the soccer ball and all kinds of relationships

We've been talking about he soccer ball panel with regard to relationships between two people.

It's also worth noting that the soccer ball panel pattern works for any type of relationship- relationships with ourselves, with animals, with spirituality, with work/co-workers/bosses, and, yes, with food (and I'm guessing, with any other type of relationships we can think of).

The food one is really interesting to think about- and I bet it can be helpful in terms of not getting too ambitious and too black and white/perfectionistic about developing your relationship with food.

How bout we make the first soccer ball panel "thinking it'd be a good idea to get back into a decent relationship with food" (which implies that you don't have such a great relationship with food at the moment- typical of most people who have eating disorders, right?). As usual, you'd chart out your plan based on sequential soccer ball panels.

Skipping a bunch of panels would be something like being at a panel such as "having not eaten anything with fat in it for months" and jumping to the cheese sandwich or peanut butter sandwich panel. You would have skipped all those important panels that had to do with "getting used to the idea of eating something with fat in it" and "trying out a bite of peanut butter and jelly" which are panels designed to illustrate that eating something with fat in it is OK and won't kill you- which then reassures you that it's ok to proceed to further panels.

When we look at it this way it's easy to see how people get paralyzed in their journey towards a more calm, neutral relationship with food. For some reason they get into thinking they should or have to suddenly be at some panel WAY ahead of where they are (Gee... I wonder how this happens.... :) This terrifies them and they dig in their heels out of fear and the stand still (or run backwards, suddenly frightened of even panels they've gotten pretty comfortable with).

As a little project, try thinking of relationships you can use the soccer ball panel plan in. It's kind of fun :) (and it's kind of reassuring).

Comments

[wendy]

:)

[Courtney]

So I think I'm (slowly) getting the point of this panel thing. Is it to not go from one end of the pendulum all the way to the other? Like not from completely strict to complete chaos and vice versa? I'm not sure if I'm even explaining myself correctly here.

I didn't really see how this panel thing could apply to me for the first few posts but now I'm beginning to think about it differently. I guess I'm often a black and white thinker and I see that the panel thing teaches us to take relationships one step at a time. I often think that if one thing goes wrong in a relationship then it needs to end. I guess that's a bit of black and white thinking and this panel thing might be a good way to look at things differently.

[Tiger]

EEeeeeek!

Ok, can we talk about why professionals have such a desire to call things something?

I take serious issue with the term "eating disorder," in relation to me. Maybe this is just my thing. I feel like by saying that I have an "eating disorder" I'm admitting that I am a whole bunch of other things. White, (check) female, (check) good grades (check) perfectionistic (checkcheckcheck) etc. etc.

Ok. Little rant over.

How does one get to have a relationship with food? The food doesn't engage with me, doesn't have a conversation, yet, I can, and sometimes will, sit and have a stare-down with a yogurt.