How to Listen to Your Body and Give It What It Needs

a post by Wendy Leeds for the Tiny Buddha blog


“And I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.’” ~ Nayyirah Waheed

For more than half my life, I took care of my body “by the numbers.” Every day, I walked a certain number of steps, no matter how sore, sick, or tired I was. I worked a certain number of hours, often going without sleep in order to finish my work and check off all the numbered items on my to-do list, no matter how my body begged for rest.

For weeks I’d follow a strict diet, counting points or calories or carbs, ignoring hunger pains and my growling stomach. But when the diet was over, I’d stuff myself on sweets and junk food until I felt sick and ashamed. At the same time, I struggled to see a certain number on the scale and to fit into a certain dress size.

Not only was I miserable physically, but when I didn’t meet these “number goals,” I felt like a failure, and told myself there was something wrong with me.

Maybe some of this sounds familiar to you. Maybe you’re exercising though pain, working beyond exhaustion, and eating in ways that leave you feeling tired, bloated, or sick.

Maybe, like me, you’re blaming your body for not being strong enough, thin enough, tough enough, or just plain not good enough.

But here’s the truth: None of this is your body’s fault.

Whether you know it or not, your body is speaking to you all day long. It’s telling you on an ongoing basis what it needs to keep you healthy, comfortable, and happy.

Continue reading

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Digital Self: A Third Type of Self-Representation

a post by Richard Kensinger for the World of Psychology blog

The sense of mind and self is created by multiple social interactions with many others; particularly from those in our early psychosocial environment. These intimate interactions result in the construction of our personality. Personality becomes, in time, the consistent features of who we are in regards to our thoughts, feelings, and actions (which I refer to as mind, mood, and motor). Around age 3, personality emerges. It is dynamically formed by multiple inputs from others, becomes consolidated in our late teens and early 20’s, and around the 3rd decade it becomes relatively fixed.

In Psychology, one field of thought involves the split-object representations of self/other. There are essentially four global sub-types and each involves a global emotional charge. They are: good-good (++), good-bad (+-), bad-good (-+), and bad-bad (–). These four subtypes, in my clinical opinion, are critical to attachment and bonding. Emotions essentially encode our experiences with others. This occurs in the Limbic region of the brain. I refer to this region as our “reacting brain” as it is the origin of our emotions, motivations and attraction to and connections to others. (See Daniel J. Siegel’s The Developing Mind.)

Continue reading [quite heavy going but I found it very interesting]

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