SEVEN
Moving toward a Healthier You
IF YOU’RE NOT going to live your life by the rules imposed on you by society—the rules that say we have to cope on our own and not bother other people, that we must consider others’ feelings before our own, that we must look a certain way; in short, that we have to base our self-worth on standards set by other people—then what standards are you going to use?
The odds are high that if you’ve read this far, one of your life goals is to escape the toxic triangle: “I want to stop drinking.” “I want to stop overeating.” “I want to stop being depressed all the time.” Or you may say, “I want to stop being concerned with how I look.” Or “I want to stop sacrificing my own needs for other people.” Or “I want to stop being so hard on myself.” Some readers may be concerned about a family member or friend who seems to be suffering from symptoms of the toxic triangle.
These are good goals, but research on motivational processes has shown that it’s difficult to accomplish goals that are defined as avoiding something or getting rid of something about yourself. Instead, it is easier to accomplish approach goals, which move you toward a positive change.1 In this chapter, I will teach you how to use your powers of self-reflection to decide which goals you want to approach—the changes you want to make and how you want to live your life—and design strategies to get you to that place. The exercises you learned in chapter 6 made you aware of what you want to leave behind—toxic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that suck the life out of you. The exercises in this chapter move you yet further forward, into a new place where you can be healthy, happy, and growing.
To begin this journey, try the following exercise.
• Shut your eyes, get quiet, and conjure up a very positive image of yourself. Watch that Positive You get up in the morning, get dressed. If she has children, observe her getting them off to school. What are her interactions with her family like? What does she do for the rest of the day? Does she go to the same job you have (being a homemaker is counted as a job)? What are her interactions with other people? What kinds of things does she do over the course of the day? At the end of the day, what does she do? If she has a family, what are their interactions like? If she is single, whom does she see at the end of the day and how does she spend her evening?
Now turn your attention back to the Real You and tune in to how your body feels. Is there a sense of happiness or excitement at the prospect of the Positive You? Or frustration and defeat? Concentrate on what’s going through your mind. You are likely to discover some thoughts, such as “My husband would never be as warm and loving as the Positive Me’s husband.” “My kids are so out of control, I’ll never have the kind of smooth morning transition to school I imagine.” “I hate my job and I’ll never have the kind of interesting job that Positive Me has.” “I just go home and feel sorry for myself and eat in the evenings, not like the Positive Me.”
Focusing on the differences between the ideal or Positive You and the Real You can trigger ruminative overthinking, anxiety and despair, and escapist behaviors like bingeing, so you might be wondering, why should I do this exercise?2 Because, before you can begin to make positive changes in your life, you have to be aware of the goals and expectations you hold for yourself, so that you can decide whether you really wish to hold them, or whether they are the legacy of society’s expectations.
Some of the characteristics of the Positive You are likely to represent impossible goals that you have internalized based on society’s messages about what you—and other women—should be. Was the Positive You skinny? Did she have a perfect relationship with her spouse, children, and coworkers? If so, you are likely to have discovered unreasonable expectations you have for yourself, either consciously or unconsciously. Striving to meet these expectations is not the solution—it’s part of the problem that makes you depressed and want to escape through bingeing.
To illustrate the destructiveness of having impossible goals, or goals that have been set for you by other people, I want to tell you the story of Trin, a beautiful young Vietnamese-American woman I met when I was a professor at Stanford University.3
Trin arrived on move-in day at the dorm and announced amid the chaos that she was going to become a neurologist. It had been her dream since serving as a research assistant to a neurosurgeon in her hometown. The determination in Trin’s eyes when she spoke of her goal made most of us back away from arguing that she should keep an open mind about her long-term future, especially given that it was her first day of college.
Trin drew much of her great strength of spirit from her family. The family had settled in the upper Midwest after escaping from Vietnam in the 1970s as members of the fabled “boat people.” As Vietnam fell to the Communists, the family, including baby Trin and her six older brothers, packed into small boats and headed out to sea. All their material goods had been hastily sold, and the money converted into gold, which was sewn into the linings of her parents’ clothes. Far away from shore, the boat sank in heavy seas. Trin’s parents were forced to shed their coats, and thus their gold, to avoid sinking and drowning. Miraculously, a fishing trawler was nearby and saved the family. Several months and several refugee camps later, Trin and her family arrived in the United States and were “adopted” by a church in the Midwest. There they slowly rebuilt their lives, the father finding work as a janitor, then a retail clerk, and finally a store manager. From her preschool years, Trin’s intelligence shone, but she had to fight for her father’s attention and respect, as the youngest child and only daughter.
Then Trin was admitted to Stanford. This, coupled with her experience of working with a neurosurgeon, crystallized a dream she had of becoming a famous neurologist, wealthy, internationally respected for her work, perhaps eventually a professor at a major university. Trin didn’t see any connection between this goal and her lifelong pursuit for her father’s love. Instead, it was a rational choice of careers, based on her abilities and interests.
