12 Steps to Total and Complete Insanity

[A spoof on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. . .and oh so true!] 

1. We admitted we were powerless over nothing. We could manage our lives perfectly and we could manage those of anyone else that would allow it.
   
   
2. Came to believe that there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane.
   
   
3. Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and their lives over to our care.
   
   
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of everyone we knew.
   
   
5. Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of their wrongs.
   
   
6. Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.
   
   
7. Demanded others to either "shape up or ship out".
   
   
8. Made a list of anyone who had ever harmed us and became willing to go to any lengths to get even with them all.
   
   
9. Got direct revenge on such people whenever possible except when to do so would cost us our own lives, or at the very least, a jail sentence.
   
10. Continued to take inventory of others, and when they were wrong promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
    
11. Sought through nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn't understand them at all, asking only that they knuckle under and do things our way.
    
12. Having had a complete physical, emotional and spiritual breakdown as a result of these steps, we tried to blame it on others and to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.

From The ACA Communicator - March 1990 - Omaha, Council Bluffs Area Intergroup

Yesterday



Relationship With God

This is an excerpt from a blog written by an incredible young woman named Sheila.

"Having a relationship with an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful being who doesn't talk back is really, really hard.

This post is to summarize those things I do know about God. Some of them are things I know by instinct; others I have to remind myself over and over again, because there's a part of me that can't quite wrap my head around them. I find myself just defaulting to Jerk-God because the real God is just too puzzling to understand.

What do I know about God?

First, I know his definition. He is the creator of all things. That is what most people mean when they say "God." I tend to explain by saying that all things we know of in this world have a temporal beginning and a cause. But we know, because the universe is here at all, that something had to come behind all these causes -- something different, something that didn't have a temporal beginning or a cause. . . .

And when I look at the created world, really look at it, I feel like the person who made all these things is someone I would very much like. I mean, think about it. He could have created us like the plants, just needing some sunshine but never having to eat. But he made us able to bite into a juicy steak or crunchy apple. We could have reproduced by budding, but he gave us sex, pregnancy, birth -- things so weird and wonderful I sometimes imagine the trouble I would have explaining them to aliens. He didn't paint everything with a broad brush; every detail of creation is worked out perfectly, so that no microscope can see the infinitesimally small but absolutely organized structure of everything.

This comforts me more than anything. I know that Jerk-God could never create this wonder. Jerk-God would have had the world be so much less fun. Real God gave us a place we could really delight in, because he wanted us to be happy.

Someone who would go to the trouble of all that creating wasn't going to be happy just setting us on our way and letting us go. He wanted to have an actual relationship with us. Now I think we all know that it's impossible to have a real relationship that's forced in any way. God made us able to say no to him. . . .

This God is someone who is awfully eager to get to know us. . . .

I was struggling internally a few weeks ago with all this when [her son] started singing to himself. He sang a song from Mr. Rogers: "It's you I like, the way you are right now, way down deep inside you." I couldn't help but think, "If Mr. Rogers can love me just the way I am, what kind of person is God if he can't manage the same?"

It's hard to believe in this. It is so, so hard to believe that at the same moment a person could know everything about you, and I mean everything ... and at the same time love you. It's hard to believe that there could be a person who couldn't deceive or be deceived, who is pure unchanging truth ... and at the same time love you.

We tend to pick one or the other, love OR truth. Either God lies and says everything I do is a-okay and I never do anything wrong, in which case he can love me, or he sees the reality of what I am and the people I've hurt and the lies I've told, in which case he can't possibly love me. I think this is one of the mysteries of God that we'll never fully understand, how he can see us and our faults and still smile at us, the way I smile at my boys, and say, "I love you just the way you are, not later when you've earned it, but right now."

All of my spiritual life . . . has been a process of trying to be worthy, to be good enough. I feel that God has made a terrible mistake by loving me, and the only way to make it right is to try to be good enough so it won't be such a mistake. . . .

. . .  I want to be a better person because everyone wants to be a better person, this is a good thing to do. But God isn't my personal trainer. Sometimes he might want to talk about other stuff besides how awful I am.

In fact, I think that, if he's anything like all the other people who love me, he doesn't like hearing about how awful I am. Think how you feel, if a person you love starts bashing themselves. You want to run in and yell, "Don't talk that way about the person I love!" Why wouldn't God be the same?

To understand God, I have to redefine my terms.

God loves me.
Old definition: God tolerates me and gives me things for no apparent reason, considering how much I suck.
New definition: God actually likes me, enjoys being with me, and sees all the good in me.

God wants me to be happy.
Old definition: I'd better do what God wants, even if it makes me miserable, because if I don't things are going to be even worse.
New definition: God wants me to be happy, and if I'm not, it isn't his doing. He hates seeing me suffer, and though he can't always rush in to fix everything, he really does care about my struggles.
. . .

