Just read my previous post through, and it seems there is so much I didn't
say.
I didn't mention addictions, for instance, and how I believe that we are
addicted to certain foods both physiologically and psychologically, so this
makes it almost impossible to give up the addiction unless you address
both aspects. I believe (based on my experience in working with so many
people over the years) that addictions are taken on deliberately, as a
very useful crutch, to help cope with impossible situations (or, what SEEM
to be impossible situations to us at the time). I always congratulate
people for having been resourceful enough, and enough of a survivor in what
is often a crazy world, and smart enough, to discover that certain
substances, or behaviors, or "habits" (all habits are addictions, just try
giving one up and watch how you act and feel) would help them cope - or in
some cases survive.

Loads of people do this (start new addictions) with food. Either with
specific foods, like the famous one: sugar, or another other famous one:
"opiate-laced"-bread, or
any other assortment of the many addictive foods; or they just do it with
their _behaviors_ around foods that wouldn't necessarily have
chemically-addictive substances in them (like avocados).

So a lot of my work with people has to do with addictions - what they are
really about, what purpose they serve, how to kick the habit, what to
expect
physically and emotionally, etc. Addictions is a HUGE part of my work. I
have worked in clinics for people recovering from serious substance abuse
problems, by the way, and the issues that drive people to heroin and
cocaine and alcohol are just the same as the issues that drive people to
the more "acceptable" addictions (like sugar or bread or pizza or
compulsive overeating or eating disorders of any stripe). Addictions are
addictions. And I'd like to add that people who decide to give up
addictions, face what they need to face, are unbeleivably inspiring people
to
know. This takes true grit. The strength of some people's spirit is
awesome.

There is so much more to say about emotions and nutrition. Like: how one's
whole basic concept of oneself - whether one sees oneself as "healthy and
hardy"
or "frail and fragile and sickly" or "able to fight and win" or "I always
give up" - has everything to do with one's metabolism, and how one handles
the absorbtion of nutrients.  Sometimes in my work, a person will realize
that somehow or another along the line (usually since they were very
young), they got a sense of themselves, some basic view, that leads
naturally to sickness, not health, or to chronically engaging in behaviors
that make them un-well. So then this must be dealt with at the same time
that they are trying to adjust things in their diet, or lifestyle. If they
don't do the psychological "adjusting" of an unhealthy self-concept, then
they're "swimming upstream, against the tide," or "working at
cross-purposes" or "playing tug-o'-war" or however you want to describe
their internal civil war, and any attempts to get healthy by getting on a
better diet, or trying to get enough sleep or excercise and so on, will
only be temporary, or they just never will be able to find the motivation
to do these things with any real commitment.

It's also tricky treading on this "psychological" ground, too, with most
everyone. I cannot go in with an agenda for them, at a pace that I would
prefer. Every person has their own pace, since only they themselves know
what's really in their own personal can of worms, and how much personal
"resource" they have to face whatever they have to face.  So I have to be
very patient, and let them lead me, and offer encouragement when THEY ask
for my encouragement, not when I think they need it.

I have one woman - she's distorted, bloated, twisted, arthritic, wheezing,
gums turned to jelly and lost all her teeth, diabetic, obese, and inchronic
pain - and for
the past six months, as we slowly (feels that way to me, anyhow) make
changes in her diet and lifestyle, she goes through these lengthy litanies
of telling me how great her life is, how happy she is, how healthy and
vibrant, how life just keeps getting better and better (which is true,
actually), and how she can think of so many people who REALLY need to work
with me because THEY have real health problems ---  all the while crying
and crying, and thanking me deeply for giving her someplace to express
these things she would never have the opportunity to express otherwise. I
don't begin to pretend to myself that I understand why she needs to "vent,"
or "detox" in this particular way, at this time, but evidently this is most
useful for her, for getting over some place she's stuck somehow, and for
enabling her to be able to make the EXTREMELY difficult (for her) and
EXTREMELY foreign-feeling changes in her diet (like eating fresh produce,
which she has never, in her entire life, ever eaten before - she'd never
eaten a whole, unpeeled piece of fruit, and she's in her 60's).

Anyway, I'm describibng this particular client's experiences just as
another example of the many unique ways people have of doing what they
personally need to do, when it comes to "emotional detox." Like I've said
on this list many times before about diets - that every person is utterly
unique and needs their own completely unique diet, the same is true for
their emotional health. "Primal therapy" which, (I don't know much about
it, so I'm guessing here) would operate on a presupposition that EVERY
person needs to discharge fear-as-anger-trying-to-emerge, or bang pillows,
or do ANYTHING at all that is pre-conceived; seems to me to be just like
"Fruitarianism is the only REAL diet, for EVERY person" or "veganism is the
universal human diet" or "Raw Animal Fats is the diet that will heal
anyone" or "Only Raw Foods" or "The Zone" or "Atkins" or "Macrobiotics" or
any diet that's promoted as good for everybody.

I just think that people are too unique, God made us each COMPLETELY
different from any living thing that ever has been or ever will be,  to fit
into any rigid regime of any sort.

Love,  Liza

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[log in to unmask] (Liza May)