Cooking Without Made Easy: All recipes free from added gluten, sugar, yeast and dairy produce. Barbara Cousins
She went home from her first consultation enthusiastic about the slender, healthy body that she felt she would soon regain. A few months later she was back in my consulting room saying that she was going to have to give up on the treatment. She was having a few problems with her husband and needed time to sort these out before she resumed treatment. It seems that Natalie had started expressing how she felt as she had started to detoxify and this had caused problems between her and her husband. I tried to explain that this was all part of the detoxification, that health wasn’t just about being slim and fit but about being true to our selves and in touch with our own potential and power. It’s not an easy concept to grasp and Natalie didn’t even want to try. Things were very uncomfortable and she didn’t like it, so she chose to go back to her old way of life rather than rock the boat. She took menial jobs that fitted in with the children’s schooling and holidays and continued to have health problems. Natalie chose to remain toxic rather than face and move through her pain.
Learning to love ourselves
If we are not following our true path and meeting our needs, then we are not loving and caring for ourselves. We then need other people or other things to serve as a substitute for love, and to use as an anaesthetic to cover up our basic unease. Natalie used food, but whatever ‘substance’ you are addicted to—be it alcohol, drugs, sex, television, shopping or gambling—you are using something or someone to cover up your pain. Natalie’s husband used work. I used sweet food, but I also always wanted other people to love me because I didn’t love myself. I always dreamt of wonderful birthdays and Christmases when I would be showered with gifts. I always hoped that my husband would buy me chocolates and flowers and book tables in romantic candlelit restaurants, but it never happened. And it didn’t happen because the universe wanted me to learn to love myself. This lesson repeated itself so many times in my life that I eventually wrote the following quote, which I’ve handed out regularly to clients over the years: ‘We don’t get what we want in life, we get what we need in order to grow. When we’ve grown we get what we’ve always wanted, only then we don’t need it any more’.
The more I wanted others to show how much they loved me, the less love I received. Eventually, however, when I started loving myself sufficiently, others started treating me better, but guess what? I didn’t need it any more. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate their kindness, because I did, but it became a bonus and an indulgence rather than a necessity.
Learning to love ourselves doesn’t make relationships redundant, but it does mean that we move on from dysfunctional relationships where we are too dependent on our partners to meet our needs, to a relationship where two people come together for mutual growth and benefit, one in which each is able to stand on their own feet, meet their needs and follow their own path.
Being human
During the time I was learning to love myself I suddenly found myself attracted to someone new. The feeling was mutual and I was shocked. I thought I had the perfect marriage, so what was happening? However, in reality I was more in touch with what I imagined my marriage to be, rather than the real thing. Looking back, I did the best possible thing—I told my husband what was happening and how I was feeling. This opened up a level of communication we’d never had before, enabling us both to face issues, many of which we’d not even known were there. These issues were ones that would have come up in the new relationship, if I’d chosen to move on, because like attracts like. I was attracting someone who would have been there to teach me in the same way that my husband was. The only time a new relationship is necessary is when an old one is over; when one partner has moved on and grown and the other hasn’t and doesn’t want to.
I’d not been in touch enough with my feelings to be able to be honest with myself, and now suddenly feelings were overwhelming me. I had always tried to be ‘Miss Perfect’, using perfectionism and super-achievement as a shield to cover up for my lack of self-worth. But suddenly I felt very human, and human beings are not infallible. It was actually a relief to realize that I was human; that I wasn’t perfect and that it was actually all right not to be. I was being taught to love myself, warts and all. Even though I hadn’t consciously attracted someone else, I’d obviously done so unconsciously. Inside of me there was still that little girl who just wanted to be loved and who felt better about herself knowing that others loved her. It made me much more aware of the work I still needed to do in order to love myself sufficiently so that I wasn’t so needy. I had to be able to stand on my own two feet, whoever I was with.
My husband’s fear of losing me made him face up to the fears that had prevented him from wanting to listen to my problems in the past. If I wasn’t happy he felt vulnerable, inadequate and lacking in control. In turn, I sensed his pain and tapped into my own fears of losing him, because I wasn’t making him happy, therefore I’d always suppressed my feelings and backed down. Now that things were changing, I was able to tell him about all the occasions when I’d been unhappy, when I’d felt unsupported, when I’d been very hurt. I cried and I got angry. Finally being honest with each other allowed us both to grow and we became closer—and more open with each other than we’d ever been.
Jane’s story
Jane was a client of mine. She was married with two boys and had what she considered a good marriage. Jane was a carer—she loved looking after her home and family and never complained. Her husband had his own business and worked long hours, but he was a good father and always found time for the boys. He would take them to football matches or play with them on the computer and had built up a good relationship with his sons. However, the family didn’t do many things together—they rarely went out for the day or to the seaside or even on holiday. Jane would often entertain her husband’s work colleagues, despite the fact that she didn’t like some of them. She also did the book keeping for the business because it helped out and saved the company money, rather than because she enjoyed it.
Jane had started taking antidepressants in order to cope with her father’s long illness and subsequent death. The drugs helped her to suppress the emotions she needed to work through, many of which stemmed from the lack of support she was receiving. She came to me to help her come off the antidepressant. However, each time she cut down the amount she was taking she became anxious. This was caused by mental and emotional toxicity that she needed to work through and leave behind. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what’s behind them, therefore I suggested that she came regularly for support in order to begin to work through the issues at the root of her anxiety. Unfortunately, this never happened as Jane always managed to cancel her next appointment before we’d done any constructive work. In her heart, though, Jane knew that this was the right way forward and would arrive back in my consulting room six months down the line, back on the full amount of antidepressants. We’d then start the process again, only for her to give up yet again.
Eventually, the drugs were not sufficient and Jane started to turn to alcohol. She enjoyed a glass of wine and considered it a treat, but what had been an occasional tipple became a daily necessity, something that she turned to whenever she felt anxious, uncomfortable, unloved or put upon. As a result, the emotions that were trying to come to the surface were suppressed yet again.
Then one day Jane met someone else, had an affair and moved out of the family home. Everyone was shocked, including Jane. She couldn’t understand what was happening to her; what this compulsion was that was dragging her away from what she thought was a good marriage. She said that she hadn’t minded always being there and looking after everyone, yet the man she had met was giving her all the things that she’d never had in her marriage: weekends away, days out, holidays, fun, time for her, and support. Jane had used drugs and alcohol over the years to suppress the real her. She had tapped into one side of her personality, the carer, but had ignored a part of her soul that was crying out for attention.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Eventually, Jane’s husband took the opportunity to move to America and the boys decided to go with him. They never forgave their mother for breaking up their home. And so Jane gained and lost