The Voice That Was Never On Your Side

I have had a complicated relationship with sugar for most of my life.

If you read my earlier piece called The Lifeguard, you may recall my seminal moment at the age of six when I discovered that sugar could numb the pain of rejection. To that small girl, any kind of sweet treat, packaged in a candy wrapper or melting from a wooden popsicle stick, seemed like a miraculous friend.

My anxious feelings seemed to dissolve like magic.

As I grew older, that escape exacted a price. I battled my rounding tummy and felt self-conscious. My mother began a targeted campaign for me to lose weight. I wanted to please her, but frequently found myself creeping down the back stairs to the basement. We had an old-fashioned slot machine where I’d hidden a small spoon. While Mom snoozed through an episode of The FBI, I lifted the top of the huge standalone freezer, pried the lid off the gallon drum of vanilla ice cream, and indulged in a spoonful of luscious relief. My anxious feelings seemed to dissolve like magic.

The Seductive Voice

The pattern of using food as comfort continued into college and young adulthood. I’d go on crash diets, closely adhering to the demands of an inner critical voice that threatened me. It doesn’t matter if you’re hungry. If you don’t lose this weight, no one will want you!  

So I pushed myself until I reached my goal. That’s when the other voice came in. You did such a good job! You deserve a reward! Don’t worry, if you put on a couple of pounds you can always take it off.

And so it continued, abstaining from sugar for weeks at a time only to return to my secret lover once the weight came off. The soft, seductive voice was a welcome relief from weeks of demands. It used phrases like “Give yourself permission” and “You deserve this.”

For years, I thought this voice understood me. It felt like a caring respite from the critic’s constant demands of self-improvement.

For years, I thought this voice understood me. It felt like a caring respite from the critic’s constant demands of self-improvement. I even convinced myself it was a form of self-compassion. 

You’ve had a hard week. You need something to look forward to. Everyone indulges sometimes. Why should you be any different?

So I indulged. For decades I toggled between extremes, never finding solid ground.

A New Voice

Four years ago, something different happened. I’d gone into the holiday weekend telling myself I would “just have a little” and ended up over-indulging. Sunday night found me with a headache, feeling emotionally unsatisfied and disconnected from myself. I knew I couldn’t keep on like this.

That’s when I heard a different voice. Direct, clear, and not at all dramatic. It simply spoke the truth.  

Expecting yourself to be moderate with sugar is an impossible demand. You are not someone who can have just a little. The neural pathway has been created over decades. Asking yourself to be moderate is like asking an alcoholic to have just one drink. It is not a failure of willpower. It is simply not a reasonable expectation.

I sat in stillness and let it land.

There was no shame in it, no implication that I was broken or weak. It was just true.

There was no shame in it, no implication that I was broken or weak. It was just true. And underneath the truth was something I hadn’t expected to feel: relief. A different kind of relief than the indulgent voice had ever offered me. Not the relief of being let off the hook, but the relief of finally being told the real thing. A flicker of hope followed.

The voice continued. This will be hard. Part of you will probably always long for this escape. But you can do hard things. And you will not be alone in doing them.

I recognized the clean, clear voice of my inner Nurturing Parent because I’d heard it before. I’d allowed it to guide me in other areas of my life, apart from my addiction. But on that day, I realized I was finally ready to let love into this shameful place.

A Fundamental Choice

On July 23, 2022, I made the decision to give up sugar. Not for a month, not until the holiday season, not until things calmed down. For good.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t scared. I knew that following through would require real strength and support. I found a coach who specialized in quitting sugar. I began with a commitment to take it thirty days at a time and then sixty and then ninety. My coach told me that if I could make it ninety days, something would shift. He was right.

What I found on the other side of that threshold was not deprivation. It was a kind of freedom I hadn’t known was possible. The obsessive negotiating quieted. The cycle of craving and shame began to loosen. 

The voice that is truly on your side sounds different. It tells you the truth.

Here is what I have come to understand about the voice that sounds like support but isn’t:

It will always tell you what you want to hear in a moment of doubt. It will validate your reasons, excuse your patterns, and protect you from the discomfort of genuine change. And it will do all of this in the language of gentleness, which is why it is so hard to catch.

The voice that is truly on your side sounds different. It tells you the truth. Not cruelly, not impatiently, but clearly. It stays with you, inviting you to feel, while you integrate that truth. It does not let you off the hook. It illuminates the hook with love and asks what you actually want to do about it.

Lucid Moment: The voice that truly loves you will sometimes say the hard thing. It is willing to sit with you in discomfort, because it knows when you’ve outgrown an old image and don’t yet see yourself in a new one.

The voice of your inner Nurturing Parent offers you structure instead of excuses, and presence instead of permission slips.

That is the difference. Not between harshness and softness. Between a voice that lures you into hiding and a voice that knows you are meant to live somewhere better.

The crossing is underway. Let’s make it together.