Trin certainly had the ability. She sailed through the biology, chemistry, and physics courses required of premeds in the first few years. But those of us who knew her well always wondered if she had the desire. Although she could ace any class she took, Trin never seemed to have the intrinsic passion for her work that you like to see in anyone devoted to such an ambitious goal. The only time her eyes lit up was when she attended a poetry reading, occasionally held in the dorms, or a visiting faculty member’s lecture on the history of pioneer women in the American Southwest. If, by some chance, Trin didn’t get the highest grade on an exam, she would come back to the dorm and brood about it: “How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I study the chapter on quantum mechanics more? I let myself get distracted—I’m going to have to move out of the dorms so I can be alone and quiet to get my studying done. But then I’ll have to cook for myself and that will take time away from my work. I’ve got to get moved to a quieter dorm, out on the edge of campus away from all the noise and activity.”
Then in Trin’s junior year of college, tragedy struck. Her father was killed in an automobile accident while driving home from work. Any loving child would be stunned and overwhelmed when they unexpectedly lose a parent. Trin, however, was not only overtaken by grief She became a rudderless boat. She left school, not officially dropping out of class, just disappearing. She lost all sense of motivation to continue her studies or much of anything else in her life. She just hung out at her boyfriend’s apartment, occasionally taking walks or watching a little television, much of the time staring out the window.
It was six months after her father’s death when I next saw Trin. She was even thinner than before, and she had cut her hair short. Her eyes, though, were what I noticed. Gone was that look of steely determination, that “don’t get in my way, I’m going to class” attitude. Instead there was a softness, a deepness, that I had only seen on those rare occasions when Trin was sitting quietly listening to classical music or reading a book of poetry instead of her biology textbook. I asked her what happened.
“I just floated for a couple of months. Thankfully, Sean [her boyfriend] kept me from self-destructing. I even thought of committing suicide a few times. I kept seeing my father, hearing him, when he wasn’t there. He was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand, I was so scared. I thought I was losing my mind.” At this point, tears began running down her cheeks. “Then, several weeks ago, when I was asleep, I heard my father calling me: ‘Trin, Trin, here, listen to me, daughter. Follow your heart. Follow your heart.’ I couldn’t tell if it was a dream, or what, I just knew I heard him, and I knew he said, ‘Follow your heart.’ But what did that mean? I lay awake the rest of the night, listening for his voice, asking him what he meant. But I heard nothing more, except the echo of his words, ‘Follow your heart.’
“I spent a lot of time walking in the hills, still listening for my father. I was no longer seeing him or hearing him everywhere—it was as if he had spoken what he needed to tell me, and now he was really gone. I wanted him back, I wanted to ask him questions. But that was his way. He spoke something once, and only once, then he moved on. What was in my heart? I kept asking myself. No clear answers came except one—it wasn’t medicine. Medicine wasn’t in my heart. ‘How could that be?’ I asked myself. I’ve been driven toward medicine ever since high school. I’m very good at it. I could make a brilliant physician. But it was not in my heart. When I first realized this, I thought, ‘I’ve lost my father, now I’ve also lost my calling, my career.’
“But instead of feeling empty and grieved, I felt a tremendous relief. It was as if something that had been holding me by the back of my neck for years had suddenly let go. My father had let go. He hadn’t been the one holding on to me exactly, it was what I thought he wanted of me, what I thought I had to do for him. And now he’s gone. So my reason for pursuing medicine is gone.”
I had always viewed Trin as a mature young woman, but I stood gaping in awe of her insight and growth. “What,” I asked, “is going to replace medicine?”
“I don’t know yet,” she responded. “I’m coming back to school to find out. I’ve dropped the premed major and have declared an English major. My mother and brothers think I’ve lost my mind. But I think I’ve found it.”
Trin eventually graduated from Stanford with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in American literature, and went on to further graduate study. Her real accomplishment, though, was in letting go of a goal that was not truly hers but that was nevertheless running every aspect of her life—the goal of becoming a doctor. She could have achieved the goal. But because it wasn’t in her heart, achieving it would not have given her rich and abiding pleasure.
Thankfully, most of us can readjust our expectations and goals for ourselves without having to experience a tragedy such as Trin’s. First, ask yourself which of your goals you’ve picked up from society’s messages or expectations other people have for you. Then ask yourself if those really reflect your values and the ways you want to define yourself. If the answer is no, then let go of them. Use your self-reflective strengths to imagine wrapping up these false gods in a bag, flipping the lid on the garbage can, and tossing them away.
Then rewind the tape of the Positive You’s day. Shut your eyes, and before you play the tape again, say to yourself, “Be gentle. Be kind. Accept who you are. Be realistic.” Then try running the tape again. How does the Positive You look different this time? Are there things about her that now look more like the Real You? Which characteristics of her or of her life bear little resemblance to the Real You? For example, perhaps the new Positive You still has quite a different relationship with her husband than you do. Or perhaps she has a pleasant evening without alcohol, when the Real You seems to need a drink to relax. Does she have energy and interest in what she does, while the Real You is always tired and unmotivated?
