Growing Human(kind)ness by Karly Randolph Pitman

Foster a change of heart

3 Ways to Meet Your Inner Rebel

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​The inner rebel can be such a frustrating part of ourselves! It's easy to get discouraged, to give up, or to try and use force to ​just 'push through.'

​None of these feel very good, and none of them work.

When we're working with the inner rebel, there are three qualities that do help:  humor, patience, and trust.

Humor brings levity and softens anxiety. Patience brings compassion for when we get stuck, and for all the tenderness that lives under the inner rebel.

​And trust reminds us that ​we're on a journey - and that it's taking us somewhere.

Whew - nothing's wrong when the inner rebel arises. And the journey itself has meaning and purpose!

​This clip is an excerpt from my webinar, Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel. It's a preview of my upcoming class, Align:  Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel. ​


The warm embrace of resistance

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Resistance can get such a bad reputation! It’s often seen as something to just ‘push through’ and ‘get over.’

I think this understanding arises partly from our culture. Earlier today I was listening to an On Being interview, and heard a psychologist describe Western culture as ‘a mastery oriented culture.’ We really like to fix things, to find solutions to problems, and to be in control!

Problem solving and mastery are great for building bridges or performing surgery. Not necessarily so for the human heart.

Why fixing is not a solution

The challenge with a mastery mindset is we can apply it to things that don’t need fixing – like our own being.

When we approach ourselves with a ‘fixing’ mindset, our humanity – and all its inherent contradictions, messiness, and vulnerability – becomes something to master and control.

Things that seem to ‘get in the way’ – like emotions, resistance, and inner conflict – are approached as problems to hack or fix. We want a solution, process, or tool to get rid of them!

Ouch – it’s really painful to approach ourselves this way.

Embracing vs. problem solving

I think being human means to practice love – to embrace and care for these things that we’re trying so hard to erase and overcome.

For we are a part of this living, dying, ever changing world – and this includes our inner world. In our own inner ecology, like the ecology of our mother earth, there are many different species and life forms trying to co-habitate together.

Trying to eradicate our messy, painful and difficult parts – like our inner rebel – can be a form of ecological genocide – where we decide which parts of ourselves can stay, and which parts need to be eradicated.

And trying to force, push and overcome these parts of ourselves separates us from our own inner life, from each other, and from our inherent beingness.

Being with

The inner rebel – like all our challenging parts – is, at its root, an invitation to connect – to deepen into our inner ecology, not go to war against it.

When we shift out of a control mindset, the heart turns. We turn away from fixing, away from attempts to control, and turn towards these places that scare and frustrate us.

We choose to stay, to relate, to wonder, and to be with.

In this being with, we find wisdom. We lean closer. We listen to what resistance, the inner rebel, all these inner nos are saying – and we become curious about what they’re pointing to.

Yes, this takes courage.

We have to be willing to dive, to go under, to go behind, to go underneath – to tenderly and warmly invite what lives underneath resistance, to invite it to come forth.

But, oh the reward:  a deeper intimacy with ourselves, with being human, and with all of life. We can start to see these species that stay more hidden; we can see and touch and taste our soft underbellies.

Rather than going to war against our resistance, against our softness, against these species we don’t like, our inner landscapes become more vibrant, rich, authentic, and full.

And from this place we have a better chance of embodying our natural power, sovereignty, and wisdom – to steer and steward our lives.

Caring for the vulnerability that lives under the inner rebel

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One of my all time favorite movies is The Color Purple. There’s a well known line from the film that says: “Everything just wants to be loved.”

Last week, in my free webinar on healing the battle with the inner rebel, I thought about this line when we spoke about how we can embrace and love our inner rebel.

It was really moving to spend time together in a collective space of softening, in a field of love. I think we all came away feeling more understood and less afraid – ah, yes, we all have these inner rebel parts! It’s really okay!

The protective function

One of the things that softens fear is understanding.

When we come closer to the inner rebel, and ‘listen with the ears of the heart,’ we open to this understanding. We often find that the inner rebel is not what we think it is at first glance.

The inner rebel is not intentionally trying to make your life difficult. It’s often a protector part – meaning, it’s a cover that protects and cares for the vulnerability that lives underneath.

Sometimes the inner rebel is protecting our hunger for emotional nourishment – and the ways we use food to meet this need. This need can come up strongly on holidays like Valentine’s Day.

When food is a primary source of nurturing, it makes sense that we may feel protective of it – especially if we feel like it’s going away!

The inner rebel flares up when this protection feels threatened – when you try to set limits or stop using food for emotional nourishment.

It’s trying to protect the tender vulnerability that lives underneath.

