Sometimes, we overeat or eat the “wrong” foods to punish ourselves. Sometimes the voice in our head is very unkind and says all manner of things that are hurtful – things like “I’m not good enough”, “I’m useless”, or “I’m not loveable”.
These are in fact lies.
But we believe it.
These unkind forms of self criticism can also be described as vitriol. A beautiful word for an ugly thing. The dictionary defines vitriol as:
vit·ri·ol/?vitr??l/
Noun:
- Sulfuric acid.
- Cruel and bitter criticism.
A recent client illustrates how we can be so vitriolic to ourselves, even at a young age. This young woman had a really bad sweet tooth. She ate a lot of sugar (lollies) and a lot of artificial sweetener – far too much of it to be healthy. We worked together over a period of time to improve her diet, reduce the sugar and get her feeling great again but the sweet tooth remained.
It wasn’t until we started to delve into her thoughts and feelings around needing sweetness that she started to discover some of her unconscious reasons for craving sweets. She’s had a serious shock in her life when someone close to her died. We uncovered a story she’d made up over his death and why it had happened to her at such a young age. And it wasn’t a story in which she came out glowing. Quite the opposite. She was undeserving, flawed, hopeless and maybe even to blame for what happened.
With a gentle homeopathic and the awareness she gained from identifying her own unconscious beliefs, she was able to make some big changes in her life. Over time the sweet cravings will diminish.[subscribe2]