Rerun the tape a couple more times, and each time begin by telling yourself, “Be gentle. Be kind. Accept who you are. Be realistic.” Notice which differences between Positive You and Real You keep coming back over and over, because those are likely to be the changes you want to make for yourself. Get a piece of paper and write each change down in the language of approach goals—new behaviors or ways of living that you want to move toward, rather than things you want to avoid or give up. Some examples might be “I want to eat three healthy meals a day.” “I want to drink within healthy guidelines for women.” “I want to increase my energy level.” “I want to find a more interesting job.”
Now you’re ready to begin working toward these positive goals. In the rest of this chapter, I am going to give you some tools that will move you away from the toxic triangle and toward healthier living. These tools build upon those you learned to use in chapter 6 to identify triggers for depression, yo-yo eating, and heavy drinking. These new tools take you beyond what you learned in chapter 6 into a place where you are not just aware of your unhealthy habits and their sources but actively choosing new ways of thinking and behaving. These tools have been tested in research with women who suffer depression, eating problems, and drinking problems (or all three parts of the toxic triangle) and have been repeatedly shown to reduce their symptoms and help them make positive changes in their lives. The tools can also help you, no matter which combination of symptoms you suffer. If you believe you are on your way into the toxic triangle but haven’t quite gotten there, these tools can help you turn toward a healthier place before you become trapped.4
Set the Stage: Make Your Environment Healthier
It’s difficult to move toward positive change if your environment keeps pulling you back into the toxic triangle. Let’s focus first on simple changes you can make to reduce your likelihood of binge eating or drinking.
CLEAN YOUR HOUSE
Instead of dusting the furniture and mopping the floors, clean out those items that you believe are triggers or cues for overeating or drinking. Several of these triggers might have been identified while practicing mindfulness or in your diary. Maybe your binges often start with salty chips, or with a particular brand of cookies. Purge them from your pantry! You don’t want to be tempted to binge on a luscious cake or pie, so you may want to skip cooking rich and fattening desserts until you’ve gotten control over your eating.
Replace your binge food with healthy snacks. Make sure you have plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables in the house. When you’re shopping for food, make a list and stick to it. Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry or you’ll be more likely to buy binge foods and to consume them. Instead of buying foods that can be taken out of their wrappers and eaten quickly, go for foods that take some preparation. You might try new recipes from books or magazines like Cooking Light that are focused on healthy eating.
You may also need to clean out your liquor cabinet or wine cellar, particularly if you tend to drink alone at home. If you don’t want to dump out expensive liquor, give it to a friend. If your spouse or partner objects to your getting rid of the liquor, you may be able to move it to a place where it is less “in your face.”
If your tendency is not to drink at home but at bars or parties, then for the time being you may need to limit your exposure to these tempting situations. This doesn’t mean you can never go to a party again. But until you’ve gone for a while without over-drinking and have become accustomed to how your body feels after a pleasant evening without alcohol, it is best to keep your environment relatively free of it.
EAT A SQUARE THREE
You’ve heard it since you were a kid—eat three regular meals a day. Well, it’s true. Eating three regular, normal-size meals a day is one of the best ways to avoid binge eating. (And binge drinking: many women drink when actually they are hungry—and become drunk much faster on an empty stomach.)
Don’t wait until you are hungry to eat. If you’ve been dieting excessively or binge eating for a long time, your body’s signals as to when it is empty or full are likely to be mixed up. Once you’ve been eating a reasonable amount on a regular schedule, you’ll be able to trust these signals once again. But for now, set yourself a regular schedule of eating three full meals, say at 8 A.M., noon, and 6 P.M., and also schedule a light snack in between each meal.
“But I’ll gain weight!” you might protest. This is unlikely. If you have a habit of starving yourself for long periods of the day, you are setting yourself up for binge eating. Even if you vomit or otherwise purge the binge, you still absorb significant calories from the food you have ingested. Eating three reasonable meals a day reduces the physiological and psychological drives to binge, making you likely to consume fewer calories per day than if you continue the habit of starving and bingeing.
If at all possible, plan your meals and don’t let other things interfere with your eating times. At first, it doesn’t matter so much what you eat as when you eat it. Establishing a regular pattern of eating can be very difficult for women who’ve gotten in the habit of grabbing a burger with their kids on the way to a game or skipping meals all day in an effort to control their weight. Use your family’s health as a motivator if you need to—your kids need three square meals a day as much as or more than you do, and they will be more likely to eat healthfully if you do.
Try to concentrate on what you are eating during your meals and try not to do other things while you’re eating. Mindless eating often leads to overeating. Use mindfulness techniques to notice everything about every bite—the texture, the heat or cold, the taste, how it feels as it goes into your mouth and down your throat. Research shows that people are much more likely to overeat if their minds are preoccupied with other tasks while they are eating.
Small Steps: Build New Activities
What do you do with all that time that you used to spend binge eating, drinking, or sitting around feeling depressed? It is critical that you build a new set of activities into your life that are healthy replacements for your former unhealthy behaviors. These can be simple, pleasant distractions that lift your mood and give you an alternative to bingeing. Or they can be endeavors that move you forward toward the changes you have decided you want to make in your life.
