Not Getting My Way: Resentment, Anger and Fear (yesterday, today and tomorrow)

Resentment is from 'not getting my way' yesterday.

Anger is not getting my way – today.

Fear is not getting my way tomorrow.

The ONLY day I can do anything about is TODAY.

One day at a time. 

So I inventory my resentments of yesterday and my fears of tomorrow.

I take swift action in Step 10 about my angers that arise today.

A more Involved Step 10 when the issue has sticky thoughts and feelings...

I'm wrestling with whether to continue with a weekly group, finding it not that helpful.  I had committed to see it through for 12 weeks, however, and have been going back and forth on whether it is the right thing for me to withdraw from the group. 

This is the wisdom from my sponsor, who shared her experience with finding weekly meetups with a friend no longer felt right either:

...  it was then I knew that I'd have to do a  quick  step 10 with GOD..I'd go into the quiet sacred space. (as I do every morning-aka step 11) and talk it over with GOD.. BUT  if the issue kept coming up in my mind.. and if I talked about it to anybody (that's when I knew I needed more work on the subject  when I give power to negative thoughts by giving them a voice)...

... then I'd have to write out my step 10, taking the guidelines from the Big Book, p.84:  "Dear God, I'm feeling these emotions (and I write every one out) and now I'm asking YOU to remove them," et cetera.

When I finish with the guide of p. 84,  I do a pro and con list...  I take a 8" x 11" piece of paper and write a pro column  and con column... and then fill it in.  What is the PRO if I stay there?  What is the CON if I leave?

I actually did this with a good old friend as well and found out that the con's outvoted the pro's by only ONE...  so I placed it in GOD'S hands...  and asked for a sign because I truly thought what a waste of time to meet with her once a week!   

And GOD DID DO what was necessary:   my friend started to have car trouble and couldn't make our weekly meeting.  Eventually, winter came and our time together was limited by severe weather...  Then summer came and she called to say, "it's too hot and I'm not going out today".  That was the end of our relationship... except for we did continue to meet twice a year, once for her birthday and once for mine. 

I had let go and let GOD handle it..

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.

Anger and Recovery

I never expected to feel such a steady storm of anger in recovery.  I wish I felt more joyous as I approach my first abstinence birthday.  Instead, I am irritable easily and often lately.  I am frustrated - a combination of sad and mad - that my recovery is taking so long.  I am angry that my past haunts me, that depression lurks to darken my days, that some days just being is very hard.

I know the Big Book says we have to let go of our angers, our resentments:

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.  The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us.  They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for [addicts] these things are poison. [Big Book, p.66]

Being angry about the past is not only useless, it is harmful to my recovery.  My future depends on setting aside past hurts, past resentments -- not because it was right or fair or just that they happened - but because it is in my best interest to let them go.

The Promises talk about how we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it [Big Book, p.83].  I am not there yet.  Some days I am.  Some days, the past hangs over me like a smothering wet blanket, blocking all light, all progress, all life.

At this stage in my recovery, anger is not even a luxury, it is a force that threatens my abstinence.  Even justified anger, as I work through a legal process resulting from someone else's inattention damaging me, is harmful to my serenity, my equilibrium, my ability to move forward unaltered by self harm or self abuse.

The AA 12&12 is helpful, I find, on anger.  In the discussion on the daily inventory, Step 10, it reads:

...we have found that justified anger ought to be let to those better qualified to handle it.

Few people have been more victimized by resentments than have we [addicts].  It mattered little whether our resentments were justified or not.  A burst of temper could spoil a day, and a well-nursed grudge could make us miserably ineffective.  Nor were we ever skilful at separating justified from unjustified anger.  As we saw it, our wrath was always justified.  Anger, that occasional luxury of more balanced people, could keep us on an emotional jag indefinitely.  These emotional 'dry benders' often led straight to the bottle.  [...]

Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen.  We must avoid quick-tempered criticism and furious, power-driven argument.  the same goes for sulking or silent scorn.  These are emotional booby traps baited with pride and vengefulness.  Our first job is to sidestep the traps.  When we are tempted by the bait, we should train ourselves to step back and think.  for we can neither think nor act to good purpose until the habit of self-restraint has become automatic. [AA 12&12, pp. 90-91]

...we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means.  It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like, us are suffering from the pains of growing up. [p.92]

And I am reminded of the passage in the OA 12&12 about Step 1 where it says "we never grew up".  Well, I'm growing up now.  With all the pains, tantrums, storms, and learning that comes with it.

