Old Habits Die Hard

This past weekend I had a fancy Christmas party to attend, and so I reached into the back of my closet to inspect my “not worn since last year” party clothes. And while I was looking forward to the party ahead of me, I found I actually had some anxiety as I took the clothes off the hangers.

And the anxiety increased as I undid the zipper and buttons, preparing to try on the first outfit.

But once I put the outfit on, and realized it “still fit”, the anxiety completely disappeared.

I realized what was happening here. The “old me” used to fluctuate so much in weight and size that I never knew from one weekend to the next what was going to fit me, never mind from one Christmas to another. And in those days, since I was gaining weight more often than I was shedding it, trying on clothes from the back of my closet was an anxiety-riddled event. More often than not I was bigger and the clothes were too small, which would cause me to get into beating myself up, with my self-talk spiraling down into a very negative place. Didn’t exactly put me in the mood to party or socialize, and often back then I just would end up not going out afterall.

And even though I have now kept my weight down and steady for over 6 years, the old feelings and emotions associated with trying on clothes came flooding back. Just goes to show you how firmly engrained our paradigms can be, and how they can reappear whenever they are triggered by something “old and familiar”. But now I know better. I recognized that this anxiety was just my old paradigms trying to hang on, and so I was able to move on. Onto getting dressed, getting out the door, and having a wonderful time!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm and is filed under The Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.