Our hearts are so tender – and also so strong. Like every other part of us, they thrive with nourishment, attention and care.

Embracing your inner rebel – forgiving this part of you for its resistance, defiance, opposition, and strong “Nos!” – is one way to heal this pattern – to care for your heart, and to meet your true longing for nourishment.

The second step is an action step – moving forward and taking action in a way that truly meets your longing for presence, love and care. For myself, this morning I sought out connection by doing my  Remembrance practice, reaching out to a loved one, and connecting with two dear friends by email.

Ah – some of the loneliness I had woken up with this morning felt more sated and filled.

Every time we touch our vulnerability – including the vulnerability of the inner rebel – and offer it room, presence, care, warmth and witnessing, our true hungers become more filled, and our protector parts – like the inner rebel – can soften their strong stance.

And every time we take action to care for our needs, we fill up with the nourishment that we’re truly longing for.

I sometimes think if the inner rebel had a voice, it would say things like, “I really need you to hear me, and to hear how much this means to me!”

And, “I feel really scared! Don’t hurt me!”

And, “Please – let me know it’s safe. Let me know I can show my needs and feelings.”

And, “No, stop that!”

All of these are important and powerful and needed messages.

Here in this month of February and Valentine’s day, I wish your inner rebel warmth and space, lots and lots of room, and lots of care for the vulnerability that lives underneath.

As Nayyirah Waheed said so eloquently,  “your heart is the softest place on earth. take care of it.”

When your ‘inner rebel’ creates obstacles to following through

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In my last few emails, I’ve been talking about how important power is in your relationship with food as a preview for my new course. In case you missed those emails, you can read them as blog posts here – why power is a form of love – and the two forms of nurturing that create healing with food.

I feel really excited to email you today to share that this new course is officially launching! (If you’re eager to learn more, you can go directly to the course page here.)

But first, I want to talk a bit more about power, because it’s so important. If you’re feeling stuck and frustrated because you can’t seem to make changes in how you relate to food, your body, or your needs, power may be the missing component.

When we don’t have a connection to our power we often feel unable to effect or make changes in our lives. This can exacerbate patterns of overeating, for food becomes the primary or only way we express power or care for ourselves.

Likewise, we may feel afraid of using power in our relationship with food and with ourselves because we’re afraid of hurting ourselves. This can show up in a number of ways:

  • you may feel paralyzed, unable to move forward
  • you may collapse into hopelessness and ‘why bother’
  • or you may ping pong between too lenient and too rigid ways of caring for yourself

These dynamics can be so frustrating – and often have a common root:  a conflict with your ‘inner rebel.’

Meet the inner rebel

The inner rebel is the part of us that says, “Uh oh, no way!” and strongly rebels or resists when we try to tell ourselves no, set limits or steer or guide ourselves into new ways of being. The inner rebel can arise as strong emotions, body sensations, thoughts and feelings of resistance, rebellion, opposition, and defiance.

It’s like a 2 year old saying, “No! You can’t make me!”

The inner rebel can be so frustrating! For there’s a part of you that longs for growth, healing and change. And yet the conflict with the inner rebel can create ‘self sabotage,’ fester feelings of self doubt, and keep you stuck in the very patterns you long to change.

In teaching over a thousand students and in listening to their food stories, nearly everyone experiences conflict with their inner rebel. It’s really, really common – and is why I’m offering a new course, Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel, to support you in softening the conflict with this part of you.

The good news is this – you can learn how to understand, listen to, and care for the inner rebel so that you don’t feel caught in so much internal conflict.

Why it’s about relationship

It’s not about ‘cutting out’ this part of yourself, but understanding its necessary and vital role, giving it outlets so it can do its job, and connecting with this part of your being.

With loving relationship, you can align your inner rebel with the other parts of yourself, where your various parts cooperate in greater harmony – working together towards your dreams, hopes and yearnings rather than against each other.

If you’ve spent a lot of time nurturing your softness, making room for your vulnerability, and creating a more compassionate relationship with yourself and your overeating, and yet you feel like you’re not able to make the changes you’d like to make with food, healing your relationship with your inner rebel may be the next step on your journey.

In this new course you’ll learn about the dynamics that feed the inner rebel, how to soften the battle between your desire for change and your desire to say no, and how to relate to your inner rebel with more levity, playfulness, and friendship rather than fighting this part of you.

Be filled with power

Healing your relationship with your inner rebel helps you embody and embrace your natural power. This then frees you up to follow through on the dreams, intentions, and hopes that are precious to you.