When you conjured up the realistic version of Positive You, what kinds of simple things did she do instead of drinking or eating? Perhaps she had a hobby or a sport. Perhaps she volunteered at a local charity. Perhaps you saw her lounging on the living room floor with her children, playing.
Make a list of simple, everyday things that you find enjoyable and that are relatively easy to do. These might range from taking a walk in your neighborhood to joining a recreational sports team. One of the most important steps to moving away from bingeing and toward a more Positive You is to find things to do that can take your mind away from your urges, filling up the time during which you would normally binge. Plan activities for the times between meals and snacks when you otherwise don’t have anything to do. When you feel an urge to binge on food or alcohol, go back to something you’ve done and enjoyed before.
Finding pleasant endeavors to fill our time is also an important coping strategy for depression. In our research, we have found that just a few minutes of a pleasant, distracting activity can break up ruminative overthinking and lift a mood.5 Breaking the grip of overthinking through pleasant distractions also improves the quality of your thinking, making it more positive and balanced and less negative and biased. Free of overthinking, you become a better problem solver, able to generate higher-quality solutions to your problems, and you have more energy to carry out these solutions. So although pleasant distractions may provide only short-term relief from overthinking and negative moods, they set the stage for longer-term relief by improving your abilities to overcome the myriad problems fed by overthinking.
In our studies, one of the most effective activities is exercise. Exercise provides a biochemical boost to your brain and a healthy distraction from overthinking and bingeing. Make sure to choose an exercise that is right for your body (you should talk with your doctor before starting anything new). Sports that require all your attention—like a challenging squash match or a technically difficult mountain climb—will do a better job of distracting you than those that can be done automatically and with little concentration.
Hobbies, such as glassblowing, gardening, model construction, or painting can be great distractions. Losing yourself in the activity is the key. Try something fresh that requires you to build new skills. Both hobbies and exercise can give you a sense of accomplishment and identity that shores you up and prevents you from falling back into the toxic triangle.
Bigger Steps: New Skills at Problem Solving
The activities you have come up with so far are meant to lift your mood, take you away from negative overthinking, and fill the time you would otherwise have spent bingeing. These are small steps, although critical ones, on the road to the Positive You. Now you are ready to take bigger steps—steps that will begin to overcome the larger problems in your life that drive your unhealthy thoughts and behaviors, and that help you reshape the Real You into the Positive You.
When you did the Positive You exercise, you developed a list of goals for positive change. These goals reflect your core values, what you want to be most true in your life. The toxic triangle takes you away from your core values. Bingeing, recovering from binges, or being depressed simply takes a lot of time that you could use to do things that are in line with your values. The social and psychological pressures that lead us into the toxic triangle, such as the demand that women be thin and that they sacrifice their needs for others, are goals that are imposed on you and often interfere with your pursuit of your own deeply held values. Here is an exercise to begin moving you toward those values.
• Take your list of approach goals—new behaviors or ways of living you want to move toward—developed in the Positive You exercise. Under each goal, brainstorm some things you can begin to engage in, today, that will move you toward your goals. Start small! Thinking you have to overhaul your behavior or your identity in one fell swoop will only set you up for defeat! What you write down first should be simple things that you can begin today, with the resources readily available.
Say, for example, that one of your goals is to do work that is more interesting and fulfilling than what you are currently doing. Some things you might consider doing to move toward this goal include:
1. Talk to friends who seem to like their work, to find out what it is that makes their jobs enjoyable.
2. Look through the “Help Wanted” ads in the newspaper or in a trade magazine for your profession to see what looks interesting.
3. Look into workshops or lectures on changing careers that might be given in your community, for example, at your local YWCA or community college.
4. Flip through the catalog for a local college to see what courses excite your interest, to get ideas of what direction you might want your career to go.
If you don’t want to seek a new job but just want to spend your time in something more meaningful, you might think about volunteer work that is in line with your important values. Helping other people is a great mood lifter, as well as an important expression of what you believe. Volunteer to serve soup in a homeless shelter. Help an environmental group clean up a park. Take meals to an elderly person who can’t leave her home. Your personal concerns will be cast in a different light after you’ve spent some time with the less fortunate.
Your larger problems or goals will require more advanced problem solving. Fortunately, psychological research has identified a set of problem-solving steps that can be applied toward a vast array of problems or goals, no matter how large.6 Take one of your major goals, or a significant change you want to make in your life, and consider how you would apply each of the following steps:
1. List as many possible activities as you can to move you toward your goal without judging whether they are “good” or “bad.” In other words, brainstorm things you can do without getting hung up on whether or not they’ll work.
2. Now you get to judge how useful the behaviors you generated in Step 1 will be. Rank each one, considering how easy it will be to accomplish it and how effective it will be in moving you toward your goal. If you find yourself thinking, “That won’t work! Nothing’s going to help!” try using the mindfulness techniques learned in chapter 6 to slow yourself down and be more open and gentle with yourself. Recognize that the process of change is a gradual one and that there are never any guarantees that changes we make will get us to our goals. But you’ve made a commitment to yourself to move toward the Positive You, and you deserve to live that way.
