Being a Newcomer again

 I am struggling with my faith that God will do what I cannot do for myself.  I see and hear stories of recovery where faith and surrender to a Higher Power leads to healthier, happier lives.  And I feel stuck and unhappy.  I believe God will help you recover but I am not convinced God will help me recover.  That's f*cked up.  The years of therapy I have had suggest this is black or white thinking, future telling, any number of other cognitive dissonances based on a self concept of being unworthy, undeserving, somehow damaged more than anybody else.  And I know that is not true.  However, I still feel it.

This morning in my daily reader, For Today, I looked up all the entries in the index for 'newcomers'.  Date order be damned!  And this is what I found:

No one [in OA] made me feel that my illness rendered me less worthy of respect than other people.  Taking a cue from these loving, caring friends, I stopped being ashamed of myself.  The defences I had set up fell away, and I became open to change.

OA is a refuge from the harsh judgments society passes on compulsive overeaters.  [I need] unconditional acceptance and respect, not judgments. - May 9

This is true - the only person making me feel my compulsive eating, my size, my struggle with depression et cetera renders me less worthy of respect and help is me.  Shame is a big part of this struggle.  Feeling like I am not good enough for God's help.  Feeling like I am too long in OA to be a newcomer again, or a newcomer still.  Defensive that after six years, I still struggle with frequent relapses in my abstinence and my faith is shaky - not for you but for me.  My Higher Power offers unconditional acceptance and respect for my humanity and I don't accept that gift a lot of the time.  Pride.  Self.  This has to go!

As newcomers we look at recovering compulsive overeaters who tell us of the happiness, freedom and joy in their lives and we can hardly comprehend that they were not always this way.  Those miraculous recoveries seem unattainable to us.  ...  members with years of program and lives that are happy, joyous and free are compulsive overeaters who, like the rest of us, began at the bottom.  Where I am today is a fine place to start.  - May 16

Where else to start but here?  And "here" arrives each moment.  There is no arrival and I'm done.  That is a lie I tell myself, along with the belief I should be more recovered than I am after six years in OA.  Members with more years and more recovery still struggle - I hear that in the rooms.  The standard is not perfection spiritually.  I can't achieve that and neither can they.  They don't claim it in their stories.  But they are happier, more joyous and more free than I am.  And I want that.  I need to suspend my beliefs that I can't have that too for whatever bullshit reasons my disease puts in my head.

There is no reason to be discouraged if newcomers [if I] express doubt that the recovery [I] see will happen for [me].  [My] experience of the disease is propelling [me] toward experiencing recovery.  -June 2

Ughhh...  my disease is propelling me toward recovery -- true!!  Or I wouldn't keep coming back.  My disease is also propelling me into the abyss with lies that I can't, I don't deserve this, God will do this for other people but not for me.  This tension is something I have to give over, give up.  It is a tug-of-war I can't win and the doubt it creates only prolongs my misery in my disease.  

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions. ... I may fool myself and others by my talk, but my illness cannot be fooled.  - June 12

I feel like a fool, an incompetent.  Six years in OA and 270 something pounds.  I wear my disease.  I wear the lie of my recovery.  That is living in the past, however, and unhelpful.  Today, I can do differently in what I think (maybe?) but definitely in what I do.  The slogan of 'acting myself into right thinking' applies here.  I need to shut off the thinking and focus on doing what I know helps.

Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliances are relieved or not at all [Shakespeare].  ... I want what I see in OA.  I pray for the willingness to follow each step of the program and to believe that the food and the weight will be taken care of in the process.  - August 17

Yep.  I think the experiment of not tracking and not weighing myself for October is incomplete.  I am more aware of what I am doing (I think) and I need to continue to build on the changes in my plan of eating and my action plan I have started to identify.  I feel like I should continue on this path in November and also continue on my week-long (so far) practice of a meeting a day.  I need to hear the message from others and stop listening to the disease in my head.

Balancing - Physical (Purpose), Mental (Meaning), Spiritual (Hope) and Emotional (Belonging)

 I am in the process of relooking at my spirituality and my faith that I too can recover.  I felt stung by another fellow's honest reflection that my thinking / spiritual belief that God could but would God for me? is like a newcomer.  

I have been pondering faith and hope a lot in the last week – since last Sunday’s 100 pound panel at the Region 8 convention.  I feel all in progress and a bit disoriented.  I decided to try more meetings and I have somewhat unofficially decided to try 90 meetings in 90 days.  I am not at all confident that I will keep with this but for today, I am doing another meeting.  So I am at day six and meeting six. 

