Anger and Learning

I am 22 days clean from bingeing and (mostly) compulsive food behaviours.  In the last 22 days, I have not binged.  I have not had chocolate or popcorn or chips or other binge foods.  I have had a teaspoon of sugar in my tea when I wanted to feel something other than I was feeling.  And I had a very late lunch one day and ate a 10" pizza.  Which was not ideal.  But not a binge.  I am being as honest as I know how to be with myself about my food behaviours. 

I have also significantly changed my other avoidant behaviours.  The bingeing on mindless internet surfing.  Netflix.  Podcasts I'm only half listening to.  Avoiding housekeeping.  My feelings.  I am trying very hard to actually feel how I feel.  The result is I am easily angered.  I am easily in tears.  I am easily frustrated.  I have decades of experience in using various techniques, including food, to numb out.  And when I take those things out of my life, a cascade of emotion, some of it decades old, comes flooding out.

And I am meditating on anger.  The Big Book says "If we were to live, we had to be free from anger.  The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us.  They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison" (How It Works).  In me, I see that anger suppressed is a recipe for bingeing.  Anger itself is just a warning sign that I am not dealing with some underlying upset.  I feel wronged in some way.  And usually it is me who is wronging me.  I am not being firm with a personal boundary.  I am not being honest and so I feel shame.  I am putting someone else's needs ahead of my own and expecting to be loved for it.  When my expectations are not met, I feel resentment.  And if the resentments pile up, I feel rage.

I like this entry in Voices of  Recovery (June 11):

I have to be careful about my attitude toward anger.

Righteous anger is the hardest thing for me to release.  I get such a good, self-affirming feeling from holding on to it.  However, anger, like fear, takes up so many mental megabytes that there isn't room for new information and new feelings, new insights and new paths to conversation with my Higher Power.  If I allow my hard-drive (my heart) to fill to capacity with anger or fear, then there is no room for the positive, for what my Higher Power wants for me in life.

When the anger or the fear is gone, what's left?  At one time I speculated that nothing would be left of me once I shouted or cried it all out and released it.  Now I realize that what happened was a massive blackboard erasure with a whole new background - life - to fill as I want.

I am learning to sit with my anger and not binge.  This is not to say I am processing my anger well (or sometimes at all).  But I am letting uncomfortable feelings come to the surface - I am not suppressing them with food or other distractions that don't help.  It is hard, hard work.  And I am in tears more than ever.  When it gets intense, my thoughts turn to food.  I have to remember to pray, to ask for help, to move my body, move this anger energy.

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.

Paper versus Digital

It's a peaceful grey still morning here - the rain has stopped for the moment and the cat is hanging out on the desk like a paper weight.  It occurred to me I haven't been using this blog much for almost two months.  And I realized the reason was because I have been doing all my recovery work in a notebook with pen and ink.  Old school! 

I read the Big Book and some of the language reads old school and that's ok too.  More than ok.  A more than viable alternative to digital living. 

So I'm working on my step study and distilling my list of character defects, shortcomings and harmful behaviours.  I asked two friends outside of program but sympathetic to 12 step to have a look.  So far, one has honestly and helpfully said I did not include the "I want what I want when I want it, damn the consequences" mindset under self-centredness.  Yep.  That's both fair and a classic statement on addiction.  #workinprogress

Blessed be.

A More Peaceful Approach to Living

It's  snowy Sunday morning and I am reflecting on my week.  The house is quiet, nature is still outside, and insulated in a clean white layer of snow.  The cat is meditating on the edge of my table, coffee is hot, and I feel more content than usual.

One of the readings for today (in Voices of Recovery) talks about 12 step recovery as finding a more peaceful approach to living.  No longer do I use all my energy to try to make things happen.  No longer am I constantly met with frustration, disappointment and feelings of failure or self-pity (all of which led me to the food).  I am learning to stop.  To ask for help.  To pray for guidance.  To contemplate options.  I am starting to anticipate the effect of my actions on me and on others.  It's calming.  It's comforting.  It's easier.

With all that is going on in my inner world and in the world around me, a more peaceful approach to living makes life better.  I do not need to struggle, to fight, to rail against what is.  I can be still and see more.  More beauty.  More hope.  More peace.

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.

Free Your Mind

For an honest, balanced view of myself, I take a few minutes in which I free my mind of everything except God's love for me.

This.  The being surrounded by white light.  The metta practice that I be safe, I be at ease, I be happy, and then that all sentient beings feel the same.  This.

Blessed be.

Justification for Bingeing is Insanely Insufficient

It occurs to me that my justifications for bingeing -- I'm upset, I just want the world to go away for a little while, I can't cope with my feelings, I'm sad, I'm lonely, I'm depressed -- are insanely insufficient in light of the emotional and physical health consequences obesity causes me.  If the bingeing actually helped my mental state, well, then it would be a hard bargain to make, but it doesn't.  I used to think it does but really it doesn't help.  I feel worse after I binge, not better.

I'm reading in AA's Big Book, the chapter on "More about Alcoholism" and I find this passage helpful in the context of when I deliberately binge because I am upset or depressed:

In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like.  But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened.  We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be. 

Our behaviour is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jay-walking [who ends up with a broken arm and then two broken legs but persists in jay-walking nonetheless].  [Big Book, p.37]

Later, the Big Book talks about the "subtle insanity" just before taking the first drink.  In this period of premeditation the compulsive behaviour seems like a casual idea, innocuous, not likely to be harmful.  A couple of cocktails.  Some salty snacks.  A doughnut.  But 1 is too many and a 1000 is never enough.  I know this.  I have no defence once I pick up the binge food.  As the Big Book says:

...though I did raise a defence, it would one day give way because some trivial reason for having a drink.  Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all.  I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind.  I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots.  I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated.  I knew then.  It was a crushing blow. [Big Book, p. 42] 

What I know about neuroscience is once a brain is wired one way, with repeated behaviours over many years, it is very hard, if not impossible to rewire it.  So if this science is true, my will power and intellect is not going to be a allay in stopping my compulsive eating.  I need something more to help.  And that's where the concept of my Higher Power comes in. And weirdly, that's what I see when I keep reading!  The end of the chapter on page 43:

Once more:  the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defence against the first drink.  Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defence.  HIs defence must come from a Higher Power.

Blessed be.