3. Once you decide what would be most helpful in moving toward your goal, develop a plan to carry it out. For example, if you’ve decided you need to take some courses to improve your job skills and get a new job, then the first step is to investigate a local educational institution. The second step is to sign up for a relevant course. The third step is to take the course. It may also be helpful to consider the available resources for each step. For example, you may need to look into financial aid.
4. Schedule the first step in your plan. Scheduling simple activities such as “Look up courses in the course catalog” may seem silly, but the act of scheduling will make you more committed to carrying out the activity, and will help ensure that you find the time to do it.
5. Once you go through with your scheduled activities, evaluate how well they worked. How did they make you feel? Did they accomplish what you wanted?
6. At this point, you may need to revise the plan, especially if you didn’t get as far along the path to your goal as you hoped. Again, be gentle and generous with yourself—you won’t get to the Positive You overnight, just as you didn’t travel into the toxic triangle overnight. You may need to go back to Step 1 and repeat the process of generating ideas that move you toward your goal.
7. Whether or not everything you tried was successful, reward yourself for just trying. For example, treat yourself to a meal at your favorite restaurant or to coffee with a friend.
Build New Relationships
Women’s empathy and strong emotional ties to others can lead them into the toxic triangle, but these strengths can also help them escape it.
ENLIST FAMILY AND FRIENDS IN YOUR GOALS
It’s tough to make major changes in your life by yourself. Enlisting family members and friends as allies can significantly increase your chances of success. Simply making public your intention to change makes you more likely to stick with your plan when the going gets tough.
As discussed in chapter 6, loved ones can provide emotional support by listening and accepting your feelings of depression or anxiety, which can ease your own burden. They can be your cheerleaders as you make changes, encouraging you by their confidence that you will succeed. They can also be your safety valve—someone to call when you feel yourself sinking into despair, or giving in to the urge to binge.
Loved ones can provide practical support, in the form of sounding boards for ideas about the Positive You, and can help generate ideas about how to move toward the Positive You. They might also provide material support to help you accomplish your goals, for example, babysitting your children while you take a course to improve your job skills.
It’s important that when you ask loved ones for help, you be specific, so they know what you need. You could say something like, “I’ve realized I have a tendency to binge eat [or drink too much at times] and I would like to be more healthy. Would you be willing to help me by…” and then finish the sentence with the kind of help that would be useful to you (such as being available for a phone call if you felt the urge to binge, rewarding you for going without bingeing for some specific amount of time, being tolerant with you if you become irritable as you first gain control over your binges).
Family and friends can also undermine your attempts to change. They may have a stake in you remaining the way you are. For example, if you’ve been shortchanging your own professional and intellectual needs in favor of your husband’s career, he may view your new desire to pursue your own interests as a threat. Or, if much of your drinking happens in situations where your husband also drinks, he may feel that your attempts to cut back cast a negative light on his own behavior or that you are sending him a message to cut back on his own drinking.
People can also undermine your new goals by being insensitive. The friend who keeps pushing you to have one more glass of wine, or to eat more food when you’re at her house, may be threatened by your willpower or may just be insensitive. A family member who expresses doubt that you’ll ever finish your degree and pursue a new career may be threatened by the likelihood of your accomplishments.
In either case, it may be time to find new friends or to limit your time with unhelpful family members who make you feel more depressed than encouraged. People who are trying to abstain from alcohol often find that they cannot hang around with the friends they used to drink with and successfully resist the temptation to go back to their old behaviors. In part, this is because these friends often pressure them to drink. But what is not as well-known is that the body develops a physiological response to the environments in which you used alcohol that can make you crave a drink. This is called a conditioned craving. Because the characteristics of that environment—the look and smell of the bar, or specific people—are so often paired with the physiological effects of using alcohol, your body begins to go through physiological changes when you are in the environment, even if you are sober. The result of this environmental association is that your cravings can increase to a point where they can be difficult to resist. It may be necessary to avoid these environments and these people altogether if you want to abstain. It is easier to do if you’ve developed a set of alternate activities that are pleasant and in line with your values that can fill the time you used to spend in these triggering environments.
When the person who is undermining you is your spouse or someone you can’t or don’t want to avoid completely, it’s time for you to become assertive. If your immediate response to this suggestion is, “Oh I can’t. I can never stand up to him,” or “He’ll get mad and I can’t stand that,” then please realize that this excessive concern with relationships is what we identified in chapter 3 as a key factor pushing women into the toxic triangle. You are refusing to stand up to a friend or family member who is blocking your path out of the triangle and toward the Positive You for the sake of avoiding conflict.
Being assertive doesn’t mean creating conflict, nor does it necessarily entail yelling at or blaming another person. What it does mean is making other people aware of the negative impact their behavior has on you, and asking them to change that behavior in a specific way.
• The major components of an assertive response are:
1. When you … (fill in the behavior that is undermining you),
2. it makes me feel … (fill in your specific feelings when this behavior happens).
3. I would like you to … (fill in a new specific behavior to replace the undermining behavior).
Let’s go back to Peggy, whom we met in chapter 6, to illustrate an assertive response.