As a sign in my gym bathroom says, “Don’t throw paper towels, trash, or your hopes and dreams down the toilet.” This note makes me smile – and feel a bit inspired – every time I see it.

If this topic speaks to you, I invite you to follow the link below.

A few nitty gritty details:

You can find the details for the course here.

The course starts February 25th and is open for pre-registration. If you already know that this course is something that speaks to you and you want to join me, you can pre-register now.

If you’re still unsure if this course is for you, rest assured – I’ll be talking more about the inner rebel over the coming month so there’s plenty of time if you need to hear more. Pre-registering, however, does give you the best price and helps us prepare a place for you.

Questions about what’s included or how it works? Please explore the course page below. And if you have more questions that we don’t answer there, please send us an email and we’ll get back to  you. As we’re a small company, kindly give us 1-2 business days to respond.

The two forms of nurturing that support healing with food

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When we overeat, we tend to use food in fairly typical ways.

One of these ways is using food for comfort – eating for stress relief, to self soothe, and as a source of softness, care and tenderness.

In my classes, I call this using food ‘as a mother.’

When food is a ‘mother,’ we’re using it as a relational substitute.

Food is not just food, but a mothering presence – a source of nurturing and comfort, a source of empathy and attunement (a way to feel ‘felt,’ seen and understood), and a source of stress relief.

Overdoing and using food for a ‘treat’

One of the patterns that tends to go hand in hand with this tendency is overdoing.

There may be areas in your life where you feel like you’re too hard on yourself – where you feel like you’re pushing yourself too hard or asking yourself to do too much. This internal pressure can feel oppressive and painful.

One of the ways you may cope with this stress is to treat yourself with food. For example, people will often share with me that food is their one or primary source of comfort or pleasure.

In truth, most of us use ‘things’ to relax to some degree or another – whether it’s with a dessert, a glass of wine, or a favorite TV show. Of course!

But when this pattern becomes excessive or compulsive, it creates a lot of pain and frustration.

Why setting boundaries can feel so confusing

This can bring you to a challenging place:  where you want to set some boundaries or structures around comfort or stress eating, and yet you also want to do so in a way that doesn’t feel overbearing or punishing.

This can be especially tricky if you have relational trauma, and eating is a primary way you feel loved.

When food is a substitute mother – a warm, attuned loving presence – setting any kind of limit or boundary with food can feel like abandonment or neglect, a removal of this motherly love.

Many, many people have told me how food is the primary or only place where they feel deeply loved – and that removing this source of love feels like a giant emptiness, hole or void.

Likewise, so many have shared with me that setting any limit with food feels like punishing themselves. Cognitively they know the limits are helpful. But emotionally, it’s a different experience.

Alongside these strong feelings that come up around limits, there’s also another part of us that wants structure and limits, for limits and structures are a powerful and primary way we feel protected, nourished, and cared for.

Caring for the feelings that arise

What this can create is a double bind, or a push-pull – where you may have a desire to grow or make changes, or to set some boundaries with food, but you also feel afraid.

This mix of feelings is very understandable, and makes so much sense. And it can feel like these feelings are ‘getting in the way’ of your healing.

It can make us want to ‘remove’ or ‘get over’ these feelings so we can heal. I know I had a lot of drive to ‘fix’ myself and my painful feelings that kept me so caught in food – which often left me feeling like I was steamrolling over really tender places in my heart. Ouch!

In truth, our tender feelings aren’t in the way. They aren’t something we need to ‘get over’ to get to our ‘real life.’ They’re something precious arising, asking us to pause, and to offer care.

From a heart perspective, they’re openings and opportunities.

Here are a few things that can help:

Combine softness with strength:  Both forms of nurturing are necessary to have a healthy relationship with food.

You need the warm, nurturing, yin, empathetic caring that helps you feel cared for and safe when you’re experiencing pain, overwhelm, or discomfort.

And you need the solid, strong, steady yang of boundaries, limits, and structures. This yang form of nurturing helps you feel protected and softens the anxiety about the ‘free for all’ that you can feel around food.

Get help for trauma:  If very strong feelings arise when you try to create limits with food, or if you recognize that you have trauma, I highly encourage you to get support. Working with a therapist or a support group can make all the difference in healing and unwinding the pain underneath overeating.

Healing this trauma can help soften the very understandable resistance, alarm, and fear that can arise when you try to set limits or boundaries with food.

Take the next step of growth. If you feel the desire to integrate greater power, structure, or boundaries in your relationship with food, you may be entering a new stage of growth.

The yin qualities of nurturing, compassion, mercy, and gentleness, grace will still be a part of your journey.

