psychotherapeutic method is not so common.

Women who come to see me about being overweight, young and not very young, are ready to discuss various diets for hours, why they don’t have enough time to go to fitness and yoga, they are ready to build barricades of excuses for unfulfilled recommendations, and doing it with such enthusiasm, as if it were a matter of life and death. It reminds me a little of paralysis of the will, the same as in alcoholics, gamblers and other addicts.

But there is another side that distinguishes these women from classic addicts. With some part of their consciousness, they understand the problem (once they have reached a psychologist), and therefore they live in constant internal conflict: their powerful unconscious is trying to maintain the status quo, and the hopeless efforts of the conscious part to change something with the help of willpower and diets end every times the same, reinforcing women in the idea that change is impossible.

The way out of this situation is simple and difficult at the same time. Considering the accumulation of excess weight as part of the behavior, it is very important to determine why we do this to ourselves. It is clear that we do not want to cause harm to ourselves as a whole, even unconsciously, and, therefore, it is important to determine the positive intention of weight gain. It can be the most stupid, ridiculous and at the same time very significant for us. Now let me give you a typical example.

I had a client, a young woman of 35, who suddenly became very stout and could not lose weight. With a height of 167, she began to weigh 85 kg, while before her usual weight fluctuated around 60 kg, and she was a very athletic person. She passed all the blood tests for both sugar and thyroid hormones. Everything was in perfect order, and she kept getting fatter and fatter.

In the process of communication, it turned out that she was the eldest daughter in the family and she had a sister 4 years younger. She has always been a role model for her younger sister, she studied well, graduated from the institute with honors. This woman, let's call her Anastasia, made an amazing career for her age. She is became a vice president of a large insurance company.

The life of her younger sister was completely different. She is рано вышла замуж, родила ребенка, ушла с работы, располнела, муж пил. Anastasia threw money at her, but what does money mean compared to envy. And once between the sisters there was a very big quarrel. The youngest told Anastasia everything she thought about her, and she thought the following: that Anastasia is a careerist, that she will never have a family and children, that she is a man in a skirt, that everyone hates her at work and that her company deceives the population.

Anastasia ran a large company, and, therefore, was a good psychologist. She is прекрасно понимала, что движет младшенькой, но видимо упоминание про мужа, семью и недостаток женственности задели ее за живое.

Here I want to remind you about stress and adrenaline. Of course, for Anastasia it was stressful. Of course, she had an adrenaline rush, and, consequently, her suggestibility increased. Perhaps the thoughts of the absent family visited her, but somehow irregularly, all the time she was busy with work. But after this quarrel, they became obsessive.

And it is easy to imagine its further internal unconscious logic. Her body began to be rounded in the hips and chest, which would give the figure more traditional femininity. At the same time, on a conscious level, Anastasia completely coped with the devaluation of her life that her sister subjected her to, but on the unconscious level, this resulted in anxiety, disguised by obsessive thoughts and weight gain.

If her adult, worldly experienced, logical part were included in the work, then in order to improve the situation, she would find several other ways out, for example, to visit places where there are many interesting men of her circle, to get acquainted, as is now fashionable, by Internet or use the services of a matchmaker.

All these methods would achieve the same goal - acquaintance and the creation of a family, but would not have such disastrous consequences. However, resentment at the ingratitude of her youngest and the painful feeling of life passing in loneliness blocked Anastasia's access to these adult resources of hers. And in order not to be alone with such severe pain, her unconscious chose such an archaic protective path.

And, therefore, the first step towards change will be Anastasia's awareness of the true causes of weight gain. For this, it is impossible the technique of "six-step reframing" is more suitable. I help Nastya enter a trance state. We agree on finger signaling (when the unconscious twitching of one of the fingers means "yes" and the other finger means "no").

I invite her to imagine the part of her personality that is responsible for the weight gain. The phrase is not very clever, but you can’t say it more precisely. Nastya presents her in the form of a nesting doll. An interesting image. I don't think it's random. After all, the nesting doll has another nesting doll inside, that one has another smaller one, and so on. On the one hand, this is some kind of allegory of motherhood, and on the other hand, it is evidence that another, deeper problem lies inside the weight problem.

We temporarily deviate from the consistent observance of the technique and I ask Anastasia to open the matryoshka and see what is inside it. Anastasia, being in a state of trance, does this. Inside the matryoshka there is another, but not a young woman, but an old woman. "Grandmother!" - exclaims Nastya.

It should be mentioned here that Nastya talked a lot about her grandmother. She was a well-known Moscow lawyer, a clever woman who retained a clear mind and humor until her death at the age of 84. Grandmother doted on Nastya, and her granddaughter, even as a teenager, was more frank with her than with her mother.

Suddenly Anastasia shudders, and her expression changes dramatically. She is начинает совершать руками некие движения, как будто хочет оттолкнуть что-то или кого-то. I gently take her hand, reassure her with the traditional words "You're safe, I'm with you." I ask her if she sees something. Without opening her eyes, Anastasia begins to tell. At school, she was athletic, very thin, angular, with a short haircut, like a boy. She was the head of the class and, as it seemed to her, the leader.

But there was one guy in their class, Sasha, very popular among girls, with whom her relationship developed strangely, competitively. He was tall, handsome, also a good student, engaged in social work, and they constantly bullied each other. And then one day, returning from school, Nastya noticed him kissing on a bench with a girl from a parallel class.

You know, there are such precocious girls who at the age of 15 look at all 20, and everything is with them, both breasts and buttocks, and this one was also a blonde. And it seemed to Nastya that, having noticed her, Sasha redoubled his efforts, and began to not only kiss the girl, but straight up slap. Nadia was very embarrassed, and quickly slipped past the couple in the hope that they would not notice her. But…

The next day, at a break, the blonde approached Nastya and loudly, so that everyone around could hear, gave out: “In vain, Tolmacheva (surname changed. - Approx. Aut.), You try, track down. The whole school knows that you are in love with Sasha, yes just look at yourself in the mirror, no skin, no faces, just bones." Nastya did not have time to answer her, the bell rang, but her head ached badly, and she took time off from school to go home.

In fact, she had a rather high opinion of her appearance. She liked to look at herself in the mirror, and she never had a complex about the fact that she had small breasts, as girls her age often do. But the words of the hated blonde alarmed her. Barely waiting for the evening, she clung to her grandmother.

Grandmother was a nugget, an intellectual in the first generation, despite being a well-known lawyer, and, in a popular way, she was sharp on the tongue. "What blooms early, will bloom early. And you are my flower that blooms late. You are my smart one and will always be the first. And the most beautiful." Then she thought about it and added: "It's not easy to build up an ass and boobs. When the time comes, you meet a good person - they will grow up on their own."

Then Anastasia opened her eyes and exclaimed: "I understood everything! I got fat so that a good person would appear" And she laughed.

A month has passed. Since Anastasia was a strong-willed woman, she excluded sweets and easily digestible carbohydrates from her diet, and began to go to the sports club 3 times a week. But she did pretty much the same thing before. However, this month she lost 7 kg. After that, as is often the case, weight loss stalled. And at this point I want to draw special attention of the reader, because this is typical!

If some system freezes in equilibrium, it means that it is in the energy minimum. In order to bring it out of this energy minimum, additional energy is needed. What can play the role of this external energy in the