If God is like this, I really do want to know him. Not because I feel guilty that he loves me so much and I've loved him so little in return. God can handle that. He wouldn't have created mankind if he couldn't take a little rejection, and anyway I actually do love God at least to some extent, so it's not like he's actually getting rejected by me. The reason I want to get to know God is because he seems like the sort of person I would like to know."

Just a Thought. . .

"I can't think my way into right acting, but I can act my way into right thinking."   - Unknown

The Disease of More

"'When you eat one, you want more,
then two, then three, then pretty soon four.'" - A New Beginning, page 4

I heard at meeting once that we are suffering from a disease of more.  We want more food, more happiness, more attention, more perfection, more love, more respect, more more more.  But one thing I desperately wanted more of was peace and serenity, and I knew that there was no way for me to reconcile that desire with the desire for more food.  So the food had to go.  But that was easier said than done!

One of the biggest impediments to my abstinence, however, was always the fact that I could see others eat sugar and fast food and pizza and all those other things I loved with impunity.  But Dr. Bob worded it best: "I used to get terribly upset when I saw my friends [eat junk food] and knew I could not, but I schooled myself to believe that though I once had the same privilege, I had abused it so frightfully that it was withdrawn.  So it doesn't behoove me to squawk about it for, after all, nobody ever had to throw me down and pour [sugar] down my throat." - The Big Book, page 181 (Dr. Bob's Nightmare)

That First Step's A Doozie

The speaker at my meeting this evening talked a lot about the steps.  He expressed something that resonated with me: he couldn't start the program until he was willing to take the first step.  Of course, he was referring to the actual First Step: We admitted we were powerless over food - that our lives had become unmanageable. 

While in a step study meeting focused on the Sixth Step (were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character), one speaker stated that we are always ready to have the consequences of our defects removed if not the defect itself.  We cling to our defects like treasured friends.  So too do we cling to the notion that we are not compulsive overeaters.  We may want to have the symptom removed - our excess weight - but we are often not ready to admit that the excess weight was brought on by our powerlessness over food.

I have heard the road to recovery begins when you take that step into the door of your first meeting.  But the fact remains that recovery simply will not happen until you are able to admit that there is something you need to recover from.  As the Big Book says, "Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." (Page 58)

I walked into my first meeting to be moral support for a friend.  A very clever friend who knew exactly what I was even if I didn't know it myself.  At the end of the meeting, I was able to declare with absolute certainty that I was a compulsive overeater.  I marched up to the speaker and asked her to be my sponsor that very same meeting.

The problem was, I didn't necessarily believe that I was powerless over food, and I most certainly didn't believe that my life was unmanageable!  I had done quite well for myself - or so I believed.  All I needed was someone to help me with a food plan and to give me accountability.  Then I would lose my weight, keep following my food plan, and not need to worry about silly things like meetings.  You see, I had it all figured out.

Every time I asked my sponsor when we would start doing step work, she would tell me that we were: we were working on the first step.  I would protest, "but I already admitted I was a compulsive overeater."  She would just smile and tell me to trust her.  So for months I was performing exercises designed to show me that my life was unmanageable.  I just didn't realize that was what we were doing. 

The exercise that caused me the most pain and suffering was so innocuous that I never suspected what I was in for.  I was told to perform one simple task: write down three things you love about yourself every day.  I rolled my eyes at this task, but when I sat down that first night to write down my three things I was in a quandary.  I couldn't think of a single one!  So I tried to go through my laundry list of achievements.  But no matter what achievement I looked at, I found a way in which it wasn't good enough.  I should have done better.  In the hour I sat there, I turned every last accomplishment I'd ever had into a personal failure, right down to my first place trophy for my seventh grade basketball team's undefeated season.  (Yes, I was digging that deep to find something to be proud of that I could love about myself.)  After running out of accomplishments, I then went to tear down every aspect of my physical appearance, from my wild curly brown hair to my big ugly feet.

That was the moment I made my first outreach call to a woman named Diane.  Looking back I almost feel sorry for that poor woman.  As soon as I verified who I was speaking with I broke down into a loud wailing sob and announced "I don't love anything about myself!"  It is to her credit that she didn't even miss a beat.  I can't remember what she said that day, but it was apparently exactly what I needed to hear.  After getting off the phone I sat down and came up with my three things I loved about myself.  1) My purple sparkly toenails (I usually have my toes painted).  2) The three freckles on my left foot that form a straight line diagonally across my foot.  3)  The way my wrists pop and I can make little popping sound music with them.  The next day, the cluster of freckles on my right leg that look like they could make a smiley face if you connected the dots was at the top of my list.  Of all my accomplishments, these were the things that I could identify as something I loved about myself.

