Look at me, The Invisible Woman

I’ve lost 16 pounds.

Yes, I have. 16.2 pounds actually.

Good for me.

Back in April I started going to a new naturopath. It was such a good move. This guy is the most holistic practitioner I’ve ever been to. So sometimes it’s all about the practical. And other times it’s all about the woo-woo. For instance, in my first few weeks I had to drink algae (practical) and work through a belief I had that I was unable to lose weight (woo-woo).

But, in May and June, I’ve been getting stuck. No weight loss. Finding it harder to stay on the diet. Feeling resentful about how hard this whole thing was.

Back to the naturopath. He asked me where I felt this feeling of resentment (my solar plexus). He asked me to intensify that feeling (not hard, believe me). And then asked to remember another time when I’d had that feeling. What came up for me was when I’d started working my dream job for my dream company, but I discovered that part of my portfolio required that I be the liason to the board. Which meant I had to do minutes, stay late for meetings, and basically be this invisible person as I was the lowest status person in the room. So, be at the meeting but be silent and unseen. Not what I’d envisioned when I got the job.

Tell me more about being an invisible person.

Damn. I should have known he’d leap on that.

Well, I guess it might be a recurring theme. And when I look at, it totally is starting in my earliest recollection when I changed high schools and just couldn’t find my place there for two years. Then there was university where I felt like an outsider in my acting class, like I probably didn’t belong there. Then there was the awful job right out of university with the office full of women who hated me. Then there was my first professional acting gig.

I’d completely lucked into it. I got a call to audition from a resume that I’d sent in at least a year and half prior. My audition partner turned out to be someone I knew so I was more relaxed at the audition. And they needed some non-equity people. Me and my scene partner at the audition got the gig. So, great right? Well, yes and no.

The director turned out to be not very good. So it was hard to get information from him. The five other equity actors in the show were SO GOOD. Really. Like ohmigod fantastic. And I got caught in that vortex of “How did I end up here? They must all know I suck. I’m the only one here who has a real job (actually true). I am not good enough. Why am I not good enough? Why do I not know what I’m doing?” And then to make matters worse, one of the pros I admired let me know that the other non-equity person was driving him crazy and that he viewed this guy as a no-talent. So, I immediately assumed he felt the same towards me.

Man, I’ve been carrying this crazy monologue around inside me for more than a decade. I’m tired of it. Tired of it being an issue. But there we are. Still an issue.

This was my naturopath’s view. It’s like a car accident when time slows down and you can remember every second of it years later. It’s because your body has gone into fight or flight mode and in those intense times your nervous system gets easily imprinted. So, because of my anxiety — constantly finding myself in fight or flight mode — the whole few weeks got imprinted on my system. The energy of that time is stuck in my body.

Time to destuckify.

But that’s for another post.

Advertisement