Coping strategies: Take the true compliments

(LighterLife Route to Management – Week9 Day3)

I think I’m on to something here. I attended a big party last night and during the night got a very heart-felt, genuine compliment from a childhood friend. I think I last saw him in November last year, which was during the heavy drinking, heavy eating period I went through before I ‘came back’ to the LL program for good.

His words were not out of ordinary, just You’ve lost so much weight. You look absolutely great! But it was the way he said it. I felt he was genuinely happy for me, which is different to most ‘compliments’ I’ve been getting. And this is a guy who always remembers to joke about his own beer gut. And he does have one, has had one for longer than is to his liking. But he’s been thin as well, so he knows about yo-yo’ing, and he knows it’s painful, yet he rose above his own pain and was happy for me. And THAT – the difference between his compliment and some others I’ve been getting – has made me think about how I’m actually taking the compliments.

Mostly, I still dodge them. I make a joke. I dismiss them. I change the subject. I distract by paying back a compliment, whether genuinely felt or made up in the moment. And that’s crap, isn’t it!?! I haven’t actually drawn the positive/negative strokes chart since we filled one in in the Green Book of LL Foundation, but I can just see myself having a huge deficit in the positive stroke column… Yet I do think it’s not so terrible to dodge or distract from the fake compliments, or the ones that have the undertone of you look too thin for your own good and you make me uncomfortable, looking so good. Because – and you might disagree strongly – they don’t really count. Not to me. They count as incidents when people have NOTICED my weight loss, but they don’t really count as compliments.

So you should always take the true compliments. When I got the one from my friend last night, I wavered for a second – possibly due to the couple of glasses of wine I had already had – but then I composed myself, allowed myself to feel delighted and happy about him actually having said it out loud, and responded with a “Thank you, I have lost a lot of weight, and I do feel great”, accompanied by a big smile. And boy, I DID feel great just there and then!! Great, and proud of myself. Proud of the way I responded, and very proud as well for the past 4 months of hard work to get this far :)

And, although I didn’t plan last night as vigorously as I planned my first night out drinking during Week 5, I did think about it a lot and planned for potential ‘dangerous’ situations like someone buying me a shot without asking first and such malarky, in my HEAD. And I survived the very long night very nicely in deed, without so much of a whiff of a binge afterwards!!!!!! WHICH IS BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And there’s another entry on its way about my current relationship with planning!!

In the meantime, back to the compliment business. What I learned last night was that when I don’t take the true compliments, I’m also denying the hard work I’ve put into this, and thereby belittling both my efforts AND MYSELF. And I also now realise that I’m not only doing this with compliments about my weight or how I look, but also with compliments about my work and the impact I’m having on things. And, in a word, THAT HAS GOT TO STOP. I want to be able to feel good, happy and proud about myself and my accomplishments. I DESERVE IT. It has taken a long time to admit that I WANT that. And it’s very hard to even write the words ‘I deserve it’. But I do want that. And I do believe I deserve it.

My God, listen to me: I WANT TO FEEL!!! :D :D :D