘housing’ for something more important.
    6. Some parts of the body sin, and could be ‘chopped off’ like eyes..
    7. The Lord sees what’s on the inside, the heart… your body shape, size doesn’t matter, but not in a special way, an irrelevant way.

    Not much body love happening here… right?

    And the implications for all of this for me, who already felt deep internalised body shame, self conscious, self neglect and pain that I had normalised…

    The other activities in my life, including sports and school, emphasised either the cultivation of the mind to do academic work, the physical aspects of the body for sports, some bits on healthy eating, and the facts about the body were just that, facts, how the body works, from the organs and muscles, to the smaller details of the DNA, cells, neurons and oxygenation, facts to be understood, not a body to be treasured or wondered at, just to learn about.

    Pictures of perfect male specimens started to adorn my walls, the footballers of the 1990’s in poster form. Ryan Giggs’ left foot, Mark Hughes powerful thighs, the massive hands and shoulders of Peter Schmeichel, and that utter confidence of the mercurial Eric Cantona. It wasn’t difficult to feel inferior, as though I tried to play football, I could in practice but in games I had too much anxiety and panic, and so pretty horrid nicknames were headed my way.

    And it was all my bodies fault.

    It could all be taken out on my body.

    My body didnt matter did it. And though I maybe cute and blond, i didnt like how I looked especially my teeth, and hid myself from any mirror.

    It wasn’t difficult looking at this with my eyes open, aged 46, at the damage this was doing.

    As I headed into teenage years.

    And yes, the myriad of Puberty.

    I liked what my body could do, sports wise, I was pretty fit and dived into sports, so swimming, and I wasn’t uncomfortable being practically naked each week swimming with others, I played badminton and pretty flexible, and football, and in the main, was in good physical shape. It wasn’t that I loved my body’s ability to do this, it was that I was competitive and determined to win.

    I remember a school nurse when I was 15 or so, it was ‘that’; check up, where they checked my whole body, so I stripped off except pants, and stood there, on the scales, and she commented; ‘James you have a very well toned body with broad shoulders’ and remembering this now, was the only body compliment I received between 0-18. I didn’t know what to do, but probably smile uncomfortably, and let her know that it was due to swimming a couple of miles a week. One of only a few positive body complaints I received as a young person, the other was from a youth leader who probably crossed a line when she told me I had ‘great legs’ and yes… given the sports.. but only two positive body messages in childhood. WOW.

    Wasn’t hard to see how easy it would be to disconnect from my body though. Mind and Spirit more important, body the source of pain, frail and weak. And I would berate my body if it couldn’t do sports beyond the pain, keep pushing it, keep pushing it. Or keep pushing it up late to study and learn.

    My body just the tool, the housing.

    How damaging was all of this though?

    What did it cause, self denial, self loathing, shame, self-neglect – and then self pain – from that constant nail biting until I was 17, comfort eating which started when I was 12 (late night bread/cereal was safe food, and required for the ‘growing boy’) and continued until I was 41, averaging 4 slices of bread each night, for 29 years, and thats not to mention the other times I would eat so unhealthily to mask emotional pain, the millions of reduced price doughnuts at Tescos for one example, or eating food in the car between leaving work and going home, to comfort the depression in both settings.

    I would try dieting, and it was have to be severe, and it worked for the odd month, but it wasn’t from a whole place, comfort eating soon followed again…

    So let’s go back to puberty…. eeeeuuugghhh, I know..

    Yes.

    Those body changes. All seen as humorous by those parents. The Voice cracking, squeaking, etc, trying to work out myself about shaving and also, the looking in the mirror; The spots. Oh the spots. I had learned to inflict pain. You can guess the rest.

    At this time also, though maybe also before, our eyes dont help us think that our own bodies are beautiful do they?

    Starting to notice, like and find and fancy other people. I’ll be inclusive, it may have been other boys to you, but it was girls for me. Eyes start to notice the shape of girls and not really know how to deal with what they saw. From their hips, legs, smile, breasts and bum and everything else. All of which is perfectly natural, but seriously hard to know what to do with as a disassociating teenager, with body in shame mode, trying to be a good christian boy and go to school with some well developing beautiful young women.

    And those eyes still do the same dont they, even in a healthy way, you may be reading this blog on the couch and your beautiful partner (male or female) is making you a coffee and they are hot in your eyes, they are your partner, they have something that raises your temperatures… so it can be difficult to love ourselves and our own bodies when our eyes see the beauty in other people before our own.

    I know most of this is my story. But anyone else relate?

    So.. the big question:

    Have you, as a man, ever considered that you could love your body?

    As it is… not as you think it should be

    All of it? Even if it can feel frail or has let you down

    All of it? even if it contains feelings that seem mysterious, or distractive

    All of it? as you are, not comparing it to the bodies who you find attractive

    All of it? even now, today, even after it may have tormented by others in the past, wrongfully (it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your body’s fault)

    And as Men, what have we learned to feel about our own bodies…it’s barely to love it is it?

    Men, why do we find this weird? Does it feel feminine? Does it feel soft? Does it feel impossible? It’s as if our bodies has housed all of our shame and we don’t know what to do with it, I didnt.

    I sense there is a lot more to write about this subject from both an emotional, physical, spiritual and sexual perspective.

    But I want to end this piece with this quotation, which I read yesterday, and tied with what I read above.

    ‘It takes so long to learn to take the place in your own life’ (John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes).

    And this life includes our bodies. the inner wholeness within, the sense of peace and contentment, acceptance of and also, not using the language we have created to berate our bodies, instead loving our bodies with kind words. But it takes so long, far too long, and it’s about unlearning all the internalised messages from a long long time ago. They do not need to rule in our heads any more, another way of thinking about our bodies is possible.

    I’m a man, and have a heart too, can this not love myself and my body in a healthy way, and what would this feel like to have self acceptance, wholeness and love for myself.. within?

    Please do put some of your thoughts and reasons in the comments below or send me an email. This as I say is part one.