Peggy’s husband, Lyle, offered her a drink when he got home from work even though she had told him she wanted to cut back. Peggy told Lyle, “No thanks. Like I said, I’m trying to cut down.”
But he persisted. “Come on, Peggy, one little drink isn’t going to hurt you. In fact, it will make you more relaxed. You seem really uptight and grumpy tonight.”
Peggy felt her anger rising to the surface. How dare he try to bully her into drinking, insinuating that she needed a drink to be pleasant! How dare he push her to drink when she had explicitly told him she wanted to cut down!
“Lyle,” Peggy said, as calmly and evenly as possible, “I feel really frustrated when you try to get me to have a drink with you when I’ve told you I’d like to cut down. It’s very important to me that you support me in this. I’d like you to accept my ‘no’ as final when I say to you that I don’t want a drink.”
Notice that Peggy didn’t expressly say that Lyle was being a jerk, though he was. If she had said this directly, Lyle would probably have become defensive or hostile. Instead, Peggy remained calm and voiced her concerns and feelings in as concrete a way as possible. She didn’t ask him for some vague change in his behavior, such as “I want you to be more loving to me.” Or “I want you to stop being such a jerk!” Asking for such nonspecific or huge changes in another person’s character is asking for trouble. Instead, Peggy asked for a specific change that was well within Lyle’s reach and would have a major impact on her ability to meet her goal of having evenings without alcohol.
Assertive responses not only stop the undermining behavior, they also make it easier for you to stick to the positive changes you are making in the way you eat and drink. The act of being assertive also has a major effect on your mood, making you feel more in control and less victimized. Some women find that becoming more assertive is an especially important component of overcoming the depression component of the toxic triangle. Self-assertion lifts them out of the sense of helplessness that is at the core of depression, while the act of becoming more assertive can have positive repercussions throughout a relationship, making those close to you more aware of, and sensitive to, your needs.
Assertive responses don’t always work, however. Other people may not want to change, and may resist all your attempts to assert yourself and call for that change. They may even become hostile or angry. You can prepare for a negative reaction by anticipating the worst possible outcome of your own assertiveness, deciding ahead of time how you will cope with it. If you have any reason to expect that the other person will become violent toward you, then it’s probably best not to proceed. Any relationship in which violence is a potent threat cannot be fixed by assertiveness; instead, please seek the help of a professional counselor to develop a plan to deal with this kind of relationship. You can find free help in most cities by calling programs for women in abusive relationships.
If the worst-case outcome of your assertiveness is that the other person becomes angry, refuses to even consider changing his or her behavior, and storms away, the first step in coping is to take care of yourself. In the past, you may have sunk into a deeply depressed mood or taken refuge in a drinking or eating binge. Now that you have decided to free yourself from the toxic triangle and pursue the Positive You, you need an alternative strategy. You might try reaching out to a friend for emotional support. You might want to use the mindfulness techniques or Diary Methods in chapter 6 to “be with” your feelings but not be overwhelmed or ruled by them, and to capture your thoughts as they flood your brain and body. The breathing exercises that are part of mindfulness can be very helpful in reducing feelings of frustration, anger, and anxiety.
The second step in coping is to decide how you will respond when others react to your assertiveness. In the past, you probably would have given in to any reluctance, believing nothing could change and it wasn’t worth rocking the boat further. Don’t do it! Giving in will only pull you back into the toxic triangle, eroding any progress you’ve made toward the Positive You.
It’s best not to go running after your spouse, or whomever you have tried out your assertiveness with, to confront his or her disappointing response. The person may at this point be angry and not open to reason, at the same time that you’ve got a million angry thoughts flying through your head that are even less likely to help the situation. It is better to wait until you have formulated a calm, but again assertive, response.
So imagine that when Peggy made her assertive request to Lyle to change his behavior, Lyle reacted with hostility. Here’s how she could assertively handle that situation:
Lyle initially was stunned at Peggy’s response to his encouragement to have a drink. Then he got mad and shouted, “Ever since you got on this self-righteous kick of being on the wagon, you’ve been a real bitch!” Then he took his drink and stormed out of the room.
Peggy wanted to scream after him that he was an asshole and a drunk, but luckily she didn’t. Instead, she continued to cook dinner, chopping vegetables furiously, and occasionally stopping to take some deep breaths and relax her body.
When dinner was ready, Peggy went into the family room, where Lyle was watching television. He didn’t look up or acknowledge her when she walked into the room. She decided she didn’t want this conflict to drag on through dinner, both of them sitting silently, trying to ignore each other. So she said, “Lyle, if I have been more irritable lately, I’m sorry. But even if I have, I don’t think it is okay for you to press me to drink with you if I decide I don’t want to. I don’t want this to be an issue between us. But I don’t want to feel like I have to drink just because you want me to.”
Lyle replied, “I don’t push you to drink. You drink because you like it. I just was being polite and asked you if you wanted a drink.”
“You may not be intentionally pushing me to drink,” Peggy said, “but when you keep encouraging me to drink when I’ve said I don’t want to, it feels like you are pushing.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel about it,” Lyle said reluctantly.
“Yes, that’s how I feel about it,” Peggy said firmly.
