Not Acting on Thoughts, Not Doing More than My Share

The reading in Voices of Recovery today talks about abstinence and how, although abstinent, we can still have compulsive thoughts around food when we are stressed, frustrated or depressed.  Uh huh.  I know all about that.  The reading continues:

Although I would love to have a complete freedom from such thoughts, I'm learning to accept that I have the mind of a compulsive overeater, a mind that automatically associates feelings of discomfort with the siren song of food.  ...No matter who strong my desire to eat may be, it's never the food that I really want; therefore, eating won't make me feel better.  If I am upset and craving food, I really need to connect with my Higher Power, to spend some quiet time by myself or to talk to a caring friend.  Thus, recovery has taught me that even though I may think like a compulsive overeater, I don't have to act like one.

This is reassuring in many ways.  I think I had made the assumption that if I still have compulsive thoughts about food, I am not abstinent.  But it's refraining from compulsive food behaviours, not thoughts, in our definition of abstinence.  It's not like I can control my thoughts.  I may be able to influence them over time with repeated patterns of behaviour, but I can't control my thoughts directly. 

Intergroup yesterday.  Lots more volunteers but all of them new to intergroup.  Good thing we no longer are enforcing the rules about attending for three months before you can be elected and having to meet the abstinence requirements or whatnot.  It's good to have new blood - there are people there who are not really contributing to Intergroup.  I expect they take the Intergroup news back to their home groups but that's about it in terms of contribution.  They don't actually do the work of Intergroup.  Maybe that's none of my business.  That's their journey.  If they are stuck, they are stuck.  If they are fine, they are fine. 

I was hurt and offended when I had three jobs and they had none, yet when the issue was raised, they did nothing.  However, the issue was raised and now I have one job.  It was a good lesson in me being serene enough to wait to see if someone else would step up or the position could stay empty.  I don't have to save the world.  I am only responsible for myself. 

Taking on too much is not good for my recovery.  I am learning to be consciously and responsibly selfish. I think it's important in our step 4's to look at these issues.  I am learning from the Al-Anon people that it is controlling and selfish to do too much for other people as well.  As I work my steps, I am going to read more closely for these issues -- control and doing too much as a sign of selfishness or ego.  Service gives me an opportunity to look at these issues in my life.

Blessed be.

Leaving Room for the Divine

Today's Voices of Recovery is about Step 11 - praying only for knowledge of our Higher Power's will for us. 

I have been trying to keep this front of mind in the context of a friend going through serious financial problems.  My best thinking in the past has been to try to rescue a friend in similar circumstances.  That didn't go very well.  I got badly hurt.  The friend ended up in hospital (she may have ended up there anyway, I don't know).  Our friendship ended because she felt my helping betrayed our friendship.

Now with this current friend, my instinct is to rescue but I can't.  The problem is too big, the financial burden too high.  And with all I have learned in doing the Steps, listening and talking to other members, and praying for guidance, I have determined it does not help to get between an addict and their bottom.  They have to get to a place of abject failure and defeat - for them - and where that is and what it looks like is theirs alone.  Only then are they at ground zero and can start to rebuilt their troubled lives.

For me, I wonder if I've recently hit my own bottom in feeling distraught over trying to help and then realizing my 'helping' others has meant I have ignored my own needs, my own recovery.  Yes, I have been going to meetings.  I've even started a new step study.  But is my heart in it?  Or is my heart too broken, preoccupied on what isn't than what I can do? 

So the reading today that reminds me my recovery comes first.  And that means I have to leave room for the Divine to work in my life and in the lives of those I love. 

"For today I will remember to let an infinite Higher Power enrich my life and broaden my horizons with His will, rather than shortchanging myself with the finite limits of my own human vision."

Blessed be.

Change (why it should be different) and Acceptance

I'm doing this Desire Map daily planner and one of the questions for today hit hard:  the category was "want to change" and the prompt was "why should it be different?"

And I didn't initially want to write anything.  My house is still a mess and I want it to be nicer but I rebel.  I realized it's because it's an old power struggle with my mother about what my space should be like.  And that's old.  I don't have to clean up because my mother says so.  I can want to change my house because I deserve beautiful.

The reading in Voices of Recovery for today is:

I have never seen a person grow or change in a constructive direction when motivated by guilt, shame and/or hate.  - William Goldberg.

And the text accompanying this incredible observation is this:

If you eat too much you're a glutton.  If you weigh too much you won't be popular with the boys (or girls).  Heaping new guilt upon the old, I tried to reform myself.  I dieted, lost weight.  There, now I looked terrific.  But for how long?  And did I like myself any better, inside?

...

