Objective: not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased.

Subjective: placing excessive emphasis on one's own moods, attitudes, opinions, etc.; unduly egocentric.

Objective vs. subjective turned out to be a very important lesson for me. I had been told to look at things objectively before but never truly understood what that meant until I read the book, "The Secret Language of Eating Disorders." The author addresses something she has coined called CNC, Confirmed Negativity Complex.

The author states that someone in throws of an eating disorder is thinking negative thoughts often, if not constantly. These negative thoughts are a plague to the mind of the individual affected by the eating disorder. For me, it was true. Everyday, sometimes every hour I would think something that was negative, hurtful and self-deprecating. Some were Bad Body Fever, some were just down right mean and harmful.

I realized that I was looking at everything with my negative mind and that was why I was looking at it subjectively. I had a negative filter. If I was looking at it without my negativity, then I was looking at it objectively.

For example, I called a friend to tell her something I thought was exciting. I caught her in the middle of a nap so she wasn't as excited as I had hoped. At first I was hurt and couldn't understand why she wasn't responding the way I wanted. We only talked for a few moments before she asked if she could call me back in about an hour. I hung up the phone and sulked. Normally this would have sent me straight to the fridge. Luckily I had just read the part in the book about the difference between objective and subjective so I tried to apply it to my current situation.

What I found was that I was hurt because I was looking at the event in a subjective manner. I was hurting because I was not getting the attention I needed at the time but I wasn't taking into consideration the fact that I called when she was asleep, she answered the phone disoriented and asked me if she could call back when she was awake.

After I looked at it in an objective manner I was no longer upset and sure enough, she called back an hour later, apologized for not being able to really understand what I was saying and was much more excited when she was awake.

Whenever similar situations would arise I would sort them out by role-playing. I would pretend my friend was coming to me with the same issue I had and would try to think about what I would say to her. How would I respond to someone in that boat? This allowed me to emotionally distance myself and become more objective and not react to my negative mind.

The Negative Mind can be a very powerful thing. It seemed that every decision I made, every choice I chose and every thought I would think at any moment could be influenced, and often was influenced, by my negative mind.

It was always there looming in the background like a bad dream. Eventually I decided it would be best to talk to my negative mind and find out exactly why it was sabotaging me. I know it sounds silly and trust me I felt like an absolute idiot when I decided to sit down and have a conversation with myself, but it was one of the best ideas I've ever had.

Here is a conversation I had with my negative mind:

I was very surprised to follow the course of the conversation and I learned quite a bit about myself. I had many other conversations as well. Here is another:

Negative thoughts are something I still struggle with, but each day I grow stronger and I keep practicing. Each time is easier. A friend told me once that we all play tapes in our head. Some tapes are positive and some are negative. All we have to do is practice replacing the negative tapes with positive ones. It's like learning to ride a bike, it takes a while, you fall off, you get bruised up but eventually, you get there.