Stop and Start Recovery - learning from a sponsee

This morning, I am playing my spiritual music list and right now the Bellamy Brothers' song, Let Your Love Flow, is on.  It’s been a dark few days here mood-wise and that is challenging.  I weighed myself this morning and I am losing and regaining the same five pounds!  Since New Year, I’ve done it twice and I have been bouncing around the same numbers since the end of July.  My sense is I am in some sort of holding pattern there so I am praying for insight on what I need to accept / acknowledge / understand / surrender to move forward.  So that’s for my two-way writing prayer meditation this week.

It occurred to me that my erstwhile sponsee is showing me this pattern but in big capital letters and broad strokes.  She will email me that she wants to start working her program again and then she doesn’t actually start.  Or if she starts, it’s a day at the most and then she stops.  A few weeks, maybe a month pass.  And I keep the channel open but I don't chase her.  I cannot work anyone else's program for them.  And as a sponsor, all I have is my experience, strength, and hope to offer.  Seeing her struggle is a reminder of how painful my life is when I struggle.  

Last week she emailed me a quick note yet again, thanking me for staying in touch periodically and that this was an ‘interim’ email saying she has her head around her again.  She shared that she’ll work her plan and let me know how it goes later that night.  And then radio silence!  So she is struggling with moving forward and consistent effort.  

I reflect on this from my sponsee as I consider my bouncing stagnant physical recovery as a symptom of the health of my spiritual program more generally.  I acknowledge to myself and to God that I am maintaining about a 75 lb weight loss for which I am very grateful.  However, abstinence is working towards or maintaining a healthy body weight.  While I am healthier, I am not a healthy body weight yet.  

Bouncing around, losing the same five pounds, is a stop and start physical recovery.  This is hard on my body.  It is also hard on my emotional recovery - a symptom of spiritual unease.  There's some block there to moving ahead, trusting God I have the strength to do the work necessary to move toward a healthy body weight.  Trusting God that I can safely face the uncertainty that comes with feeling smaller in my body.

And this brings me to a version of the Step 8 prayer I read recently:

God, in my illness, I have harmed myself.  Grant me compassion, tolerance, and patience. Save me from negativity now as I move toward healing. 

Blessed be.

Saying No / Boundaries

I have been frustrated lately by people not extending themselves to do the work my local OA community needs.  Or if they do take on a project, they don't follow through.  Rarely they are honest enough to say, "I can't right now".  Most of the time they just ghost.  I'm sure it is unfinished in their own mind and a source of shame for them.  Another defeat instead of a triumph in their recovery.

And I feel anger over that absence, that something I hoped would be done is undone.  Sadness of them ghosting and being unwilling to stand up, take responsibility, keep their word, or apologize and make amends.  I find it upsetting to have the expectation / experience of counting on them to do what they said they would do.  And I feel pressure to take up the slack.  That's where boundaries come in most strongly for me right now in this stage of my recovery.

A good friend reminds me to look at these situations as "not my circus, not my monkeys."  True, except I want a vibrant OA in my area.  We are heading into the second year with no annual retreat.  It's been over a year since Intergroup did a workshop.  I am feeling this urge to fill the gap.  I honestly do not have the energy to put a whole retreat together and it should not be on any one individual anyway.  So sigh.  I will go to a neighbouring Intergroup's retreat and be grateful for all their work and effort in providing this recovery opportunity.  And I will see if my home group will do a 1/2 day workshop.  Do what we can, where we are, with what we have.

The For Today reading this morning is this:

Better deny at once than promise long. (Danish proverb) 

"Well, maybe."  "Perhaps."  Is that what I say because I can't say No?  Or worse yet, "We'll see."  That takes the prize for keeping someone dangling and coming back to find out whether it's Yes, No or another We'll see. 

Fear is at the root of my inability to refuse.  Someone may get angry or be so displeased as to write me off, no longer have anything to do with me.  But I cannot be responsible for the way people react to the choices I make.  That is their problem, and I no longer think I can solve other people's problems.  All I can do today is try to carry out God's will for me as I see it.  If I'm wrong, I will stand corrected and make my amends.  I believe that, too, is God's will.

For today:  God grant me the courage to be honest; to say No if that is what I mean.

