A Lesson On Buccal Fat. And Solidarity.

Buccal fat, what the?!  I was skimming through the news this morning and ran across an article, “Why everyone is talking about buccal fat removal.”  Ok, first of all, I’m not talking about buccal fat removal.  And secondly, what the heck even is buccal fat?

Turns out, deep within our cheeks we have buccal fat pads.  The article interviews a plastic surgeon who talks about the removal of these pads like he’s throwing a frisbee in a park on a sunny day with his dog.  “It can be cool . . .” he states.  He also talks about his older patients who, suffering from the effects of gravity, have droopy buccal fat compartments that give them the appearance of a heavy lower face and make them look jowly.  Rude!  Thanks for nothing, dude.

Insecurity

I’m feeling pretty insecure sitting here with this new knowledge.  Aware of my aging jowly buccal fat compartments.  This bit of info strikes up a familiar chorus in my head and I’m realizing that I’ve been pretty hard on myself the past few weeks.

I have to work hard to temper my inside voice.  My, inside my head voice, that is.  If I drop my vigilance for too long, the mean girl voices start to chime in.  They have plenty to say about how my clothes are fitting me, the not-great haircut I got a couple weeks ago, the stagnancy of my practice.  This quickly wears me out and I become defensive with the people around me.  My sense of humor goes AWOL.  I start asking for validation from my husband.  I’m looking in the mirror a lot.

These things are exhausting.  Not to mention, completely annoying.  My remedy is to kick the mean girls out and turn up my best friend voice.  That voice I use with myself when I need kindness and reassurance.  I imagine what my best friend would say to me, and then I say those things to myself.  It’s a real life-saver.

I’ve found self-consciousness and insecurity to be sort of contagious, though.  This makes it extra important for me to reign it in quickly.  It’s like when I’m talking with someone, and they scratch their nose.  Sometimes I mistakenly think this is a little signal to me that I have something on my nose.  So, I reach up to try to get whatever it is, off my nose.  Then, the other person thinks I’m signaling them, and they reach up to their nose.   This whole strange monkey business can be really awkward whether either of us have something in, on, or around our noses, or not!

Insecurity is a mean little sucker.  It not only tells us that something is wrong with us, it tells us that the way to feel better about it, is to hone in on someone’s else’s insecurity.  When we listen, we pass it on.  I definitely do this when the mean girls are loud in my head.  In this cycle, everybody loses. This is the opposite of solidarity.

Brutal And Beautiful

When I woke up this morning, I knew I needed to find some notes I had taken earlier this year regarding perspective and my inside voice.  I knew this even before I stumbled upon rude plastic surgeon dude and his solutions for jowly, aging women.

Back in the spring, one of the energy healers I follow, Matt Kahn, posted a video and it resonated with me so hard it nearly blew my mind!  I took copious notes.  He was essentially talking about how to change mean girl voice into best friend voice.  He says that the more we look for what we’re doing right, the more we cultivate positive energy.  And, of course, the converse is true as well.

“Every mistake is a miracle. You’re doing it right; it’s just not matching up with what you want because you’re hallucinating that what you want is something other than this moment.”  A strange thing happens when we learn to inhabit our moments.  We become present to ourselves. To the brutal and beautiful reality that we are exactly where we’re meant to be, doing exactly what we’re meant to be doing.  And then we can celebrate it.

Matt reassures us that we can feel good about ourselves, and we don’t even have to earn it.  We need to be the ones who stop withholding goodness from ourselves.  We’re doing the best we can.  Why not celebrate it?  And this is contagious too because the more healthy and glad we become, the more we are able to celebrate others’ health and gladness.

When we can feel good about who we are and how we’re doing, we can feel good about telling others how wonderful they are and what a great job they are doing.  It’s good to cheer on other people’s experiences, regardless of what they are.  It’s good to listen as an act of love.  Anything anyone has to say is important.  Because they are important.  Even when they are making you crazy.

Making Friends With Discomfort

And speaking of discomfort, we get to make friends with it.  Believe it or not, our lives improve when it gets to come along on our journey.  “I’m feeling frustrated and insecure, and these people are making me crazy! . . . Look how great I am at being uncomfortable right now.  I think I will stay with it and see what it has to teach me.”  And then, holy Moses!  Be amazed at your growth!

Contrary to popular belief, there is absolutely, positively, nothing wrong with you.  Or me.  We are exactly who we are meant to be.  On a journey that leads us through all the places we are meant to go.  Into the people we are meant to be.

And whether that means we have our buccal pads removed from our cheeks, or we embrace the beauty of our age-shapened faces, we are all in this together.  Solidarity with ourselves and each other is a gift that helps us to inhabit our moments.  You are wonderful, right now.  Trust me on this, and then pass it on.

If you’re feeling insecure, if you know that all is well, or you really want to know it, there is solidarity here for you.  Let’s be friends~