This last week has been a difficult one. My boyfriend broke up with me. My ex-husband took my son to see his family in Texas for Easter. But most importantly, after looking at the relationship patterns I've gravitated towards, I realized that I use love as a drug - and I'm referring to that Hallmark, Valentine's Day kind of love, not the truly deep and intimate kind of love. When things get bad, I move from one relationship into another - keeping a casual distance, putting the new person on a pedestal, and waiting for things to collapse before starting the process immediately over again.
This is just one more outlet for my disease to keep me from coping with life, and so I have a cross addiction that I am now dealing with. Which means I spent this week managing an empty house and a breakup without food, without alcohol, and without the lure of seeking out a new romantic partner.
Being without my son is always tough, but on Easter it was particularly difficult. So last night I decided that it was time to do a guided meditation. When working on my Second Step, I learned a number of guided meditations designed to help me grow closer to my Higher Power.
My favorite of these meditations is one that involves going into your "inner temple." The process is simple. Lie down and get comfortable. Picture that there is a light (pick a relaxing color, mine is a teal color but yours can be anything you like) that is moving from your feet and filling your body as it goes up to your head. Once you are in a safe little cocoon of relaxation, let yourself drift up and out of your body. You are going up and up to the clouds. Ahead you see a big fluffy white cloud and your cocoon stops there and you step out onto that cloud. Ahead of you is your temple.
The meditation goes on to tell you to approach the temple and go inside. You let your mind wander and just watch what you do in there - it's like semi-active dreaming.
It's up to you to picture what your temple looks like. My temple used to always be a Greek ruin with a few tendrils of ivy going up the side. The inside had broken floors - it looked like a place that had not seen a human being in centuries (if not longer). There was a lone stone altar in the center, but nothing else. I have always loved my meditation trips to my temple because I thought it was beautiful and special. (A bit of foreshadowing . . .)
I couldn't seem to get into my teal cocoon this time. Instead I felt like I was being sucked into a black hole. I was trapped inside this little popcorn kernel shaped shell, curled into fetal position - and it was like this that I went up to my clouds. I thought about stopping the meditation and starting over, but figured I'd go with it.
This time when I went into my temple, it was like a lush botanical garden. The structure was the same - the same pillars and vines, but this time the whole place was surrounded by lush plants and hanging vines of flowers. The floors were old and worn, still ancient, but they had that well-kept look that you see in old cathedrals in Europe. My stone altar was still in the center, but it had a pristine white table cloth on it, with candles and flowers. On one side of the altar there now was a throne where I knew my Higher Power sat. Instead of a place of decay, everything was pristine - as though it was millennia old, but had been loved every single day of its long, long life.
Looking around my temple, I realized that the changes I was seeing were a reflection of my growth in program. I am no longer a barren, broken down human being. My temple before was very pretty, but this place was beautiful beyond compare. I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I was given this chance to see the changes in myself. After how rough this week has been, I'd been feeling like I had made no progress whatsoever - and yet here was the proof to the contrary.
I looked around and didn't see my Higher Power anywhere, but somehow I knew he wasn't far. I looked down and in my hand there was the little kernel with me inside, and I realized it was a seed. Down at the base of the throne there was a missing stone with a plot of really rich smelling soil. I'm not much of a gardener (as my poor half-dead vegetable garden can attest) but if I were a plant, that is the kind of soil I'd want to live in! So that's exactly what I did. I knelt down and planted the seed that was me, and stepped back. I knew that I had planted my seed in a safe place and that my Higher Power was there to watch me grow. I didn't have to worry about water or sunshine - my Higher Power had that part.
I knelt down next to the plot of dirt and told my seed-self, "I know it hurts now, and I know growing is a struggle. But keep fighting, because it will all be worth it once you break the surface and see the sunshine." I was picturing my seed-self pushing against the walls of the seed, breaking out and struggling against the dirt to push up and to the sunshine. I realized that the feelings I'm having now are just that - I'm pushing through the dirt trying to reach the sunshine.