I just finished a new-to-me meeting this morning and it was a unique format, one I found very helpful.  They focus on recovery as balancing the physical, mental (thinkin), spiritual and emotional health as four quadrants where we try to live in the sparkling centre with our HP.  

The meeting script talked about how physical health gives us purpose, mental health gives meaning, spiritual health yields hope and emotional health creates belonging.  I was at a meeting on Friday night where the speaker shared how his ‘dependency needs’ were not being met so he filled them with compulsive over eating.  I’d never heard that expression before and my initial reaction was “I don’t want to be dependent on anything, that’s unsafe and unreliable!”  And then he shared the exact same belief, before he found more lasting recovery.  LOL.  Yep.  I need (and want) to build more trust that I am and can be dependent on my HP and the sense of hope that creates.  

The writing / meditation prompts were to consider all four quadrants of the circle and consider:

• Take note of your reflections and then develop them as you meditate and think about your reflections from each of the four perspectives.   For instance, in this way of looking at things, our emotional health can be indicated by our feeling of belonging or reflections from our attitude.
• Our physical aspect is related to how we may do things, or our way of being and way of doing and our wholeness as a person.
• Our mental wellness can be measured in our capacity to understand our friends and neighbours, or ideas, such as those presented in books or even in society in general. We have a certain level of intuition or have a chosen rationale for our chosen lifestyle.
• Our spiritual wellness is found in our sense of hope and on what we base our beliefs, our values and on what we chose to identify ourselves with. 
• Mental wellness creates meaning, physical wellness creates purpose, spiritual wellness creates hope, and emotional wellness creates belonging.
• These are just examples to help start the process. They are not marked in stone but merely suggestions. 

It was a bit complex as the instructions were to focus on the Voices of Recovery reading for today, make notes for each of the four quadrants in our life today coming from the reading, and then do a five minute meditation on that!!!   

I felt like this is a useful way to work and yet it was a bit fast for my first time hearing it all for me to take it up in any detail.  I found myself correlating the four quadrants to my past (feeling like I didn’t belong / emotional pain), my present (health concerns / lack of purpose), my future (preoccupation in depression/anxiety worrying things will not get better – that life has little meaning), and lastly spiritual health where I have doubt instead of hope more than is needed / true. 

Blessed.

Cravings when my food is clean are only thoughts...

Joe and Charlie write about how the phenomenon of addiction starts in the mind.  It is the thought that I need something to "help" me feel less irritable, restless and discontent.  The cravings only start once the substance is in our system physically.  Before that, it is just a thought.

So I was having some 'cravings' (really, they were thoughts) that I wanted ice cream, a hamburger, some pizza.  Some summer street food in the heat, in the plaza, with everybody else.  The normal eaters and the not normal eaters in their pre-recovery days.

But those are thoughts.  Thoughts that mask the feelings of "I'm lonely" and "I wish I was like everybody else".  And EVERYBODY, from Bill W to Joe and Charlie to my sponsor to me when I'm not being restless, irritable and discontent, says this delusion of being like a normal eater has to be set aside completely.  Smashed.

So why the thoughts when my food is clean?  It's just my will trying to drive the show into a ditch.

My sponsor says when these thoughts come, we first inventory our food.  If it's clean, then I inventory my thoughts, words, and actions.  No matter where these thoughts of abusing myself with food come from, I deal with the thoughts, the cravings in MY MIND.  I don't set my body up for the relentless cycle of being triggered into physical cravings.  It stops at only the thoughts.

Blessed be.

Boundaries

Interested to read this lovely quote from Prentis Hemphill, the former Healing Justice director of Black Lives Matter, on boundaries:

Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.- Prentis Hemphill

My sponsor is encouraging me to take a step back in my service positions and focus on my recovery.  Strong personal recovery is a service in itself.  I often find it easier to serve others before I serve my own needs and that leads to resentment.  It's unhealthy.

I see it in others too -- a busy life in service to others can be a front for not being willing to love ourselves enough to do our own work for ourselves.  There is an unchallenged shame in there;  feeling we are not deserving of recovery in our own right.