Lyle was a bit sullen through the first half of dinner, but by the time dinner was finished, he and Peggy were having a pleasant conversation about their plans for the upcoming holidays. The next evening, when Lyle came home from work, he poured himself a drink but didn’t encourage Peggy to have one with him.
By formulating a response when you are calm, you will have the courage to assert yourself another time, rather than lose your nerve. It will also give you a set of coping tools, prepared in advance, that won’t require you to react in the heat of the moment.
USE YOUR POWERS OF EMPATHY
As women, we break our backs to take care of others, and often can’t understand why they don’t respond with gratitude. But often people don’t respond the way we would to a situation, or even the way they might want to. When we fall into a tailspin of over-thinking about how and why others behave as they do, it can lead us to become depressed, or to escape through bingeing.
We can instead use our empathy and emotional sensitivity to take a different perspective on the situation, as Jill did.
Jill was visiting her parents, and as usual her mother was pushing her to eat while her father was teasing her about how tight her pants were. What Jill would normally do, and what she felt like doing this time, was to go get another glass of wine and drown out her father’s insensitivity, at the same time that she silenced her feelings of being fat, defective, lonely, and sad.
However, Jill had made a commitment to change. The yoga class she had been taking had helped her become aware of her body and her thoughts of self-loathing. She was tired of living in the toxic triangle and wanted to get more balance in her eating and drinking, and to stop letting her self-worth ebb and flow depending on what others said to her or what day of the week it was.
Jill considered blowing up at her dad, but instead she used her breathing exercises to slow down and give herself time to think about what might be a more effective response. She sat back and watched her dad. He could be such a jerk, and such a sweetheart. She couldn’t understand how he could say such hurtful things to her and her sister. And then she realized she never would understand, nor could she ever change him, a seventy-five-year-old curmudgeon who had never been sensitive to others and never would be. What she could do was stop being around him. But she loved both her parents and didn’t want to hurt her mother by breaking off ties altogether.
So she decided to do three things. One was to make some attempt to help her dad understand why she didn’t want to hear him call her a “tub butt” again. The second was to limit her time with her parents—not to go over so often for dinner, even if doing so elicited her mother’s protests. The third was to give up trying to change her father’s personality to make him a more sensitive person. She could set limits on him, telling him there was to be “no more tub butt.” And she would stop ruminating for hours on end about all the things he had said to her and how she wanted him to be different.
Jill was able to free herself from overthinking and the feelings of guilt and frustration inspired by her dad by accepting that she was not going to change his entire personality. In this way, Jill used her powers of empathy to shift her perspective on her dad and free herself from guilt and frustration, which in turn gave her the strength to draw the line with her father, assertively telling him that the “tub butt” refrain had to stop. This assertive response was Jill’s way of taking care of and protecting herself. Jill was well on her way out of the toxic triangle.
FORGIVE AND MOVE ON
Another critical element of Jill’s response to her father was to accept who he was, even to forgive him for it, and then move on. Forgiveness is not a popular idea in our culture. We’re focused on justice and getting our due, and are encouraged by the media and people around us to take retribution on others rather than to forgive.
Yet at other times we want to understand why we have been unfairly treated. A huge amount of women’s depressive ruminations is focused on questions like “How could he or she have done that?” We twist ourselves into knots analyzing the hearts and souls of those who have wronged us, trying to understand what caused them to behave as they did. Only sometimes do our powers of empathy give us the answers we need.
Most of the time we will never know the hearts and souls of others; even if we do, we may never accept their behavior. We can forgive them for it, however, which releases us from trying to accept or understand it. Forgiving another person for their actions does not mean you condone those actions or deem that person to be acceptable. It also doesn’t mean that the wrongdoer should not be held accountable—you may still want to press charges, file a lawsuit, or simply confront the wrongdoer. But forgiving means letting go of the desire for revenge for its own sake, pulling away from the hold that anger and hatred have on your heart and mind.7
The symptoms of depression, particularly guilt and shame, sometimes signal that we need to forgive ourselves. Modern society gives us endless reasons to feel contrite and embarrassed about the things we have done to others and the choices we have made. Understanding why you behave the way you do, of course, can help you to avoid behaving in the same way in the future. But understanding yourself doesn’t always bring relief from depression, just as understanding why other people mistreated you doesn’t always bring relief from anger. You may understand why you lied to your boss when she asked if you completed your work, but still feel guilty for doing so. You may understand why you blew up at a friend who was just trying to be honest with you, but still feel guilty the next time you see her. Here’s where forgiveness comes in. If we can forgive ourselves, we can move on to action, rather than remaining mired in brooding and depression. When we forgive, we let go of our desire for revenge and retribution and focus on recovery and repair, which is the first step down the pathway toward health and well-being. Only then we will have the energy and creativity to think of ways to move toward our positive selves, and will be less likely to allow our guilty feelings to be transformed into anger against those who make us feel guilty.
You can use your powers of self-reflection and your mindfulness techniques to begin to forgive in this version of the Leaves Flowing Down a Stream exercise from chapter 6.