I came to after that and felt this sense of peace. I know days are going to be difficult, but just for today I can have faith that the sunshine is going to be worth it.
I don't know if these meditations are just my subconscious giving me the information I need or a way for my Higher Power to reach me, but either way: message gratefully received.
Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Step One, Question 1, Page 1
I think it's time I take the plunge and start writing on the first question in the workbook. It has been sitting on my desk, open to that page, for weeks. I will begin working the steps with my sponsor this week and I have some time before bed to do a bit of work, so here goes nothing (or perhaps, everything)!
1. "In OA we are encouraged to take a good look at our compulsive eating, obesity, and the self-destructive things we have done to avoid obesity - the dieting, starving, over-exercising, or purging." Here is a First-Step inventory of my compulsive eating history.
A lot of my early compulsive eating is blurred by the haze of the sugar high. Or perhaps I should say "glaze". I remember not being allowed sweets because my mom was worried about my weight. It wasn't consistently enforced, though. It was like her own warring opinions on whether she could eat sweets spilled over into what she permitted me to eat. But here are a few compulsive overeating memories:
I would sneak into the pantry when people were busy/sleeping/away to steal food. My favorites were fruit snacks and granola bars. The best was the "Fruit O's" from Costco - fruit snacks in a huge container from Costco. I knew I could take one or two of those a day without being caught. Granola bars were another love, but I knew I had to take those slow. I would take one bar a day. There was a very strict order to how I ate my closet foods: 2 Fruit O's, 1 granola bar, 1 of this, 1 of that. It depended on what we had at the time. Gold fish had to be smuggled one handful at a time. If the container went missing I would get caught and I'd either get lectured or in actual trouble. The number of items became just as important as the theft of the food and it's consumption. No matter how much or how often I smuggled, I always wanted more. It called to me and I craved it, but I knew I had to wait until the next day or they'd notice the food was disappearing too fast. Thankfully my brother was assumed to be the one doing the eating. Eventually he hid the food in his room to keep me out, which upped the stakes. I only could sneak in maybe once a week to get the food then. Even now, when I go to fast food restaurants, I find that I get a list of foods I want: 1 of A, 1 of B, 1 of C, 1 of D - the ordering of the food is part of the ritual, even when I ordered far more than I could possibly consume.
I remember being excited about the food come the holidays. It was the one day I knew my mom wouldn't chase me about how much I ate - until the car ride home when both parents would scold me in front of my brother. I would make the obligatory round of hugs and then settle next to the appetizer table. I would eat non-stop until dinner. Then I'd eat a plate of two of food at dinner, maybe sneak back for more appetizers. Then I'd get one of everything offered for desert, after I snuck in plenty of cookies, fudge, and whatever else was sitting out for deserts. The sad truth is: I can't remember much about the holidays other than eating and hoping my parents weren't watching how much I was putting into my mouth and body.
In elementary school I used to offer to put anything people wanted to give me into my yogurt to eat it. I wanted the food, so even if they put tuna salad in my cherry yogurt, I'd take it. Mostly it was things like Oreo cookies [yum] or half eaten sandwiches. I ate anything people wanted to throw out. I never fished in the school trash cans [although I did in the kitchen trash can at home] but I was a mini garbage disposal for anything and everything no one wanted. My friends eventually started bringing extra food for me.
In college I remember thinking constantly about food. Classes were the things I did between meal times. I loved the cafeterias because I could get as many plates as I wanted, and if I went alone I didn't have to worry about anyone following me. Mostly I didn't think about people watching me eat then. I was out of the sight of my parents, which to me meant I was out of the sight of everyone. I frequented the vending machines in my building - I think I stopped on the way to and from every class for something, usually those little doughnuts. Once I had a car, my food adventures were usually in the form of 4 or 5 large meals a day at fast food as well as the dining halls. I went every Tuesday to a Thai food restaurant where I ate until the point of pain. I also always had snacks in my room to nibble on between meals. This part is a bit fuzzy, because I didn't pay a lot of attention to what I was eating when. I have always been a grazer so I had meals I paid attention to, and meals where I just grazed along without paying attention to what I was eating.