And at the same time, God grant me the courage to try new things, to stretch myself, to come out of my isolation and carry my load, fairly.  Not too much.  Not too little.  And to have faith that as others recover, they will do the same. 

May I have patience and pity for those who are not yet able to carry the message and contribute their share of the OA community's work.  May I let go of my perfectionism and my expectations of others.

May I place my recovery on my own shoulders and with the help of my Higher Power, grow in my own right, without reference to what other people may or may not do.

Blessed be.

Step 4 and Notes on Courage

Most days we only can see as far as we have the courage to look.  Step 4 asks us to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  The underlying spiritual principle is courage.

Many of us who have a slipping and sliding kind of abstinence may have plenty of courage to do our Step 4 but then we falter.  We struggle to find the courage to do the daily work we need to do with those character defects, those emotions, that cause us to binge, to purge, to overeat, and to have compulsive food behaviours.  Or our courage to do this work is not sustained.

How committed have you been to working on your character defects?  The angers?  Resentments?  Fears?  Basically, all the icky emotions we would rather avoid.  You know, all the feelings we used to numb or silence by abusing food. 

Addicts as a group generally do not have a good vocabulary or working skill set for emotions.  Until we develop those skills, working through our Step 4 emotional baggage, we are white knuckling our recovery to at least some degree. 

White knuckling is the idea that you are holding on so tight the blood flow is restricted in your hands and your knuckles go white.  It is also the idea that you are hanging on until the end of the ride - just using pure willpower to stay sober but expected to crash eventually.  Have you (mostly) given up addictive substance(s) or behaviours but you are carrying on in your life in the same old ways, much as you always have?  It’s a kind of courage, but it is not true recovery.  There is none of the surrender we learn about in Steps 1, 2 and 3.  And so Big Book’s Promises (pp.83-84) haven’t come true (yet).

If we don’t learn to work with our emotions, we do not learn what courage in action actually means.  We do not protect ourselves from emotional chaos.  If anything, we are simply postponing the day we get overwhelmed and binge. 

If I am not consistent and dedicated in feeling my emotions, learning to live with them, how to interact positively with emotional energy, and be in relationship with others without my defects getting in the way, I will fall.  I cannot trust my “I don’t wannas” to protect me.  The “I don’t want to feel sad.”  I don’t wanna feel mad.  I don’t want to express my fear, my sadness, my resentments.   These “don’t wannas” are a recipe for a binge.

Ask yourself, have I been resistant to doing the work of dealing with my emotions which I need to do to ensure my recovery from food addiction?  Are you slipping and sliding in your abstinence?  Well…

White knuckling is being dishonest with ourselves.  Unless we deal with the underlying emotions that cause us to get upset and overwhelmed, we are not dealing honestly with the cause of our addictive behaviours.  A white-knuckle kind of abstinence isn’t true abstinence – it is not full surrender.  Instead, we rely on human will power (which inevitably fails).  Someone with white-knuckling recovery is more at risk for relapse, depression, or for developing other addictions. 

Recovery means building a new and better life away from substance abuse. This takes a lot of effort.  If the emotional work of recovery is incomplete, we have a low tolerance for any type of irritation.  Everyday ups and downs in life are a real challenge without the numbing out of addiction.   Instead of enjoying the freedom and promises of recovery, we just muddle though. 

It takes courage to retake your inventory daily with the view to look at every evasion, every “I don’t wanna”, “not now”, “it’s too hard.”  Watch your behaviours closely.  Are you inconsistent in your abstinence?  Can you talk a good 12 step recovery but cannot (or will not) consistently practice good recovery habits?  Are you restless?  Irritable?  Discontent?  Do you lash out at people close to you?  Do you flirt around the edges of situations you know could get you in to the food?

If so, your recovery is a work in progress.  A white knuckling.  You could go either way – back into active addiction or you could grow.  Giving up the addictive substances / behaviours is only the start.  It gets you clear enough to look at the mess of everything else.  But you need some impetus to grow more.

Let this be a call to courage!  Are you cleaning up your side of the street emotionally?  Or are you simply abstaining from the worst of the addiction and rearranging the emotional deckchairs on the deck of your personal Titanic?  Courage, friends.  It is not too late to build a better life.  – Jennifer S