. It described how to work with two aspects of myself, the Dictator and the Wild Child. Here is an exploration of each of them and their motivations.Dictator: My Dictator is rigid, controlling, and can be cruel when stressed or frightened. Dictator me is trying to take care of me by making me follow the rules, both those set by society and those I set for myself. The Dictator is terrified most of the time (since she has no control over anything) and feels a sense of impending doom. She is sure she will be blamed when the rules are not followed and expects the rule-makers (whoever they are!) to destroy her or take away her power, leaving her without an identity, a nothing, an empty shell of failure. She wants to keep me safe. She wants me to feel protected and secure. She wants me to be healthy and happy. However, the rules are constantly changing, especially those about eating! What "they" say is good for me today, "they" say will cause me to get cancer tomorrow. The Dictator is trying to stand on a tilting floor covered with marbles. She can gain no solid foothold and is engaged in a life or death struggle every waking moment. I can feel her as a terrific pressure on my chest that pushes my ribs into my abdomen. It's like she has strapped me into a tight corset. I can hardly breathe. In her view, eating is a dangerous activity. Though she knows I have to eat to survive, she also believes it will kill me. There is no sustenance for me in the tight box she has constructed.
Wild Child: My Wild Child is just trying to keep me alive. She wants to play, to enjoy food, to savor and take delight in eating. But she is also the target for the Dictator's cruelty. Whenever she starts to enjoy eating, the Dictator berates her, belittles her, and beats her away. When the Wild Child manages to get past the Dictator to enjoy some food, she gorges. She eats anything she can get her hands on that will provide any pleasure at all. She is trying hard to eke out a little nurturing and sustenance, a little sensory delight, but instead she snatches whatever she can get when the Dictator is distracted elsewhere (such as when there are other non-food related stresses going on). The Dictator is her controlling and abusive parent. What she really wants to do is escape, to be free to explore food, sample it, enjoy eating. For now, though, she satisfies herself with being defiant and doing exactly what the Dictator does not want her to do whenever she gets the opportunity. My Wild Child is a survivor, but there is no joy in her world, yet she clearly remembers that there once was and could be again. When she is not terrified she is enraged. She hates the Dictator and would like to eat anything and everything, especially what the Dictator tries to forbid. The Wild Child feels certain the Dictator would like to kill her, to destroy the tiny flickering flame of pleasure she works so hard to hide and protect for me.
Watcher: I watch my Dictator and my Wild Child with great sadness and compassion. Both their lives (aspects of my life) are filled with suffering and pain. They are engaged in a battle each sees as life threatening. I love them both. I see them each as valiantly trying to help me, to protect me, to take care of me, each in their own way. I love the Wild Child for protecting my joy as related to food and eating. I want so badly to fully experience the gift she offers. I also love the Dictator for trying to protect my health as best she can in the confusion and shifting ground. I love them both for never giving up and persisting in their efforts for me.
I ask them both to call a truce for the moment, to sit down and rest with me. They are both exhausted (symbols of my declines in metabolic health and my depression about my weight and wondering how to eat in a healthy way). They sit in the palms of my hands, separated by the gap between, looking at each other, each wondering why they are so hated by the other. As the relax, we all begin to weep, deep sobs of the spirit, exhausted warriors. None of us knows any longer why we are fighting. The Dictator only wants to know how to guide the Wild Child through the modern day hazards of toxic and dangerous foodstuffs to a healthy pattern of eating. The Wild Child only wants to know she will be given enough to eat at regular intervals to feel comfortable and relaxed and to be able to truly enjoy the activity of sustaining my life with food. Health and eating are sacred to both of them, as I want them to be for me.
I promise the Dictator that I will try to help her sort through the data to find rules that are easy and simple. She doesn't have to fulfill that function for me. I can do the sifting and sorting for her. Her only task is to take care of the Wild Child, to ensure she has enough to eat and is able to completely enjoy what she eats.
I promise the Wild Child that I will give her the most delicious and nutritious food I can find. I will give her opportunities to play with eat, to feel rapturous about its tastes, smells, textures. I will provide her with beautiful food. In return, I will ask her to trust me to monitor the behavior of the Dictator to ensure that the rules she tries to enforce are generous enough to allow room to explore the culinary landscape in freedom within reasonable boundaries for safety. (No foods known to contain GMOs, for example.)
I (the Watcher) will need to monitor the relationship between these two aspects of myself. If I decide to eat bacon with nitrates, I need to reassure the Dictator that I take full responsibility. If I decide to forego potato chips, I need to reassure the Wild Child that I can provide other alternatives she will enjoy as much or more.
I can feel the pressure in my chest releasing as I write this. The tension of this battle has had me tied up in knots, literally. The stress and tightness has been incredible. I will need to plan some ways to remind myself to enter the Watcher role whenever I feel a tendency toward tightening. That way I can tell which if my two aspects are feeling stressed and why. This feels like a very practical way to manage the stress regarding eating that I've been living with.
I know there are healthy foods that I can completely enjoy. My job now is to identify them and make sure they are always available wherever I am.
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