In grad school I think I lived on pizza, sub sandwiches and chips, and fast food (including an awesome fast food Italian restaurant that had cheese covered baked lasagna that I would eat with garlic bread sticks - carbheaven hell.) I ate huge quantities of food, including in the middle of the night while studying. I would go to IHOP, order 2 or 3 meals and eat it all before I left.
After grad school I got the gastric bypass stomach surgery, which severely limited my ability to binge. They literally sewed off part of my stomach and rerouted my intestines. So once I was recovered enough to eat normal foods, I would still go to the restaurants and order all my food. The ritual was still in place. I just ended up throwing out most of it. I would eat a bite or two of everything and make myself ill, but I would do my best. I often grazed on my meal all day long - one monstrous breakfast-lunch-dinner mishmash of a meal. Eventually I managed to eat back on most of my weight since there was nothing that caused the infamous "dumping syndrome" for me.
When I joined OA, I had gained back some - but not all - of my gastric bypass weight loss. I gave up certain "trigger foods" but binged freely on the others. It was retaliatory binging. I took away french fries? Then doughnuts it was! I took out doughnuts next, then I went to those little fruit-jelly filled pies and cookies. Eventually I gave up and went back to before. Then I came back and tried it again - with the same results as before. Before I started with my current sponsor I had a two week long binge that was pure hell [described here]. And I haven't compulsively overeaten since.
Now to move on to the memories involving restricting/anorexia/bulimia:
These three were always lumped together for me. I remember in second or third grade hearing my mom talk about how she dieted as a kid: hard boiled egg for breakfast, and she kept lunch and dinner each under 200 calories. So I did the same. It stunted my growth and I stopped growing at age 10.
In sixth grade I started the anorexia. I would skip every meal I could get away with. It was not that hard to get away with: I would tell friends that I was eating at home, and family that I ate with friends. No one paid attention to what I ate at school, so I didn't have to worry there. Sometimes I ate at school because I liked the food, but it depended on the day. I think it got bad when I was between sixth and seventh grade, actually. During the summer months. When I had to eat dinner with my family, I'd squirrel the food into my cheeks and spit it out into napkins [because I wasn't smart enough to think that people would notice]. I just pretended it was gristle. My mom wasn't inclined to feed me sweets, so that was never a problem. When I couldn't get away with the gristle ruse, I'd rush to the bathroom and spit out the food in my squirrel cheeks. My parents obviously knew what was going on but chose to do nothing about it. Eventually my friends at school held me down at lunch time and force fed me. Once I was eating it seemed that this phase of my life had ended.
Bulimia became something that popped up intermittently with my binges. I can't really remember much about the bulimia, except that it took me a while to figure out how to make me puke since my gag reflex isn't very sensitive. After my weight loss surgery I was lucky that as soon as I overate I would need to vomit. So the purge just took a few extra bites of food and out it would come. I often used that route to get more food, but sometimes it was a way to clear the binge.
Eventually I would alternate as an adult between binge, purge, and restricting days.
Compulsive exercising hit me around eighth grade. I wanted to be skinny so I signed up for every sport my school offered, including cross country. Later I ran for the love of running, but at first it was all about the burning of calories. In grad school I exercised five to seven days a week as a means of telling myself that I was working on my weight and clearly it wasn't my fault that I was fat.
I can honestly say I've tried just about every diet over the years: calorie counting, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins, HMR, Liquid Only, Slim Fast, Lean Cuisine, not eating after 6/8/10pm, skipping breakfast, eating no breads, eating no dairy, eating no red meat, vegetarian, alcohol only, eating no pasta, eating no snacks, eating five small meals, etc.
