What’s Underneath Your Resistance?

Often times my clients will come to me, bow their heads in shame, and tell me that they’ve failed; they were unable to make time for exercise, they couldn’t bring themselves to choose a healthy lunch, didn’t even attempt to cook for themselves. They apologize profusely, promise they’ll do better next time, that they’ll shore up their discipline to overcome their laziness, their lack of motivation, their failure. They look up, ready, waiting for the tough love, a good talking to, a motivational kick in the butt. And even in their moment of dismay, I’m delighted. Because the golden opportunity has opened up for us to explore the ‘why.’ Now we can go deeper, go under the resistance, to find what’s really there.

 

When you have resistance to something, there’s usually wisdom in it. Sometimes it really is just an off-week, lack of sleep, falling sick to a cold that’s been going around, but most of the time there’s an epiphany, big or small, waiting to be found. Because when you’re pushing up against a brick wall that you don’t even know is there, how can you possibly win?

 

Here’s an example: Perhaps someone who hasn’t exercised in a long time finds excuse after excuse to not try a yoga class, but when we dive underneath, it’s because they think they’re going to be judged for their lack of skill and embarrassed by how out of shape they are. The desire to avoid being embarrassed is over-riding their desire to exercise. Or perhaps they hate the exercise that they’re trying to force themselves to do, and their inner child is rebelling. Or, and this is a common one, they’re so busy and have left no downtime for themselves, so when they carve out the time to exercise, they end up using that space to do absolutely nothing. Their body and soul has an unattended-to need that’s more important than exercise.

 

Once we understand where the resistance is coming from, then we can easily address it. We can adjust the type of exercise, do a home video instead of a populated class to circumvent the block around embarrassment, find an exercise that’s more enjoyable, or schedule an extra block of time to do absolutely nothing, so that when the time for exercise comes, it actually happens.

 

But sometimes the resistance is much bigger and deeper, reaching into the past and wrapping through old experiences and emotions. It can be sneaky, hard to grasp, hiding behind a mountain of excuses. This often happens with people who want to lose weight but can’t seem to make healthy choices for themselves, and continuously beat themselves up for it. If your resistance has been sabotaging your goals, whether they be for weight loss or anything else in your life, it’s time to get your subconscious on board. So, dive deep, my friends, and confront the darkness; bring what needs to be seen to light.

 

Here are a few powerful reasons why one might subconsciously resist losing weight:

Past experience with sexual abuse. Losing weight can make people feel more visible, more vulnerable, which can trigger the fear of attracting unwanted desire. In these cases, the weight has actually become a protection, a buffer between them and danger. Losing weight might subconsciously be a scary and uncomfortable thing for victims of past sexual abuse. This fear is false of course, as weight has nothing to do with attractiveness and desire, but it can be difficult to reason with fear that comes from trauma. Once this block to losing weight is uncovered, then one can address the underlying issues and fears rather than forcing themselves to count calories one more futile time. It has nothing to do with diet.

Avoiding responsibility. Another common reason someone’s subconscious might not want them to lose weight, is to avoid taking action or responsibility in their life. For example, perhaps you’ve been hurt badly in previous romantic relationships, and you’ve told your friends that you’ll get back to dating once you can fit into your favorite jeans again. Do you think you’re going to lose the weight if you’re too scared to date?

This applies to anything in your life that’s scary to you and to which you’ve said, ‘I’ll do it when I reach my goal weight.’ Stepping into your power in aspects of your life can be terrifying. Maybe you don’t feel ready. Maybe you’re afraid of what could happen if you really put yourself out there. Maybe the idea of wild success also opens up the possibility for wild criticism. So you stay in the safe zone, a place where you have a really good excuse (so you’ve told yourself), and the safety of that ‘out’ of not reaching your goal weight will sabotage every diet you try.

Resentment. Have you ever cut off your nose to spite your face? Maybe your parents have made you feel badly about your weight for your entire life, constantly making suggestions of diets you should try, or making subtle comments about your size. Maybe it feels like getting healthy or losing weight would give them too much satisfaction. Your anger could cause you to want them to suffer, to not give them the satisfaction of saying, ‘See, look how nice you look!’ This stuff runs deep and might be really hard to look at, and yet it offers you the opportunity to heal past hurts and overcome resistance from the ground up.

 

If resistance has been stopping you from reaching your health goals, can you see where you might be misattributing your ‘failure’ to lack of willpower? Can you go a little deeper? Is there a subconscious reason, however difficult to look at, that might be keeping you in your current situation? If you can be brave and face the monsters in your closet, you’ll open the door for a success that most likely will never come from discipline. Get at the root cause, and you’ll unlock the keys to the kingdom.

 

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