Breaking Down the Anatomy of Giving Up

Sometimes it feels like I am in an endless cycle, an emotionally broken loop, where I make some progress, I get scared or frustrated, and I either give up for awhile (or I want to).  And there is an anatomy to this process that I repeat every time.  A run away train of negative emotions.  This morning, I am grateful for my coach (who has his own recovery and addiction) for identifying the steps I take toward giving up in -- he pointed them out in my own writing! -- and then tracing the leaps of distorted logic that take me from "this is hard" to "I can't".  Sometimes we do not clearly see our own patterns and this is where working with others is invaluable.

Now that I see the pattern, I see it in myself and also when I work with other fellows in program.  It comes into play emotionally when we are confronted with something emotionally challenging that requires us to honestly look at and then do the work to change our behaviours.  For me, it has been arising as I take steps to work through my depression.  In a sponsee, I see it as the sponsee struggles with confronting her past as she works on her Step Four inventory.  It goes like this:

"This is difficult" (my thoughts are a jumbled mess)

and that leads in the logic to

"This is impossible" (I cannot focus)

and that leads to 

"I am not good at this" (technically true; it is new)

and that leads to

"I don't like this at all" (I feel overwhelmed)

and that leads to

"I don't want to do this" (I am stressed because this is hard)

and that leads to

"this is crushing me, it must be wrong" ("I can't" / panic)

and that leads to

giving up.  

There is a Japanese proverb that says "Fall seven times, get up eight."  Which is great except when you want to learn to stop falling.  Getting up is hard.  Learning not to fall is harder.  More advanced.  When I get to the point where I want to give up because working with my hard feelings (and then actually doing something to change them) is just so hard, I remind myself what the Big Book says (p.417):

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my compulsive overeating, I could not stay abstinent; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitude.

And I pray to accept that I am struggling and affirm to myself that I will not give up.  I will ask for help and I will try again.  And then I remind myself that "faith without works is dead" [Big Book, p.76] and I push myself to do the next right thing.

Blessed be. 

Willingness and Step 6

Any Lengths:  Willingness & Step 6

This month’s focus is the spiritual principle of willingness.  Step 6 asks us to be “entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character” – the fears, resentments, insecurities, self-seeking and so on – that we uncovered in taking our inventories.

There is a saying in OA that captures the idea of willingness: “OA is not for those who need it, only for those who want it.”  But what does it mean to want to change?  To be willing to change?  To be ready to change?  Willingness comes down to the state of being prepared to do something; readiness.

We learn in OA that we have a fatal disease.   We learn too that recovery is possible: “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it — then you are ready to take certain steps” [Big Book, p.58].

With Step 1, we have started to practice open-mindedness in setting aside our notions that we can “control” addiction, our compulsions and the unmanageable lives that result.  We become open to new ways of thinking about powerlessness and strength in Steps 2 and 3.  In Steps 4 and 5, we practice honesty:  first with ourselves and then with our sponsor or another trusted human being.  We lay our lives bare because we want to change.  “Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness are the essentials of recovery, but they are indispensable,” the Big Book reminds us in the Appendix titled ‘The Spiritual Experience.’ 

When it comes to addiction, recovery is a decision, not a negotiation. Past experience tells us that we don’t negotiate with this disease, we either recover from it or we don’t.  Do you ask yourself, “I’ll have to see what I am willing to do for my recovery today?”  This may be why your abstinence is not where you’d like it to be.

As we move to Step 6, we ask ourselves:  Is our work solid so far?  Are the stones properly in place?  Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation?  Have we tried to make mortar without sand?  [Big Book, pp.75-76].  Lawrie C talks about how his first sponsor made him go back to revise and add to his inventory more than once when Lawrie equivocated on the answers to these questions! [www.oabigbook.info].  But once we can answer these questions to our satisfaction, we are truly at Step 6. 