1. "In OA we are encouraged to take a good look at our compulsive eating, obesity, and the self-destructive things we have done to avoid obesity - the dieting, starving, over-exercising, or purging." Here is a First-Step inventory of my compulsive eating history.
A lot of my early compulsive eating is blurred by the haze of the sugar high. Or perhaps I should say "glaze". I remember not being allowed sweets because my mom was worried about my weight. It wasn't consistently enforced, though. It was like her own warring opinions on whether she could eat sweets spilled over into what she permitted me to eat. But here are a few compulsive overeating memories:
I would sneak into the pantry when people were busy/sleeping/away to steal food. My favorites were fruit snacks and granola bars. The best was the "Fruit O's" from Costco - fruit snacks in a huge container from Costco. I knew I could take one or two of those a day without being caught. Granola bars were another love, but I knew I had to take those slow. I would take one bar a day. There was a very strict order to how I ate my closet foods: 2 Fruit O's, 1 granola bar, 1 of this, 1 of that. It depended on what we had at the time. Gold fish had to be smuggled one handful at a time. If the container went missing I would get caught and I'd either get lectured or in actual trouble. The number of items became just as important as the theft of the food and it's consumption. No matter how much or how often I smuggled, I always wanted more. It called to me and I craved it, but I knew I had to wait until the next day or they'd notice the food was disappearing too fast. Thankfully my brother was assumed to be the one doing the eating. Eventually he hid the food in his room to keep me out, which upped the stakes. I only could sneak in maybe once a week to get the food then. Even now, when I go to fast food restaurants, I find that I get a list of foods I want: 1 of A, 1 of B, 1 of C, 1 of D - the ordering of the food is part of the ritual, even when I ordered far more than I could possibly consume.
I remember being excited about the food come the holidays. It was the one day I knew my mom wouldn't chase me about how much I ate - until the car ride home when both parents would scold me in front of my brother. I would make the obligatory round of hugs and then settle next to the appetizer table. I would eat non-stop until dinner. Then I'd eat a plate of two of food at dinner, maybe sneak back for more appetizers. Then I'd get one of everything offered for desert, after I snuck in plenty of cookies, fudge, and whatever else was sitting out for deserts. The sad truth is: I can't remember much about the holidays other than eating and hoping my parents weren't watching how much I was putting into my mouth and body.
In elementary school I used to offer to put anything people wanted to give me into my yogurt to eat it. I wanted the food, so even if they put tuna salad in my cherry yogurt, I'd take it. Mostly it was things like Oreo cookies [yum] or half eaten sandwiches. I ate anything people wanted to throw out. I never fished in the school trash cans [although I did in the kitchen trash can at home] but I was a mini garbage disposal for anything and everything no one wanted. My friends eventually started bringing extra food for me.
In college I remember thinking constantly about food. Classes were the things I did between meal times. I loved the cafeterias because I could get as many plates as I wanted, and if I went alone I didn't have to worry about anyone following me. Mostly I didn't think about people watching me eat then. I was out of the sight of my parents, which to me meant I was out of the sight of everyone. I frequented the vending machines in my building - I think I stopped on the way to and from every class for something, usually those little doughnuts. Once I had a car, my food adventures were usually in the form of 4 or 5 large meals a day at fast food as well as the dining halls. I went every Tuesday to a Thai food restaurant where I ate until the point of pain. I also always had snacks in my room to nibble on between meals. This part is a bit fuzzy, because I didn't pay a lot of attention to what I was eating when. I have always been a grazer so I had meals I paid attention to, and meals where I just grazed along without paying attention to what I was eating.
In grad school I think I lived on pizza, sub sandwiches and chips, and fast food (including an awesome fast food Italian restaurant that had cheese covered baked lasagna that I would eat with garlic bread sticks - carb
After grad school I got the gastric bypass stomach surgery, which severely limited my ability to binge. They literally sewed off part of my stomach and rerouted my intestines. So once I was recovered enough to eat normal foods, I would still go to the restaurants and order all my food. The ritual was still in place. I just ended up throwing out most of it. I would eat a bite or two of everything and make myself ill, but I would do my best. I often grazed on my meal all day long - one monstrous breakfast-lunch-dinner mishmash of a meal. Eventually I managed to eat back on most of my weight since there was nothing that caused the infamous "dumping syndrome" for me.
