Reflective Journal Entries: Male weight loss and more

From Lucy Waterhouse, with thanks

D, a guy that I have seen twice who initially came for weight loss. 

He is a giant of a man, very tall and very broad and worked out with weights, he is also the main carer for his step son who is profoundly disabled who he absolutely adores- a genuine gentle giant. On our first session I intuitively felt that weight loss was not the issue, so I decided that we would do some gestalt chair work to find out what the issue actually was. So I had him sat in one chair telling his inner weight loss saboteur why he wanted to lose weight and asking him what was the reason for the sabotaging. We worked this way for twenty minutes or so resulting in him breaking down in tears (something he claimed he never does- “big boys don’t cry” he said) as his saboteur told him that he didn’t deserve to live after all the horrible things he had done. 

I didn’t inquire as to what the horrible things were but he told me that he had been a part of a notorious biker gang and had a past littered with his perceived wrongdoings and the part of him that kept sabotaging his efforts for weight loss and therefore prolonged life was punishing him thoroughly for the things that he had done that he perceived as “evil” even though now he is a genuinely lovely man with a family and dogs who he adores and a good wholesome life. 

The metaquestioning, chair work and then the fork in the road that we did together took us up to our maximum time and I said to him that now we knew that it wasn’t an issue of whether he *could* lose weight, but a matter of whether he *deserved* to lose weight, next time he could afford to come we would do some work in trance to address these issues. 

The second time he came about 4 weeks later, he reported that his eating patterns had changed dramatically and that the nature of his workouts had changed too from working on making himself bigger and stronger to making himself fitter and leaner. I reinforced the work we had already started working specifically on his self-worth and the session progressed as I had hoped with clear IMRs and animated facial expressions during different parts of the session. He is booked in for his third and maybe final session in a weeks time.