Then, our willingness is significantly tested:  it’s time to let go of old ways that do not serve us or our fellows.  On page 76, the Big Book asks, “Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all — every one?” In other words, do we want to keep holding on to a few things? A resentment against someone who wronged us deeply? Justified anger? A comfortable old way of looking at the world that we think keeps us safe from its ups and downs? The way we talk to others? The way we listen (or don’t listen)? Aggressive driving? The need to be right? The need to control? All or nothing? The idea that we can rely on ourselves? Eating compulsively to quash our feelings?

These and a hundred-thousand other worn-out ideas and ways of conducting ourselves in the world have to go. Otherwise we will eat compulsively again. Think of our lives like a damaged ship. We wouldn’t go back to sea having repaired the boat save for one little hole in the hull. Even if the hole was tiny, eventually enough water would stream in that we would sink. It is the same with our recovery.

We are in the business of giving ourselves to our Higher Power so that we can be fully repaired—by God—and sent back into the world to help others. If we deceive ourselves into hanging onto just a couple little things, then, like the ocean filling the ship, our ego will find that weak point and fill our souls back up with the very kind of junk we’d just disclosed about ourselves in Step 5. The stuff that makes us want to eat compulsively.

As addicts, we have this uncanny knack for hanging onto behaviours that have proven again and again to cause us pain and suffering. Step 6 is about getting honest on this account and being willing to change.  It is about finally getting ourselves fully and unquestionably ready to abandon the stuff that doesn’t work in our lives. And because we are probably the worst judges of what does and doesn’t work in our lives, we have to give it all away to our Higher Power, the good and the bad. That’s how we avoid even the potential for hanging onto to something objectionable that can lead us back to eating again.

It’s OK if we aren’t yet willing. We just need to understand that we will not receive the gifts of this program until we are.  If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.  We may focus our prayers on those who frustrate us, for example.  We ask for others in our prayers and, in doing so, become willing to change ourselves. 

Sometimes people share in meetings that their willingness has left them.  That may be.  But they can get it back.  Willingness is not a Muse that comes and goes at whim.  We need not wait for Divine Inspiration to recover from compulsive eating.  If you have been trying to give up the old ways and have condemned yourself for your failure to do so, simply be willing to learn how the old ways may be replaced with ways of peace.  [And then do those things!]  If you are willing to be abstinent, even ‘failure’ may be used as a teaching device. If you are willing to be abstinent, you ask for guidance from your Higher Power, your sponsor, from whatever source will help you.  When you are willing, there is acceptance… and then there is learning followed by action.  And this willingness starts within you.  You can be your own catalyst, reaching out for willingness through your Higher Power and the OA Fellowship.  No magic pixie dust or fairy godmother is required.

Steps 6 and 7 get only a very few sentences in the Big Book, but they are the turning point in our recovery. Up until then, we’ve been dealing with our problems. Once we get through step 7, we restart our lives in the solution. But for step six, the good news is that we are only becoming perfectly willing, not perfectly able. It turns out that giving away our character defects is a lifelong process, and one that brings us closer and closer to God. So, in step 6, we have simply to tell ourselves, that, yes, this is something I’m signing up for.  I am willing to change.

We have to go all-in with God or we go nowhere and stay stuck.  This is the crucial turning point in the Steps. If we say yes, and proceed through Step 7, amends are not optional. Prayer is not optional. Sponsoring is not optional. Compulsive eating is not an option. OA is not optional.  We go to any lengths.

è  Want more? There’s the World Service Podcast on Step 6 - https://oa.org/podcasts/step-six-june-14-2015/  or Step 6 Writing and Action List - http://oahow.squarespace.com/2-questions-topics/Step%206%20Q%20%20Action%20Suggestions.doc  Y

-Jennifer S, North Vancouver, with grateful acknowledgment of concepts in the Step 6 blog posts at seacoastoa.org (Portsmouth, NH).

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.

Learning Under Duress

Things I am learning as I struggle:

·    My food behaviour is inacceptable in that it is dysfunctional and obstructive to my healthy living goals.