• Get quiet and comfortable and spend a couple of minutes focusing on your breath as it goes in and out. Imagine a stream running slowly by, and you standing on its banks. Every so often a leaf falls into the stream and begins to float with the current. Watch a few leaves float by and disappear down the stream. Now, as a leaf comes, place one of your thoughts concerning the person you want to forgive on that leaf. The thought might be specifically about something this person did. Or the leaf might hold your feelings about what was done. Or it might be a question about how could he have done that. Just start with whatever thought is easiest to place on the leaf. Then watch it float down the stream, getting smaller and smaller, eventually disappearing in the distance. When you are ready, place another one of your thoughts on a leaf and watch it go down the stream.
Keep doing this for as long as you wish—you may not be able to let all of your thoughts go in one sitting. They will come back. Just as the wind blows leaves around, your unforgiving, pained thoughts will return to you at times. If you still want to forgive and move on, go back to this exercise or another mindfulness exercise you find helpful, and once again let the thoughts go.
What makes an exercise like this work is not so much the mystical powers of mindfulness—it’s the choice you’ve made to let go of hurt and to forgive. You may find other ways of doing this, perhaps through prayer or talking with a trusted friend or counselor. Or you may need to assertively confront the person who hurt you. Only you can decide what is best for you. But forgiving and moving on can be an essential step toward freeing yourself from the ghosts that keep pulling you into the toxic triangle.
Preparing for Lapses
I hope you’ve found some of the ideas for moving out of the toxic triangle and toward a more Positive You helpful. You’re beginning to realize your expectations for yourself and which of these expectations you’ve chosen and which have been forced upon you by others. You’re making choices as to which expectations you want to keep, and which you want to let go of. Armed with an image of your new, healthier goals, you’ve begun to practice activities that can move you toward them and work on close relationships that need to change. And you’ve taken some actions to initiate these changes.
What if, a day from now, a week from now, a month from now, you find yourself reverting to the unhealthy expectations, feelings, and behaviors that the toxic triangle generates? You may start to drink more, or more often, or may find it hard to resist the urge to binge eat. You are feeling out of control, or sad, or helpless.
It’s tempting to react by saying to yourself, “I knew it wouldn’t work! I knew I couldn’t change!” This would only give you an excuse to go back to the same unhealthy ways that you previously used to cope with your feelings and thoughts. You may then give in and start binge eating or binge drinking, or sink into depression because “this is just the way I am.”
You can prepare for these kinds of lapses, which are, after all, highly likely to happen. Preparing for lapses can take away some of their power and can impart weapons to fight the lapses should they occur.
The first step in preparing for a lapse is to take a card or a piece of paper and write: “A lapse is not a relapse. It is a momentary diversion. I can get back on the path to my Positive Me.” You may want to use slightly different language, but the idea is to give yourself a concrete reminder that lapsing into your old behaviors for a short time does not mean that change is impossible, or that you have “relapsed” into the full-blown toxic triangle. You can make the lapse short term by cutting it off as soon as you notice it.
The second step in preparing for a lapse is to write down the techniques you have learned in this book or elsewhere that help you move away from toxic triangle behaviors and toward your new, healthier goals. Get a piece of paper, and list those techniques that worked for you in the form of commitments to yourself: “If I feel myself lapsing, I will … [use the Leaves Flowing Down a Stream exercise to gather my thoughts, begin to keep a diary of the thoughts I’m having when I’m being unhealthy, go talk to a trusted friend or counselor].” Be concrete—list specific techniques, perhaps even the page number where those techniques are described. In the future, if you feel yourself lapsing, you can pull out this list and use it to get yourself back on a healthier path. Lapse-prevention strategies have been shown in a great deal of research on people with depression, eating disorders, and alcohol addiction to significantly reduce the likelihood of severe lapses.8
Finally, and most important, realize that change is a process, not an end point. You are always changing, every day of your life, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. If you cultivate the kind of compassion and respect for yourself that we’ve been talking about in these chapters, then you’ll be able to weather setbacks.
Jill’s story has a happy ending, because she was able to marshall her skills at self-reflection and empathy to understand some of the forces pushing her into the toxic triangle; then she transformed these skills into instruments for change. As she practiced meditation and made a commitment to change, she realized that her excessive drinking, yo-yo eating, and negative self-image were rooted in experiences with her family and in the unreasonable expectations she had for herself. Jill practiced assertiveness with her father, telling him how she felt when he teased her about her shape and weight. He protested, saying he meant no harm and that she was being overly sensitive. She stuck to her guns, though, asking him to refrain from his “tub butt” comments. Although he pouted for a few days, he did change his behavior, and their interactions improved. Jill also slowly built a new network of friends who weren’t big partyers, but who liked to go to art galleries or hiking in the mountains, and who nurtured the healthier lifestyle she wanted for herself. Jill had setbacks: one particularly stressful week at work, she found herself reverting to heavy drinking to cope with thoughts that she was incompetent and hopeless. She recognized that she was careening down the path back into the toxic triangle, however, and called one of her new friends to talk about her fears and frustrations, and to get encouragement to get back on the path to her Positive Self. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick, but Jill pulled herself out of the toxic triangle.