60 Seconds of Hope

From the blog of the NINET-IMH Lab at UBC (they treat major depression, among other mood disorders):

Sixty Seconds of Hope

I think we’re all sailors, navigating by the stars. Sometimes they’re hard to see. The sky’s overcast, the city’s too bright. The waves are rough and you have to fight just to stay afloat. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember why you sail at all. But there are moments, sometimes weeks, sometimes minutes, when the sea lies still. When the wind is fair and the air is bright. When the stars are out. And you stand on the bow and realize the beauty of it all. These are the moments we must remember. Because no matter how overcast the sky and cold the sea, the storm will always pass. When it does, and you stand up on shaky knees to peer over the horizon, maybe you’ll finally find land. 

And hey. You’re doing good.

Love love love it.

Quotes from the OA LA Birthday Party, 2019

A friend in my Intergroup went to the OA 59th Birthday Party in Los Angeles last weekend.  She shared her best "take away" quotes and they are worth absorbing!

...

"The first thing that goes through an addicted brain is, 'how can I get my way.' The first thing that goes through a recovered brain is, 'I should make an outreach call.'" 

"You must realize deep down that you don't get away with anything."

"Weight... body size... food... dealing with that (ie. using a food plan) is NOT the solution to our problem. The solution is the 12 Steps, which help me deal with the feelings that life brings up in me."

"My excuses kept me from OA for many years. Don't let your excuses keep you from Abstinence!"

"There comes a point in this process (usually right before surrender) where it's so uncomfortable and foreign that it feels like you're walking into a bonfire. You can walk through fire tonight or tomorrow morning, but eventually, you need to walk through that fire. Recovery is on the other side, and there's no other way to get to it."

"You can always feel free to test the food one more time to see if you can beat it – but you neverwill!"

What I've learned is that we are all newcomers until we have 10 years of continuous, back-to-back abstinence in Program."

"To eat my alcoholic foods is to die: the mind, soul, and spirit go first; the body catches up later."

"When I started doing what I was told, that's when Program and recovery really started happening at speed."

"The most sacred thing you will encounter today is another person."

"Is what I'm thinking right now MY thought or GOD'S thought?

"What I'm releasing is less important than what I'm releasing into."

"God, help me see this as you see this."

"Before Abstinence, I had no idea what it felt like to be imprisoned because I had no idea what it meant to be free."

"When it came to the Big Book, I had trouble identifying with the content until I considered this: do I think like Bill thinks? do I act like Bill acts? Do I eat like Bill drinks?"

"Don't put people on pedestals in Program; that's an unfair thing to do to anybody. We must remain right-sized and humble to recover!"

"I was taken to a place of willingness – and I was willing to be taken."

"In recovery, I don't have things I 'need to do;' instead, I have a new way of life."

"We're all lamps. And unless we're plugged into Program, we can't light up!"

"If you take issue with 'God', consider this: if you need to let go of something, does it really matter who catches it?"

"12 Step work is anything done in service to another fellow in Program."

"If you're feeling alone, isolated, and needing help, go to meetings and share where you're at so that the people who can help you can find you."

"I can use any story to justify going back to food because that how I'm wired. I can't trust my broken brain, therefore I don't make food decisions on my own."

"The first 90 days of abstinence is hard! It will be painful! But it will end! It's going to be a dog fight but you won't be alone!"

"Only an addict fights to the death to keep doing something that is killing them."

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.

Defiance

"I wanted help, and I tried to cooperate.  As the treatment progressed, I began to get a picture of myself, of the temperament that had caused me so much trouble.  I had been hypersensitive, shy, idealistic.  My inability to accept the harsh realities of life had resulted in a disillusioned cynic, clothed in a protective armour against the world's misunderstanding.  That armour had turned into prison walls, locking me in loneliness -- and fear.  All I had left was an iron determination to live my own life in spite of the alien world -- and here I was, an inwardly frightened, outwardly defiant woman, who desperately needed a prop to keep going." -- Big Book, p.204

I have been meditating on defiance lately.  And resistance.  Why do I resist what is good for me?  Why do I feel like abusing myself with food will bring comfort?  And I don't know the answers other than I know food is not the answer to my emotional distress. 

I searched both the Big Book and the AA 12&12 for instances of defiant or defiance.  There are a few.  The passages that struck me are the one above -- from the chapter in the Big Book, Women Suffer Too, and then this from the AA 12&12 in the context of how AA (and OA) lack a hierarchal governance system to a large degree, preferring to be governed by the group's conscience, insider the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.