·    In giving up and bingeing when I was upset, I refused to even try let alone train consequently to use measures that actually will help me in dealing

·    I have a special version of failing when I give up and binge.  It is beyond failing as “try and not succeed” or “try and not be good enough” and in the territory of “fail by doing things I know will fail me” along with trying to justify this failing as inevitable or somehow helpful.

·    I do not have the right to put myself in harm’s way and punish myself by bingeing for three days, let alone one. 

·    I do not need 15 hours of sleep in one day, even if I am tired.  That is avoidance, not healing.

·    I was wrong to sleep for 15 hours ignoring projects that need to be done. 

·    If I mess up, I cannot be rewarded for it or why would I ever change.

·    If I procrastinate, this will get worse.

·    What I do to hurt myself is life-threatening and much worse than simply doing what is healthy for me.  My Higher Power is kinder to me than I am to myself (but right now that is not very hard to do).

It hurts to change.  It hurts not to change.  Pick your hurt.  Life will get better as I heal.

For Today - Open Hands, Open Heart

One of the speakers at the Round-up last weekend spoke about how she held on so tight to her old ways, her self-destructive ways.  Her fists were clenched tight and God cannot fill closed fists.  I found aspects of that idea in a prayer and modified it to speak to my soul, my Higher Power.

Dear God,

I know you cannot fill my closed hands,
And I have to let go of what I think is mine.
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own or want myself to be,
but what you want to give me.
What you want to give me is the serenity, courage, and wisdom I seek,
as well as your unconditional, everlasting love.

Amen.

For Today - Trusting Myself

Self trust is the essence of heroism.  - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This morning's reading starts with Ralph and ends with this:

Complete trust in myself is not always possible, but when it comes, self doubts disappear, furtive struggles and fears are gone.  I treat myself with kindness and consideration, and my word to myself is as good as the commitments I make to others.

I'm struggling.  My depression is a heavy wet wool shroud and I sleep to escape my life.  My sleep is restless; it's filled with dreams, nightmares, and periods of half wake.

This morning, I started to read the OA Slipping and Sliding reader but the questions just seem too daunting.  My willingness to engage with my compulsions is low.  I bore myself with this.  So let's give me some space to pray for willingness.

For Today - Honesty

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.  - Sigmund Freud

When I am honest with myself, I do better and feel better.  When I am angry, resentful, and willful, I am in denial about my own agency, my own abilities.  I feel lousy, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  I can see this when I stop and honestly assess my behaviour, my emotions. 

I remember being disciplined around cleaning up my space.  I had a choice:  I could diligently work at tidying up for 30 minutes and then take a 10 minute break to do something I enjoyed.  Or I could stand in the corner for the 30 minutes instead, doing nothing but stare at the wall.  Wilful fool that I was, I chose the corner. 

Thirty minutes is an endless time to stand still and do nothing.  The first amount of time I was resentful, wilful, angry, and frustrated.  Interestingly, I wasn't willing to be completely disobedient and leave the corner.  But my heart was hard and I was angry at having only two choices, each equally horrible (in my mind).  I stood there and fumed. 

After 30 minutes, I left the corner and read.  When the 10 minutes was up, I wrestled with myself but ended up back in the corner, feeling resentful but also a little bit ashamed.  Something happened part way through - my feelings started to change from bitterly resentful to resigned.  Eventually, how I felt started to shift again and I started to feel ashamed.  Why was I so obstinate?  Obviously it would be a better use of my time to tidy up instead of stand in the corner.  I was just delaying the inevitable.  It wasn't like standing in the corner meant I wasn't going to have to clean up my room later.  There was no trade-off.  I could be punished for my behaviour and still have to do my work.  Or I could just do my work.  Work that was to my benefit.  Duh.

What I don't know is why I take the hard route so often?  Now, as I honestly reflect on my eating behaviours, I am thoughtful and make good decisions a lot of the time.  Then, I get wilful and angry and upset and I make a poor choice to go off the rails, bingeing.  I know the sugar and fat combination is deadly for me.  I also know it gives me a dopamine rush that temporarily makes me feel much better emotionally.  And then it really doesn't.  I am left with still having to do the work but from a heavier, sicker, more unhappy body and feeling ashamed.  