Blessed be.

Step 5 and Integrity

Spiritual Principle:  INTEGRITY in Recovery

One of the hardest things to admit is that we have lied to ourselves.  Lied about our eating or our food behaviours.  How many of us have binged and then “forgot” just a day or so later?  We think we have the flu or food poisoning or we didn’t sleep well.  In reality, we make ourselves suffer physically when we binge, restrict or purge.  Like any other addiction, compulsive food behaviours are a form of self-abuse.  The dishonesty we have around our food behaviours is also self-harming.  It destroys our trust in ourselves.

Step 5 asks us to “admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”  The underlying spiritual principle to this step is integrity.  The courage to be this honest, to act with integrity going forward, is the cumulation of doing a Step 4 Inventory and sharing it honestly with our sponsor or another trusted person in Step 5.  We face our behaviours, our fears, our resentments, our self-seeking and other character defects squarely.  We acknowledge our past.  We face the truth about what we are like and how we got to this point in our lives.  As the 12 & 12 text says:

In steps four and five we learned courage and integrity as we faced the truth about our defects of character.  Applying these principles in all our affairs means that we are no longer ruled by a fear of admitting our mistakes.  We have the integrity to show the world our true selves.  No longer needing to appear to the world as perfect people, we can live more fully, having the courage to face up to our mistakes and test our strengths in the challenges of life. – OA 12 & 12, p.104

Have you ever realized what goes on in your head does not match what the outside world sees?  Many times, I’ve heard at a meeting a fellow acknowledge feeling “fake” or like an “imposter” sometimes.  If people knew what you are really thinking sometimes, would they be shocked or appalled?  In completing Step 5, telling someone what you have done, what your resentments are, how they affected your life, what your part is, what you fear, how you have distorted relationships – all these things help in the process of aligning your thoughts with your behaviors.  This realignment requires integrity. 

When we move forward in our recovery with integrity, we embrace the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; a spiritual uprightness in our daily lives.  We are now in a state of being whole and undivided. 

No longer do secrets – big and little – haunt us.  We have made peace with our past.  We are ready to move forward, whole.  There may still be wreckage in our past to clear – that’s what we have the amends process for in Steps 8 and 9.  But in taking Step 5, we commit ourselves to acting honestly and with integrity, not just in the eye of our High Power, but in our own mind’s eye and that of our fellows.

Step 10 encourages us to maintain this place of honesty and integrity daily.  We continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.  A nightly inventory keeps us honest:

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? … After making our review we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.  – Big Book, p.86

The Big Book assumes we are sober when doing our nightly inventory.  In OA, we add “was I abstinent today?” to the inventory.  If not, we honestly acknowledge our relapse to ourselves, to our Higher Power and another fellow.  We look at our behaviours and rework the Steps.  Am I willing?  Do I surrender?  Have I asked for help?  What “corrective measures” do I need to take?  Integrity demands we ask ourselves the hard questions.  We are only as sick as our secrets.

Need to add to your plan of action on integrity?  Some members use an AEIOU method to take their inventory daily:  was I Abstinent?  Did I Exercise?   What did I do today for myself? What did I do today for Others?  What Unfinished business or Underlying issues do I need to deal with?   YAHOO!!!  What 5 things am I grateful for today?

Others find it helpful to use a recovery app on their phone, like the free 10th Step app on iTunes or My OA Toolkit app (iTunes or Google Play).  Still others use pen and paper, in a journal or with a template such as this:  http://www.northjerseyioa.com/tools/nightly-review-worksheet/oa-daily-worksheet.pdf    or you could try this one too:  https://www.oa-dcmetro.org/big-book-study-pdfs/BB_Study_Daily_Step_10-11_Wkshts.pdf  

OA Region 1 also sells a daily program journal that some people find helpful.  Any of these tools can help us work The Steps.  The only important thing is that we have the integrity to work our program daily.  You got this.  You’re worth it.  – Jennifer S, North Vancouver