And you may be feeling inspired to nourish, support, and embody the yang qualities of love – the forms of love that arise as boundaries, no, fierce protection, sovereignty, and power.

While this place may feel a bit new, or uncertain, this is a great place to be! For something is yearning to be born in you, and in your relationship with food.

Why it’s important to face your relationship with power

Facing your relationship with power helps you integrate the compassionate mindfulness that brings kindness to overeating with the grounded sovereignty of self leadership, facing limits, and implementing loving discipline with food.

It’s how we move into a middle way with food without veering so much into the extremes of excessive permissiveness or excessive rigidity.

It’s a powerful combination!

I’ll be talking more about these two forms of nurturing over the next few months and in my new course on healing your relationship with power. If this topic interests you, you can sign up for the waiting list for the course here. Class begins the end of February.

Power is a form of love

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This coming February I’m excited to share that I’ll be offering a new course on healing your relationship with power and food. Why power, you may ask?

It helps to step back a bit.

The two gates of healing with food

If I had to give you an overview of the healing process with food, there are two primary ‘gates of healing’ that you walk through.

The first is the gate of vulnerability. In this stage of the journey, the heart softens. Your perspective changes: rather than judging yourself for ‘not doing better,’ or blaming yourself for overeating, you start to see that there’s something really tender underneath.

Your self compassion grows, and you move to care for the vulnerability that lies underneath food compulsions with greater kindness and tenderness.

This is where you understand and may even share with people, “Oh, I get it – it’s not at all about the food!”

If you want to learn more about this stage of the journey, you may be interested in this article on self forgiveness and this article on self compassion. And if this is where you’re needing help and are looking for more support from me, I highly recommend my Heart of Food course.

Healing your relationship with power

But with this softening – a deepening of self compassion and kindness –  what’s also needed is something seemingly moving in the opposite direction:  strength and power.

Healing your relationship with power is the second ‘gate of healing’ with food, and it’s as important and necessary.

It’s also an area where nearly everyone struggles, to one degree or another – especially if you’re more sensitive and intuitive by nature, and especially when there’s been trauma.

It’s one of the reasons why support can be so helpful – we’re not meant to go through these gates alone, and without help.

Do you wonder if you’re at this stage of the journey?

Challenges with power and food can show up in the following ways:

• you have a lot of compassion for yourself, but still have a hard time telling yourself no or setting limits
• you ping pong back and forth between ways of eating that are either too strict or too lenient
• you have a strong inner food rebel who resists any limits with food
• you struggle with ‘self sabotage’
• you have a lot of desire, but collapse when you try new things

This stage of the journey can be really frustrating, especially if you’ve done a lot of work to be more compassionate to yourself. You may even feel hopeless, like ‘compassion doesn’t work.’

If you recognize yourself in this list, take heart – it’s a great place to be, for it means you’re primed for this next stage of the journey. And while it may seem hopeless, it’s not – it’s merely that different qualities of love are being asked for in your relationship with food.

You’re being invited into the dance with power.

The challenge with power

Because most of us were raised in cultures that have conflicted and confusing relationships with power, and because we’ve all experienced the pain when power is used in hurtful ways, this can cause us to reject power as something ‘bad.’

We may feel so afraid of potentially hurting ourselves (or others) that we shy away from using power and self leadership in our relationship with food.

Power is a form of love

But without a healthy relationship with power, we suffer. An absence of power and direction doesn’t leave us feeling nurtured, but the opposite:  overwhelmed, unsupported, and unprotected.

It’s counterintuitive, but a healthy relationship with power is what helps you feel grounded, cared for, protected, and strong.

In a nutshell, power can be and is a form of love.

It’s healthy to thirst for power

Your hunger for power is not wrong, but arises from a desire for self leadership and empowerment – the desire to be the leader of your life.

It’s a natural and necessary stage of your development, and is how you emerge into your own viable being.

There are beautiful gifts and offerings your heart longs to give to the world. And there are ways you long to nourish and care for your body so that it feels healthy, cared for, vital, and strong.

A healthy relationship with power supports you in offering your gifts and caring for your body with presence, wisdom and strength.

And a healthy relationship with power is the ground, the ballast, that helps you venture forward.

I’ll be talking more about power over the coming weeks on the blog. And if this topic interests you, stay tuned – I’ll be sharing more about the nuts and bolts of the class so you can see if it’s a good fit for you.

In closing, I invite you to sit with your relationship with power and wonder a bit. You might ask yourself – how do I relate to power? And how does power long to express itself in my life?

And then watch, feel, and listen – listen with the ears of your heart – for the answers.

To the power that lives in you,

Karly

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