When I joined OA, I had gained back some - but not all - of my gastric bypass weight loss. I gave up certain "trigger foods" but binged freely on the others. It was retaliatory binging. I took away french fries? Then doughnuts it was! I took out doughnuts next, then I went to those little fruit-jelly filled pies and cookies. Eventually I gave up and went back to before. Then I came back and tried it again - with the same results as before. Before I started with my current sponsor I had a two week long binge that was pure hell [described here]. And I haven't compulsively overeaten since.
Now to move on to the memories involving restricting/anorexia/bulimia:
These three were always lumped together for me. I remember in second or third grade hearing my mom talk about how she dieted as a kid: hard boiled egg for breakfast, and she kept lunch and dinner each under 200 calories. So I did the same. It stunted my growth and I stopped growing at age 10.
In sixth grade I started the anorexia. I would skip every meal I could get away with. It was not that hard to get away with: I would tell friends that I was eating at home, and family that I ate with friends. No one paid attention to what I ate at school, so I didn't have to worry there. Sometimes I ate at school because I liked the food, but it depended on the day. I think it got bad when I was between sixth and seventh grade, actually. During the summer months. When I had to eat dinner with my family, I'd squirrel the food into my cheeks and spit it out into napkins [because I wasn't smart enough to think that people would notice]. I just pretended it was gristle. My mom wasn't inclined to feed me sweets, so that was never a problem. When I couldn't get away with the gristle ruse, I'd rush to the bathroom and spit out the food in my squirrel cheeks. My parents obviously knew what was going on but chose to do nothing about it. Eventually my friends at school held me down at lunch time and force fed me. Once I was eating it seemed that this phase of my life had ended.
Bulimia became something that popped up intermittently with my binges. I can't really remember much about the bulimia, except that it took me a while to figure out how to make me puke since my gag reflex isn't very sensitive. After my weight loss surgery I was lucky that as soon as I overate I would need to vomit. So the purge just took a few extra bites of food and out it would come. I often used that route to get more food, but sometimes it was a way to clear the binge.
Eventually I would alternate as an adult between binge, purge, and restricting days.
Compulsive exercising hit me around eighth grade. I wanted to be skinny so I signed up for every sport my school offered, including cross country. Later I ran for the love of running, but at first it was all about the burning of calories. In grad school I exercised five to seven days a week as a means of telling myself that I was working on my weight and clearly it wasn't my fault that I was fat.
I can honestly say I've tried just about every diet over the years: calorie counting, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins, HMR, Liquid Only, Slim Fast, Lean Cuisine, not eating after 6/8/10pm, skipping breakfast, eating no breads, eating no dairy, eating no red meat, vegetarian, alcohol only, eating no pasta, eating no snacks, eating five small meals, etc.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Happy Thursday
It seemed appropriate that I would start this blog on Thanksgiving - the holiday of the glutton. I heard a great thing in my regular Overeaters Anonymous meeting this last week: "Here at OA we have a name for Thanksgiving. It's called Thursday." And really that struck a chord with me. We always hear that others only have power over us if we give them that power, but the same thing is true of days as well.
The 4th Thursday in November. December 25th. January 1st. February 14th. March 17th. July 4th. These are all just calendar days. If you hadn't been told otherwise, you never would have known there was anything special about any of these given days. But magically being near the "holidays" leaves people feeling lonely or depressed. And for compulsive overeaters that fourth Thursday of November is a daunting day of food and temptation. Why? Because we've made it that way.
