Attributions

Attributions:

Making explanations, or attributions, to ourselves in personal ways, we tend to take undue responsibility for events in our lives. As we go through our days, we may find ourselves interpreting interactions with others in a negative light, often reading negative connotations into neutral situations. Our friend may forget to return our call, and we automatically assume that they do not like us. A coworker may fail to smile and say, “Good morning”, and we think that they are angry at us. Obviously, looking at both of these situations, there can be many explanations for our friend’s or coworker’s behavior. Perhaps our friend was busy, or maybe our coworker had a bad morning, neither of which are our fault. Yet when we us personal attributions to explain setbacks, or difficult situations to ourselves, we will feel badly about ourselves when we do not need to. This habit of creating negative emotions, without even being fully aware that we are doing this, sets us up for many negative behaviors, especially when it comes to weight loss. In terms of losing weight, feeling negative about ourselves is like a poison, often causing us to turn to food for comfort, or even punish ourselves with unrealistic rules around food. Turning to food for comfort, not hunger, tends to lead to weight gain, for sure, but also creates an unhealthy relationship with food. We also create an unhealthy relationship with food when we use restriction around food, depriving ourselves of the foods we really love. This is also a setup for weight gain, as we will ultimately want the foods we are restricting even more, now that we hold told ourselves that we can’t have them. In order to stop this pattern then, we will have to take a second look at the way we explain setbacks and disappointing situations to ourselves, and be aware of any tendencies to use personal explanations that end up with us feeling like things that might not be our fault are. As we all know in life, there are two sides to every coin, and a multitude of different explanations for events in life! For more info go to ericviskovicz.com