Wilful.  Intentional.  Deliberate.  Having or showing a stubborn and determined intention to do as one wants, regardless of the consequences or effects.

If I am honest, my willingness to surrender is inconsistent.  I am happier and healthier if I am wholeheartedly in recovery.  But I still struggle with this choice.  What beliefs or thoughts underlie this, this modern equivalent of choosing the corner instead of doing the work that benefits me?   I am broken.  The struggle is not worth it.  It is not safe to be abstinent.  I can't live with how bad I feel so I eat.  My body size protects me.  And this is seriously f*cked up thinking.  Broken?   Really?  What struggle?  I simply surrender.  Nothing but good things have happened when I am abstinent:  the danger I feel is not real.  My body size is killing me, not protecting me.

It really is simple.  Do the work.  Embrace the process.  Stop punishing myself.  Surrender.

For Today - a cranky, unhappy mess

So it's late. I haven't done what I wanted to do. I've spent too much time trying to fix my dead cell phone.  My apartment flooded yesterday and the floors are water damaged.  There is a layer of drywall dust over everything from the renos.  And I'm cranky.

So I will do what I can for 30 minutes and then go to bed. Try again tomorrow.

The quote for today was:  "We should take care not to make the intellect our God."  Albert Einstein.

Yep.  Acceptance is fundamental to spiritual growth.  I have spent the day futilely trying to fix things I don't know how to fix as if researching and trial/error will get me somewhere.  Nope.  Dumb.

For Today - Acceptance

Don't fight your problem.  Know that there is a solution.  -- Joseph Murphy

Today's reading reminds me that when I resist a problem, I give it strength, weakening my chances of finding a solution. 

This reminds me, perversely, of the Star Trek Borg threat/prophecy of "Resistance is Futile."  That part is true.  The next part, "You Will Be Assimilated" is perhaps less apt.  Or is it?  My addictive traits lead me down the rabbit hole into hell.  Other addicts, regardless of their substance or compulsion, recognize this, just as I recognize it in other people struggling with addiction.  I can hear it in their language, see it in their behaviours, and witness their pain.

The incident over the weekend with the clogged kitchen drain is a good example.  I resisted seeking help for three days, thinking I could battle it out on my own with remedies from the internet.  Um no.  The clog didn't budge and trying to fix the problem took up a lot of my energy and worry.  The plumber took five hours to fix it, the source of the problem being in the main stack, below my apartment in the parking garage.  Nothing I did could have worked.  I was tackling the wrong problem with the wrong tools!  The solution was to call the plumber.

One of the gifts of my childhood was I was taught self-reliance.  The shadow side of this gift is I am reluctant to seek help, as if needing help is a personal weakness, a failure of effort.  So I need to fine-tune this auto-script in my head.  It's good to be self-reliant (God helps those who help themselves!).  It is also good to seek help when appropriate (I can't, God can, I think I'll let God).  My calibration between the two is a bit off.

That can be a question to sit with, when I'm struggling.  "What am I resisting?"  Usually it's something that makes me anxious, uncertain, ashamed or flooded with feelings that I don't know how to process, so I binge.

... I found that I could face or untangle the other steps if, and when, I could remember to relax, trust the program, and implement the step rather than fight it.  Accepting my Higher Power did not fully change my attitude of resistance.  It just made yielding to instruction a more rational and acceptable mode of behaviour.  For each step, I still had to go through the process of recognizing that I had no control over my drinking.  I had to understand that the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous had helped others and could help me.  I had to realize that if I did want sobriety, I had better do the steps whether I liked them or not.  Every time I ran into trouble, I ultimately found I was resisting change.  [Big Book, p.541; added emphasis]

For today, when I feel unsettled or upset, let's try asking "what am I resisting?"  I suspect the answer is found in something spiritual.