The Watcher

The Watcher is neutral and stands apart from the constant tide of thoughts and emotions running through my body and my mind , but The Watcher is full of nothing but compassion and love for Wild Child and The Dictator.

Following Martha Beck's instructions in The Four Day Win, I've been practicing becoming The Watcher. It's not very easy at first. You have to be able to step back from all the millions of big and little thoughts that race through your head and all the ups and downs and sidewayses of emotions that attend those thoughts. When I have sufficient quiet time, I have successfully achieved this state. Then I look kindly at Wild Child and The Dictator and tell them how much I love them and am grateful for them. After all, each of them is only trying to protect me in her own, extremely specialized way. As The Watcher, I speak to both Wild Child and The Dictator, thanking them for the role they play in my life and then asking how they can work together instead of fighting each other. I've had some incredibly insightful experiences doing this, and this visual has really helped me "see" the changes that have been made. Wild Child is starting to comb her hair and The Dictator has taken to wearing bright red lipstick. The Dictator is learning to ask rather than demand, and Wild Child is learning to trust.

Another exercise Beck has me doing is to communicate directly with Wild Child. Since my dominant brain hemisphere is the left side (I'm right handed), and I have begun to pay even more attention to the language of Wild Child (emotions), I'm teaching Wild Child my language as well. First, with my right (dominant) hand, I write down a question. Then I switch the pen to my left (non-dominant) hand and answer it. Here's what happened the first day I did this (Wild Child's answers are in italics, and she doesn't believe in punctuation):

How are you?

confused scared hurt

What can I do for you?

give me time don't judge don't starve

I won't starve you. What do you want to eat today?

bread olive oil apples

If we eat those, will that help you start trusting me?

We'll see need proof HCG was awful like a war zone don't do that again

I have no intention of doing that again. That was awful. I want to eat plenty of foods that make us feel good (healthy) but never deny us anything.

Good. I'll cooperate if we don't go hungry

What's crazy is that as I've been doing this, I have begun to lose serious cravings. I'm always reassuring Wild Child that I will not deny her anything, and because she's content that she won't be forced to go hungry, she doesn't make me fixate on how yummy a pint of ice cream would taste or linger on the smell and texture of pepperoni pizza. Peanut M&Ms haven't even been an issue. I love pie, but I haven't been compelled to seek it out. With most foods, I can  take it or leave it. There's no temptation to binge.

I keep checking to find out if I'm hungry, rate how hungry I am, and then decide (as a committee with The Watcher, Wild Child, and The Dictator) what to eat. I keep tabs on how my hunger is doing as I eat, too. It doesn't take very long and I don't spend inordinate amounts of time doing it, and at this stage, I haven't actively begun limiting caloric intake. Though I'm still in the pre-contemplation stage, it's already put me farther ahead mentally than with any diet I have ever attempted (or any non-diet guilt trip, for that matter).

I do know how weird it sounds to refer to myself as multiple people, but I know it's all just different aspects of me. Creating visuals for each aspect and referring to them as "she" helps me identify those pieces of me that are in conflict and give them a chance to have their say.

Tomorrow, in my final installment about this book and my preliminary experiences with it (until I want to report something again), I'll explain why it's called The Four Day Win.