Therapists are people who go through years of special training. And they're people whose advice is explicitly requested. And who tend to reserve judgement until they've spent hours listening to various facets of the situation. And, as someone who has seen therapists for both myself and for my son, I can tell you that even then they often are not particularly helpful.
The point is not about the therapist or the training or the solicitation, it's about the i
individual. Sometimes an outside pair of eyes can see a clear path.
I agree with this. It's possible that I can hear something helpful from you, or a magazine article or TV show, or an advertisement on the subway, or an overheard snippet of conversation -- something that I can put into practice in my own life and will make a difference.
That is all I am saying
But it's difficult for an outsider to know for sure that piece of advice is workable and useful because, as you say, you may not understand all the factors that dictate my choices.
And
maybe that outsider can see-and this isn't directed at you, I just am out of pronouns-that a person is so wrapped up in their own tangled mess of excuses and rationalizations and justifications and defensiveness and "I am so complicated that no one can possibly understand what I am going through" mentality that they are completely closed off to what could be useful. And I am speaking situationally, not globally.
I used to think that I was so "tortured" and difficult to understand and "different". I'm not. Sure, I am unique superficially but in the big, giant picture I am just another body. I think we tend to think that we are so unique that it takes some deep knowledge of us to "understand" us when in fact our behaviors speak volumes about who we are. That is just my opinion from my own experience. I think there is quite a bit of truth sometimes in "I know you better than you know yourself". It took me until this past year to really understand and accept there is something in that.
This may be straying a little OT, but it's a good illustration of why what appears to be an obvious and "simple" answer is not always so simple. There are numerous rational reasons why a person trying to lose 20 pounds would opt for full-fat dressing. Maybe she's following a low-carb diet, most of which caution against low-fat dressings because they contain added sugar. Maybe she can't abide low-fat salad dressing, and knows that if she gets it she won't enjoy her salad, so what's the point of eating out and getting a salad. Maybe she knows that the difference between low-fat and full-fat dressing is only about 75 calories (on WW, it's a couple of points), and has already factored that into her daily allowances. I myself pretty much always eat full-fat dressing, even when I'm dieting, because I hate low-fat dressing. (And no, that's not the reason I need to lose 20 pounds. I have managed to lose weight in the past while continuing to eat full-fat dressing -- maybe I'm more likely to succeed if I can enjoy my salads and am not trying to choke down food that I hate.) Heck, maybe your friend is just opting to go off her diet, for reasons you aren't privy to or couldn't fully understand because you don't occupy her body. In any case, your friend probably already knows damn well that full-fat dressing has more calories than low-fat, don't you think? That's not exactly arcane information in this culture.
Excuses. It isn't about full fat dressing vs. low or non-fat dressing! It's about making choices that aren't getting you where you want to be! A cup of full fat dressing has half a day's worth of calories which isn't
in this situation getting me where I want to be. So I need to make different choices, fat free dressing is only one available option. I can use far less dressing, I can use lemon juice, I can use seasoned rice vinegar, I can order something else. You don't need to know my life story to know that my counterproductive food choices might be the reason I am not losing the weight that I am trying to lose.
This so gels and illustrates what I think that I have been trying to get at that I won't even bother to reply to the rest of what I had planned. For me it all boils down to personal responsibility. We can make excuses and justifications and long drawn out rationalizations about why we do the things we do but the bottom line is we are responsible for the choices that we make. Sometimes the choices are relatively easy and straight forward, most times they are not. But I believe that there is a choice that will always get us closer to where we want to be-we just can't always see that path because it is sometimes so difficult to see outside of our own patterns of behavior. Sometimes someone who just has the benefit of seeing our
repeated behavior without the baggage that comes along with it can give us some insight.
I think the biggest gift you can give yourself, and those that look to you for guidance, is the knowledge of self-responsibility, which includes "when you chose the behavior you choose the consequences. There will always be outside forces trying to influence you to make choices that are not in your best interest, and this is especially true for kids, but bottom line, the option to swim against that tide always exists.
With that, I am checking out of this discussion because it is becoming circuitous.