This is my first abstinent Thanksgiving. My abstinence right now is simple: no soda, no coffee, no beer, no hard liquor, no french fries, no doughnuts. These are all things I just can't handle with any semblance of sanity. The biggest part of my abstinence is the non-food portion: no vomiting, no eating until you feel sick. Stopping when I was full was difficult this year, but I ate each of the foods I love in moderation - avoiding the pitfalls of soda and alcohol - and I felt good about my day.
My first sponsor told me to pick items that "set me off" rather than try to do a highly restrictive abstinence from day one. She felt that starting off with a tough abstinence was a quick trip to failure. That had been her experience and so that was how we worked the program together. My sponsor was wonderful and I'm sad that when I decided to take a break from OA during my pregnancy that we lost touch. I miss her.
But I will be starting a very strict abstinence with a new sponsor in the coming weeks. Next Thursday my husband and I are finally taking the honeymoon that we postponed last year. My new sponsor agreed to start being my sponsor when I get back from that honeymoon (seeing as how week two is a bit early to be battling to stay abstinent on a cruise ship when I'm still learning the rules of the program!)
But there were a number of things that greatly bothered me about agreeing to do this abstinence program. First was the impact this would have upon my husband and son. In the beginning the meals are very uniform from day to day, and I have concerns about how this logistically will work with them. But second, and sadly most importantly, I worried about those "special days". How could I give up my birthday cake? Or Christmas dinner? Most of the rest of the holidays I could live without - but no birthday cake was really something I was stuck on.
My husband told me to order a birthday cake for myself before the abstinence started. We are writing all the numbers between 30 and 90 on that cake, and it will be my birthday cake until I am 90. Because March 23rd is just a calendar date. Sure I was born on a March 23rd, but that doesn't mean that it needs to be anything other than another day on the calendar.
With a little luck and a lot of leaning on others, I think I can do this.
The 4th Thursday in November. December 25th. January 1st. February 14th. March 17th. July 4th. These are all just calendar days. If you hadn't been told otherwise, you never would have known there was anything special about any of these given days. But magically being near the "holidays" leaves people feeling lonely or depressed. And for compulsive overeaters that fourth Thursday of November is a daunting day of food and temptation. Why? Because we've made it that way.
This is my first abstinent Thanksgiving. My abstinence right now is simple: no soda, no coffee, no beer, no hard liquor, no french fries, no doughnuts. These are all things I just can't handle with any semblance of sanity. The biggest part of my abstinence is the non-food portion: no vomiting, no eating until you feel sick. Stopping when I was full was difficult this year, but I ate each of the foods I love in moderation - avoiding the pitfalls of soda and alcohol - and I felt good about my day.
My first sponsor told me to pick items that "set me off" rather than try to do a highly restrictive abstinence from day one. She felt that starting off with a tough abstinence was a quick trip to failure. That had been her experience and so that was how we worked the program together. My sponsor was wonderful and I'm sad that when I decided to take a break from OA during my pregnancy that we lost touch. I miss her.
But I will be starting a very strict abstinence with a new sponsor in the coming weeks. Next Thursday my husband and I are finally taking the honeymoon that we postponed last year. My new sponsor agreed to start being my sponsor when I get back from that honeymoon (seeing as how week two is a bit early to be battling to stay abstinent on a cruise ship when I'm still learning the rules of the program!)
But there were a number of things that greatly bothered me about agreeing to do this abstinence program. First was the impact this would have upon my husband and son. In the beginning the meals are very uniform from day to day, and I have concerns about how this logistically will work with them. But second, and sadly most importantly, I worried about those "special days". How could I give up my birthday cake? Or Christmas dinner? Most of the rest of the holidays I could live without - but no birthday cake was really something I was stuck on.
My husband told me to order a birthday cake for myself before the abstinence started. We are writing all the numbers between 30 and 90 on that cake, and it will be my birthday cake until I am 90. Because March 23rd is just a calendar date. Sure I was born on a March 23rd, but that doesn't mean that it needs to be anything other than another day on the calendar.
With a little luck and a lot of leaning on others, I think I can do this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)