The passage is:

...We recognize that alcoholics can't be dictated to -- individually or collectively.

At this juncture, we can hear a churchman exclaim, "They are making disobedience a virtue!"  He is joined by a psychiatrist who says, "Defiant brats!  They won't grow up and conform to social usage!"  The man in the street says, " I don't understand it.  They must be nuts!"  But all these observers have overlooked something unique in Alcoholics Anonymous.  Unless each AA member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant.  His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles. (AA 12&12, Tradition 9)

As I struggle with what I want "in the moment" versus what is good for my long-term health, I have to remember that God does not want me to abuse myself.  Suffering is optional.  I can do what I need to do for my health happily or unhappily.  Either way, I have to get enough sleep, drink enough water, eat sufficient healthy food, avoid unhealthy food, and not abuse food for emotional purposes.  If I do that, I am honouring my humanity. 

The laws of physiology, nutrition, movement, and energy -- whatever they may be and I realize we know but a little here -- apply to me whether I want them to or not.  I am not exempt from the rule that if calories in exceed calories expended, weight increases.  Equally, I am not exempt from the rule that too much stress or too little sleep means the hormones in my body will prevent me from releasing excess weight.  That is just how we think it works.  And absent some other understanding, that is what I have to work with (or against).  And if I choose defiance, there are consequences, physical and emotional. 

So for today, my 18th day of not abusing food, I choose to celebrate embracing those things I cannot change.  That food doesn't fix sad.  The love isn't felt with food.  And that I had another day to learn what I need to learn.

Blessed be.

Letting myself Heal

We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.  - John F. Kennedy

And if it can happen for me, it can happen for you. - Lifeline Sampler, p. 317

I have spent the week out at the university, participating in a study of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation as a treatment for major depression disorder.  The treatment itself was approved for medical use in 2002 so this is a stage 4 study on treatment protocol efficacy.  They are also looking at biomarkers for depression with the idea that the more they learn about what works for which people, the more effective treatment can be when someone is first diagnosed.  What the drug companies don't tell you is 30 to 40% of people diagnosed with major depression do not respond to any medication.  That's a lot of people.  A lot of suffering.

As someone who has been diagnosed with depression for more than 10 years (and suffered for years before that)... As someone who has tried four or five of the antidepressant drugs and spent hours and thousands of dollars on therapy... well, this offers some hope.  I was afraid to try the study, not because the risks are high, but because it's different.  For some reason, the drug monographs didn't scare me as much (even though the risks are much more extreme) but the idea of letting someone put magnetic energy into my brain was a stumbling block.  That and a very long drive to the university every day.

I realized I had made my decision when I didn't want to live like this anymore.  Too sad, too tired, too uninterested in this beautiful world and its people.  And I realized I had made peace with my decision to try when I found myself writing in an email to a loved one that I don't have the life I want, the life I could have, and I want more.  More health.  More vitality.  More love.  More courage. 

So I have driven an hour plus each way to the university for seven days now.  And I have another five weeks to go.  I find myself praying during the day, God, please help me use this energy they are putting into me to heal.

As it says in For Today, 'I can take the steps necessary to change my life in spite of my fears."  Yep.  Doing that.  And working the Steps.  Step study homework to do! 

Blessed be.

Recovery

This I adapted for OA from an NA Just for Today reading that landed in my in-box tonight:

Few of us have any interest in “recovering” what we had before we started using.  Many of us suffered severely from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.  Getting high and staying high seemed like the only possible way to cope with such abuse.  Others suffered in less noticeable but equally painful ways before addiction took hold.  We lacked direction and purpose.  We were spiritually empty.  We felt isolated, unable to empathize with others.  We had none of the things that give life its sense and value.  We [binged] in a vain attempt to fill the emptiness inside ourselves.  Most of us wouldn't want to “recover” what we used to have. 

Ultimately, the recovery we find in OA is something different: a chance at a new life.  We'’ve been given tools to clear the wreckage from our lives.  We’'ve been given support in courageously setting forth on a new path.  And we’'ve been given the gift of conscious contact with a Power greater than ourselves, providing us with the inner strength and direction we so sorely lacked in the past.

Recovering?  Yes, in every way.  We’'re recovering a whole new life, better than anything we ever dreamed possible.  We are grateful.

I think the part that really resonates with me today is I don't want to recover what I used to have.  I want to recover my health and spiritual wellbeing -- which I did not have before.

Blessed be.