Not once during the time with my first sponsor did I ever reach a point where something about my personality or my accomplishments was found on that list.  Yet still, I didn't see that my life was unmanageable.  I left program ten pounds lighter but no better off emotionally.  I got married.  Had a baby.  Lost the baby weight while nursing.  Then within a matter of months gained almost all of it back.  To put this in perspective, I weighed 230 when I got pregnant. I weighed 290 when I gave birth. I weighed 220 when I stopped nursing 6 months later, and 250 when I went back to OA 3 months later after having been completely incapable of keeping that weight from coming back.

Yet still, I wasn't ready to let go.  I thought to work the program on my own, and for two months I was able to maintain a personal abstinence while not getting any healthier mentally or emotionally and while only losing five pounds.  I realized I had to do something.  So I sought out my current sponsor and asked her to take me on.  As I discussed in my earlier post (here), I allowed myself to go off the deep end. 

I can remember the exact moment that I realized both my powerlessness and the unmanageableness of my life.  My husband and I were in Honolulu.  We had just eaten dinner and were walking back to our hotel.  I was quite full, but we had discussed getting Coldstones on the way back from dinner.  I didn't really want the ice cream, but seeing as how we'd already said we were going to get some I didn't feel up to backing out.  So I walked into the store not wanting the ice cream.  I ordered the ice cream - and not the smallest size either - thinking I would rather not have the ice cream.  Then, I proceeded to finish that ice cream while still thinking I don't want this.  I didn't enjoy the ice cream, I didn't want it, but I couldn't stop myself. I ate it anyway.

That night I stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, and thought.  The middle of the night is a terrible time to be alone with my brain.  I realized that I was going to die unless I could find some way to stop eating.  As the Big Book words it, I was finally licked.  That night I waved the white flag and knew hopelessness and despair like I had never experienced before.

I had finally taken the first step.

Old Timer's Prayer

I came across this prayer while reading a really neat blog my sponsor told me about - Mr. Sponsorpants

OLD TIMER'S PRAYER

Lord, keep me from the habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion.

 

Release me from the craving to straighten out everybody's affairs.

 

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details - give me wings to get to the point.

 

I ask for the grace to listen to the tales of others pains. Help me to endure them in patience.

 

But seal my lips on my own aches and pains - they are increasing and my love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by.

 

Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally it is possible that I may be mistaken.

 

Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint - some of them are so hard to live with - but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil.

 

Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people. And give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.

 

Make me thoughtful, but not moody; helpful, but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all - but Thou knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends in the end.

A REALLY Bad Day

Today was a major BAD day.  It really reminded me why I need to be in OA, because today the disease brought on the serious crazy. 

 

I slept later than I wanted to, which meant I didn't have time to get work done. Which isn't the end of the world - I can do it tomorrow - but it means I can't start researching tomorrow. Then we went to lunch and ate at the restaurant, which meant I had to split my food and not have it as my salad. Again, not the end of the world. We came home and put the baby down for a nap, but he only slept for half an hour because he pooped. So we had a cranky and grumpy baby the rest of the evening while we tried to go grocery shopping.

We went first to order his birthday cake. The woman apparently was a perfectionist, because she rewrote the order on 4 slips before it was "right". All the while I am staring at the bakery display. And this isn't your usual grocery store bakery display. There are a TON of cookies, mini-cakes, little tuxedo strawberries with dark chocolate buttons, and all sorts of cookies I have no idea what the names are but that look HEAVENLY. And I'm trying to order a cake that my husband says, "are you really not going to eat his cake?" - "No sweetheart, I'm not" - "Not either day?" - "No, not either day" - "But what about the other candy, are you really not going to eat that either?" - "No, my love, I'm not eating any of that stuff." - "But they make Lebanese food for Christmas, you love that! Are you going to be ok?" - and at this stage I wanted an ice pick so I could start stabbing him repeatedly with it. My poor husband was oblivious to the fact that this was going to upset me.

The baby is fussing so we grabbed a few of the items at Gelsons - although they didn't have the seasoning - they didn't even have a Latin food section! - and then I was looking at their chicken display and it was obscene how much they were charging. And I started getting that claustrophobic feeling, and my husband is standing WAY in my space bubble the whole time. This meant that while I'm trying to read labels and find things, I have a baby smacking me in the face and pulling my hair and him breathing down my neck nagging me to just grab corn tortillas. I'm trying to make sure there isn't any sugar in them - and he wants to go.

I just wanted to SCREAM! We go order dinner because I am now starving and everywhere I look there is junk food, it seems. So we go get the next meal, even though I haven't even gotten to finish my salad yet [I turned what was left from lunch into a salad]. We bring it home and the baby goes to bed. Now I am just frazzled and while I was ok with the little things going wrong, when I take a sip of my supposedly light lemonade and it is regular I about broke down and cried.