For today, I let no one -- including myself -- try to shame me into changing something about myself I wish were different.  I pray to be relieved of guilt and self-hate, and to accept and like myself exactly as I am.  That is where I can begin to change.

This.
Blessed be.

Two Myths

The two myths disclosed this morning are these:
1.  that pain must be avoided at all costs; and
2.  that food relieves pain free of charge.

Neither are helpful.  Neither are true.  The For Today reading this morning starts with a quote from former US president John F. Kennedy:

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

The reading goes on to say that the writer's food addiction was acquired so [s/he] could survive and cope with earlier, painful circumstances. 

Thus began two myths:  first, that pain was to be avoided at all costs, and second, that eating would relieve the pain free of charge.  These myths were useful then, but they are insanity now.

As I become willing to accept the truth that is revealed to me in this program, the myths I clung to so desperately lose credibility.  I no longer need to be anesthetized; I can stand still and feel my feelings.  I don't think something is wrong if I'm not happy every minute.

For today, the more I accept the reality of what is, the more comfortable and serene my life becomes. 

This morning I am extremely sore from a fall on the ice yesterday.  My body is swollen with the excess salt I had last night bingeing on corn chips.  The binge did not prevent the soreness, it made it worse this morning.  Insane. 

I know I had painful early experiences.  I know I have been working around the edges on them in therapy for years.  For today, I will just hold my pain and trust that in time it will release its hold on me and just become part of my history, like happy memories do too.

Blessed be.

Practicing Prayer

Step Eleven encourages us to practice prayer, to continue talking to our Higher Power daily, even when it seem like a senseless exercise. - OA 12 & 12, p.97

I realized recently how much anxiety I am working with on a day to day basis.  The solution to much of this is prayer and meditation -- and a little bit from my cognitive behavioural therapy tools.

The reading in Voices of Recovery today talks about learning how the writer needs to pray. S/he writes:

I thank God for my abstinence and my recovery.  I ask for help with my abstinence in the day ahead.  I offer my service.  I acknowledge the previous day's failings and ask to be shown how to do better.  I offer the day ahead to the service of God.  I pray for friends in and out of OA.  From the time I started this simply daily routine my recovery stopped plodding forward -- it sprang forward.

This.  I can do this.

Blessed be.

Willingness comes and then Ability

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.  - William James

I did not have an abstinent day yesterday.  Today, so far, I have.  I am not suggesting I overlook my failures of both willingness and ability.  But I do go on.  I do better.  Part of the reading for this morning says:

...Of course, sometimes I cannot know in advance what to overlook.  When I must choose, I go with what seems best and give myself time to see how it works.

There is one suggestion that each of us would do well to take:  follow the twelve steps.  The steps are the program of recovery in its entirety:  everything else is intended to support just that:  tremendously helpful implements for working the steps. 

And in Voices of Recovery reading for today, we add "the miracle is the willingness came and then the ability." And so today, I pray for willingness and from that ability.  And I renew my commitment to work the steps.

Blessed be.

 

Let's not louse this up. Let's keep it simple.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. - Hans Hoffman.

I am feeling lost.  In some ways, I know what I need to be doing.  At the same time, I am unsure, uncertain, and overwhelmed.  It seems insurmountable to heal my body, my mind, my spirit.  I have teeny bits of progress and yet I still feel like I'm drowning.  Time goes by and it is as if I watch the clouds.

Today's reading is about simplicity.  It says:

One of the most profound utterances in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous is Dr. Bob's parting plea to Bill W, "Let's not louse this thing up.  Let's keep it simple," 

Overeaters Anonymous has its share of compulsive complicators.  They lard the program with mandatory procedures and other distractions.  If newcomers succeed in finding out what the program is about in this welter of the unnecessary, it may well be because they have an innate ability to simplify. 

For today, I pray to be reminded of the simple principles of this program, especially when I am tempted to present personal interpretations as the only way.

I was at Intergroup over the weekend.  What I saw were a lot of people simply showing up to report that their meeting has 6 to 8 people, one or two newcomers, and things are going well.  The vacant leadership positions -- literature coordinator, assistant treasurer, 12th Step Within coordinator, etc -- all went unanswered for the third month in a row that I've been there.  Do we need these positions?  Clearly we are functioning without them.  Why won't these people who show up each month take on a little bit extra?  I don't know.  They are not moved by the entreaty to service. 

This morning I am contemplating what I do for others versus what I do for myself.  I think I have a complicated relationship with being useful.  It reminds me, however, of the Marge Piercy poem.  I think it is true and pure, untainted by selfishness or ego.

To be of use
By Marge Piercy          

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Blessed be.