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If you allow ugly emotions to take root in your heart and mind, they will not remain specific to the situation that provoked them. They begin to contaminate all your relationships, and the person you once were begins to die. Maintaining anger, hurt, vengeance, hatred and other burdens eats away at your body and soul. If emotional pain or problems have cropped up in your life, you must insist on getting closure. This means you address the issue, then you slam the book shut and put it away. Whatever that takes, do it. A powerful process that I use to help people get emotional closure is what I call your Minimal Effective Response (MER). The operative word here is minimal. Let me explain what MER is not. For one thing, it is not seeking revenge or plotting ways to undermine other people. Taking such actions only harms you in the long run because you're still holding on to self-destructive emotions. MER seeks to satisfy your need for emotional resolution without creating a whole new set of problems. Maybe it means confronting yourself or the other person. Maybe it means taking legal action. Maybe it requires forgiveness or making an apology. Maybe it means writing a letter to someone or stomping on a wrongdoer's grave. Maybe it involves seeing a mental health counselor or turning the situation and its emotional battle over to God. There are many different ways to obtain MER; the key is to get maximum results for minimal expense. When you initiate your MER, trust me, it will lessen your need to use food as medication. To map out your MER, you can use the following questions:
  • What action can I take to resolve my emotional pain?
  •  If I were successful and achieved this resolution, how would I feel?
  • Does the feeling I will have match the feeling I want to have?
  • Remembering the word minimal, could there be some other economical action that would give me the emotional resolve I need?
 After considering your own emotional responses, and the nature and degree of the suffering you have endured, what is your MER? Maybe all you need to do is compose a letter and write down all your thoughts and feelings. Maybe you need to mail the letter. But whatever your MER is, you need to identify it and you need to do it. You need to say, "Okay, it's done. I've had enough. I will no longer allow you to rob me of my self-control."

Rethink Weight Loss
Regaining control of your feelings is not only the key to losing weight, but also to your overall well-being. These seven steps will show you how to do it!
From the October 2003 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

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