The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss & Body Confidence (20 page)

Under Eye:
I focus on the single step ahead of me.

Under Nose:
It’s safe to take this step …

Chin:
And trust that the answers will appear.

Collarbone:
I can enjoy this process.

Under Arm:
It feels so good to take this step forward.

Top of Head:
It’s safe for me to step up.

Take a deep breath and check in with how you feel. Measure the intensity again and continue tapping until you experience relief.

What action can you take right now toward a dream? Maybe it’s simply writing an e-mail or making a phone call. Trust your intuition and take a step forward, no matter how small that step may seem.

The Time Between Now and Later Is Called Life—Don’t Miss It!

After participating in my class and doing the tapping, Brandy was feeling happy in her skin for the first time in many years. One day while riffling through a shoebox full of old photos, she came across a picture of herself wearing a green bikini when she was in her early 30s. As she looked at the beautiful woman in the picture, she remembered hating her body at the moment the picture was taken.

As she thought back to that moment, she felt compassion for the woman in the picture who couldn’t recognize her own beauty. She was heavier now, yet she felt more beautiful than she had when that picture was taken because she had been tapping on her beliefs about herself.

The following weekend Brandy went camping with her husband. As she put on her bathing suit, her old critical voice began creeping in. As soon as she heard it, she smiled. That voice no longer controlled her. She realized that if she didn’t enjoy her life and body now, she would be wasting even more opportunities for joy, just as she had missed the opportunity to feel good in her green bikini all those years ago.

It’s important to have goals and reach for your dreams, but it’s never a reason not to enjoy the present moment. Ultimately it’s the journey, not the result, that brings the most happiness.

It’s time, right this second, to stop and smell the roses. Notice the parts of your body that are beautiful. Notice how you feel when you take a moment to place your hand on your heart and take a deep breath.

Living a fabulous life means recognizing how fabulous you and your life are right now.

Chapter 8

Feeling Confident in Your Feminine Body

F
rom a young age we are bombarded with images and ideals about our own sexuality and femininity. We must be sexy, society suggests, but never slutty. We must be beautiful but not too confident; not prudish, but not promiscuous, either. Too often, we’re thrown into our sexuality before we’re ready to acknowledge and understand it. Then, just when we begin to celebrate our new and ever-changing bodies, we’re faced with unwanted sexual attention and sometimes even blamed and shamed for provoking it.

Society places so many conflicting beliefs and expectations on us that our relationship with our own sexuality seems doomed from the start. After being subjected to our culture’s angst around female sexuality, many of us unconsciously look to weight as a way to hide from sexual attention that has felt, and often still feels, confusing and threatening.

Next we’ll explore how our relationship with our sexuality has impacted us and our weight, and discover new ways of relating to our bodies and our power that allows us to experience a much longed for feeling of freedom.

As we’ll see next, for many of us, this tortured relationship with our sexuality begins with puberty, just as we’re beginning to get breasts.

Being a Girl in a Woman’s Body

I grew up a tomboy, refusing to wear a dress even when it meant I had to have another shouting match with my mom. If my brothers didn’t have to wear dresses, neither did I. Wanting so badly to be just like them, I did everything possible to act like a boy. I was a rebel, outspoken, and rarely shy, forever eager for the next adventure. Most of my childhood summers I spent running around the woods with my many guy friends.

Then suddenly, my breasts arrived and ruined it all. One guy friend admitted that some boys were referring to me as “the girl with boobs” and making jokes behind my back. I hated my body for betraying me, bringing me all this teasing and weird attention.

Unable to make sense of it all, I used food to cope with my anxiety. Hiding behind weight wasn’t a conscious decision, but it served me well, protecting me from being objectified and isolated long before I was ready for it.

This pattern of beginning to hide from our newly sensual bodies the moment they start to develop is one I’ve seen repeatedly in clients. Although puberty may seem like a distant memory, those early years of feeling like a little girl suddenly inhabiting a womanly body can have a lasting impact on our relationship with our femininity and weight.

One student, Laura, traced her relationship with her body and weight back to when she was first teased on the school bus for her newly growing breasts. Embarrassed and ashamed, she began wearing a poncho that her grandmother had knitted for her. No matter what the weather was, that poncho was her favorite way to hide her feminine body. As she grew older, whenever she lost weight she felt uncomfortable with any attention she might receive, whether it was from men or a friend commenting about how great she looked. Her early experiences in school had led her to associate having a feminine form with being a target of teasing and unwanted attention.

For so many of us, puberty came as a shock. Unprepared for breasts, menstruation, and the new curves that began appearing in the mirror, we blamed the body for changes that seemed uncomfortable and unsafe.

