The term ‘breaking the rules’ seems to be coming up a lot in conversations I’m having at the moment – with clients, with my girls, with my husband, even with myself…  It’s appearing often enough that it seems important that I write about it.  And so here I find myself, late on a Thursday evening, tapping away at my keyboard.

With clients (in particular those I have been working with for some time), once we’ve got past the identity-level stage of clearing away all the old limiting beliefs they hold about themselves they can still sometimes find themselves a bit stuck their behaviours around food.  Partly out of habit, but mainly because of rules that the eating disorder set them that they feel they have to continue to follow.  “If I do xyz, even if everything in my life goes crazy, I know that my eating is under control and therefore I am in control” type of thinking – the control-level stage of recovery.

When we find ourselves at this point in therapy, I get my clients to write down a list of all the rules that they have around food.  Every single one.  From having to eat at certain times, to not eating the same food twice in one day, to having to retch a certain number of times to make sure they have purged everything.  Once it’s all down on paper, I ask them to choose one rule that they think they could challenge, that they could break, and set them the task of breaking it, even if it’s only once, before I next see them.  When they report back triumphantly that they did it – that they (whisper it) broke the rules – well, it’s a wonderful thing to see.  I always do a little happy dance inside when the realisation dawns on them that they survived, that they didn’t get fat, that the world kept turning.  (Sometimes we get up and do a little happy dance together in the therapy room). Client- 1, ED – nil.  It encourages them to see what else they could change, what other rules they could break.  Gradually the items on their list get crossed off one by one.

With my girls, our conversations around breaking the rules usually centre on me telling them which rule they have broken and why they can’t do that.  It feels pretty negative – to them and to me.  I have a lot of rules.  And a lot of them I don’t even communicate to anyone else, so it’s hardly fair to tell them off when they unwittingly break them.  As a result I’ve been working on saying yes more and breaking the rules from time to time.  Instead of “no you can’t have the karaoke machine on at full volume at 7am on a Sunday morning in case it wakes the neighbours” I’m saying “yes, lets have a disco in the kitchen”.  Much more fun!  Quite apart from there being less tantrums and strops, I’m also finding that they are beginning to realise the value of which rules are not breakable and absolutely must be adhered to (and why).

My husband recognises that I have a lot of rules about things.  I’m a detail person, he is more of a big picture type of person.  He does his best to follow my rules, because he knows that I feel better when things are in order.  Occasionally though, he breaks the rules.  Deliberately.  I don’t like my girls eating junk food, preferring to give them homemade food and yet I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve come back from a trip to London to the delighted squeals of the girls eagerly telling me that they had KFC for lunch.  For a few moments I’m furious, but deep down I know that every once in a while it’s ok and so within minutes I’ve let it go.  These little challenges to my rules are a positive thing – they remind me that life doesn’t have to be so rigid, so strict, so controlled.  It’s good for me and he knows it 🙂

And the conversations with myself about rules?  Well, where do I start?  I have followed the rules my whole life.  I have always been ‘the good girl’, the straight-A student who worked hard at school and got the grades.  Never caused trouble at home, always did what I was told, rarely argued back.  Part of me is proud of that, and part of me thinks that it kind of sucked.  Where was all the fun?

I saw an interview with Benjamin Zephaniah on TV a couple of nights ago.  He describes himself as “a poet, a musician and a troublemaker”.

Why a troublemaker?

“Well, if there were no troublemakers in the world then women wouldn’t have the vote, and black people wouldn’t be able to talk to white people.  We need troublemakers to make change happen”.

I love that.

I want to be a troublemaker.

I want to be someone who makes change happen.  Someone who breaks the rules for all the right reasons.

After watching the interview I spent some time reflecting on my life, desperately searching through my ‘good girl’ story for any times where I broke the rules, where I moved away from the way that convention and society tells us we should do things.  I also searched for any times where I’d broken MY rules, the ones that I’d imposed on myself because I believed that following them would make me into who I ‘should’ be.

And do you know what?  I surprised myself.

• I broke my rules of only getting straight A’s at school and got a D in Economics at AS level.
• I broke the rules and got my belly button pierced when I was 17 (without my parents permission and I had to lie to the piercer and tell him I was 18)
• I broke my rules when I got my first tattoo because I’d always said I would never have one.
• I broke my rules again when I got my second one, having promised my husband that I wouldn’t because he doesn’t like them.
• I broke the rules and went travelling instead of going to university.  I never went to university.

• I broke my rules by having a one night stand.
• I broke the rules by doing everything backwards – it wasn’t marriage then a house then a baby (as per tradition).  It was three babies then a house and then a wedding.
• I broke the rules by switching career.
• I broke the rules by quitting my job to set up my therapy business even though I had no backup or savings to fall back on if it didn’t work out.
• I broke the rules by enjoying books like Fifty Shades of Grey and the Crossfire series.
• I continue to break the rules of what is seen to be beautiful by being myself – pale skin, red hair, freckles, small boobs, limited makeup and all.

For the most part, rules are there to keep us ‘safe’, whether they are self-imposed or society-imposed, and usually via the medium of fear.

What I’m beginning to realise is that a lot of the time it is more than ok to be brave and break those rules, to make the rules up as you go along, or even to let go of the rules completely.  Because if there are rules you can’t be free.  Not really.  There will always be some kind of restriction or limit on what you can do, on what is possible.

Stuff that.

ANYTHING is possible.

At the moment I’m trying to figure out what the next stage for me is.  There are lots of different directions I could take and each one involves breaking rules of some kind.  I just need to decide which way to go.

How about you?  What rules do you have in your life?  Are they working for you or not?  If not, what could you do to break them and let them go?  If there was one thing you could do, which by doing it would mean that you were breaking a rule that you no longer need, what would it be?

I’d love to find out your thoughts and feelings about this post, so please do leave a comment below.  And feel free to share it with anyone you think might find it interesting.  Thank you 🙂

2 Comments for: Breaking the Rules