Take a moment to think back on how puberty felt to you. Are there any events or memories around puberty that taught you it wasn’t safe to be in a woman’s body? If so, tell the story while you tap now. Feel free to refer back to
Chapter 5
, where we learned how to tap through past events.

Compliments: An Unexpected Trigger

When we haven’t been taught how to create a positive relationship with our femininity and sexuality, any kind of attention, including compliments, can feel profoundly unsettling. While that may seem counterintuitive at first, when we lack body confidence and have struggled with weight, we often fear any kind of attention because it could lead to us being hurt or humiliated again.

That was the case for Lori, who had lost 18 pounds while taking my class. She had been working on her fear of shining and realized she had stopped wearing the oversized gray jacket that she used to wear all the time, regardless of the weather. Finally feeling confident and ready to leave the “gray” behind, one day she decided to wear a white sweater with a pair of pants she hadn’t been able to fit into for a few years. When she left the house she felt incredible—beautiful, radiant, and full of energy.

She was running errands later that day when a man whistled at her and muttered, “Ooh, sexy lady.” Feeling threatened by his comment, her whole body immediately became tense. Her panic was so acute that she froze. Unable to speak and unsure how to react, she looked down and quickly walked into a store. Part of her felt disgusted by this man, violated by his comment, but another part of her felt flattered that she, a married woman in her 50s, could still attract attention. When she realized this, she began to feel guilty for feeling flattered. Later that evening Lori still felt the burn of his comment, overwhelmed by feelings of shame and confusion.

Lori reached out to me a couple of weeks later, sharing that she was amazed that a single comment from a random stranger had derailed her entire day. It’s a common occurrence when we don’t allow ourselves to create boundaries with people, which is a topic we’ll continue to explore throughout this chapter.

Lori and I tapped on the man’s comment together, and she began to ground herself in her body and own her power. She repeated what he had said out loud, focused on the anxiety she felt in her body, and simply tapped while giving those feelings a voice. As she released her panicked response to the man’s sexual attention, she could remember the comment without feeling threatened by it. By the end of our session, she imagined herself in that same situation but this time feeling present and confident in her body. After tapping through her shame and fear, she realized that she was in control and able to feel strong and powerful. When we feel panic around unsolicited attention, it’s often because we feel powerless over the situation or unable to protect ourselves. One comment can lead us to feel frozen and powerless. It’s helpful to understand why we freeze.

The Freeze Response

Although Lori didn’t freeze physically, she felt emotionally and mentally frozen. The freeze response can take many forms, including feeling physically tense or frozen; holding your breath; agreeing when you disagree; or feeling unable to say no, speak up, or remove yourself from a situation. We see the physical manifestation of this freeze response in animals that live in the wild. When they are attacked, their bodies go stiff, and at a quick glance they don’t appear to be breathing. This is where the phrase “playing possum” comes from, since the freeze response has been well documented in possums.

Because most predators are only interested in killing prey that fights back and won’t eat an animal until they have killed it, the freeze response can be a powerful way for animals to protect themselves. When the attacker has lost interest in its unmoving body, the animal comes out of the freeze response and runs to safety.

Although we often use the fact that we froze to blame ourselves for not doing or saying more, in fact, the freeze response is our body’s most primal way of protecting us. It’s important to know this so we don’t judge ourselves for freezing.

When we have experienced the freeze response in the past, we often fear the future because we feel defenseless around anything and anyone that seems to threaten us, which can include all kinds of confrontations and conflicts. When we tap while focusing on the event where we froze and allow ourselves to really feel what we were feeling, we lessen our need to go into the freeze response in the future. As a result, we can stay grounded and make conscious decisions that serve us.

Let’s now do some brief tapping on a time when you may have had a freeze response in the past. If you remember several times when you had this response, that’s okay. Start with a memory that isn’t very intense. Did you freeze when someone asked you to commit to a project you didn’t want to, or treat you in a way you weren’t comfortable with?

Note
: If your freeze response was a reaction to an intense trauma, please seek professional help. It’s important to have the support you need before exploring ways to overcome the trauma. A growing number of therapists are incorporating tapping into their practices.

How We Interpret Compliments

Just like Lori, many clients tell me they don’t like getting compliments in any form, especially from men. “When a guy whistles at me on the street, I look down and panic,” they say. “I get grossed out and feel violated, like they’re undressing me with their eyes. But then part of me likes the attention and that makes me feel guilty and ashamed.”

Being flattered by a compliment does not mean you’re “asking for it,” and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re at risk of cheating on your partner or spouse. So often we don’t just fear the person but our perceived inability to do anything. In reality, however, when we’re grounded in the body we have more power than we previously imagined. When someone compliments you, the first thing to notice is your breathing. If it feels shallow and strained, your body is most likely having a stress response. By tapping on the experience, you can more quickly return to a calm state.