I tried to stay calm, so I put down the lemonade and went in and got a diet Lipton green tea. I would drink that instead. Problem solved. So I made my salad while my husband put the baby down to sleep and proceeded to mix my lunch remainders in with the dinner. Good - now it is all together and I can work on my food.

I sit down and locate the next phone meeting - it was set to start in 6 minutes. Perfect. I am listening to an amazing speaker and loving my meeting. And then I start getting booted from the call. Of course, being already in crazy mode, I start to take this personally. I was booted around nine times before I finally got in and was able to stay in. I don't know what was wrong? I was on mute, so it wasn't like I was doing anything special. I mute the line on their side AND I mute my side as well just to be safe! So now my great meeting is now ruined for me because I am feeling like I was getting picked on. Oh, and I was terrified that the leader was my boss because he sounded just like him and had the same name. Thankfully it wasn't him, but I spent a good chunk of that meeting not sure if I should slink out and wait for the next phone session.

 

I was sad that my meeting didn't lift me up like usual. So I picked up the phone and made my outreach calls. All answering machines. I even called a few people from my We Care Phone List - same thing. I gave up on the calls and told myself that I was being irrational, and that I was responsible for my mood. I should be proud of myself for following my instructions and staying on plan. But I wasn't.

 

I realize I was being vile to my husband and snapping at him at the grocery store. So I apologize. The baby wakes up from his evening nap and we get bundled up to walk him around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights while he drinks a bottle. My husband starts complaining about how this one thing hurts - and I get so annoyed because he whines and complains about aches and pains all the time. If he has the sniffles it is like the world has come to an end and he tells me "I feel sick" in misery every ten minutes. Except that I've listened to these whines and complaints for two years every single day.

So I am biting my cheek to keep my mouth shut. I have tried to get him into the doctor, but he just says "oh, this doctor at a walk in place didn't help me when I told him I hurt my shoulder" so he won't go see a doctor who specializes in the types of injuries he has. Meanwhile the fact that I have torn cartilage in both my knees, arthritis in my hands and feet, two blown discs in my back, and adhesions in my abdomen that all cause me pain on a daily basis rises up to the front of my thoughts. And you know what I don't do? Complain to him about them. He knows I have these problems but he'll forget unless they're really bad - why? Because I keep it to myself. And it isn't a martyrdom issue. I simply don't see the point in harping on it when there's nothing to be done about it.

 

So I get home with knees that feel like there's broken glass inside of them, my abdomen feeling like someone is repeatedly stabbing me, and listening to him whine about an ache in his shoulder. The baby has had the bottle and the dogs are now pleased that they've had their walk. The baby goes up to bed and we proceed to watch television.

I make my evening oatmeal and it isn't the kind of oats I like. I tried this rolled oats thing that doesn't really gel together into oatmeal. It's more like having Smacks cereal without the sugar/flavor. In water. And then my husband makes himself a few slices of sourdough toast. And when I give it a longing look he then takes a big bite and goes "mmmm it's delicious" - and proceeds to tell me it is revenge for me being snippy in the grocery store. I was within a millimeter of punching him in the face. And when he sees I am genuinely upset, he says "I was just teasing you, what's wrong?" Like he even needs to ask.

And then, he proceeds to talk through the whole TV show. He knows that is like nails on chalk board for me. Most nights I pause and stare at him, so he eventually gets the point and stops. But tonight I was just not able to be calm about it. I knew if I paused I would yell at him, and I didn't want to yell at him.  So I sit and I stew.  I drank water because I wanted to eat that sourdough bread so desperately.  So of course I had to pee constantly.

 

Then we are going to get ready for bed and he starts up one of our repeating fights.  The problem is that he is epileptic and can't remember a lot of what happened while I was pregnant.  So he starts going off on how the baby made him sick.  And I remind him that his insistence on not taking his medicine - against his doctor's instructions - is why he got so sick.  And he argued with me that the doctor didn't go against it.  And I just stared at him like he'd gone mad. 

 

Then he got angry at me because I didn't agree with him.  I am actually able to give him written proof of the doctor's instructions, but he is getting mad at me because I won't tell him what he wants to hear.  But I am not going to let him say that our child is the reason he is so sick when he did it to himself!  Because I know him.  If he gets it into his mind that he is sick because of the baby I'm going to hear nonstop about how my having the baby ruined his life.  I was just floored.  But I stopped myself and didn't scream.  I didn't yell.  I just agreed to not have the conversation since he was getting angry.

 

And he wanted to get a hug and kiss goodnight before I went downstairs to do my Big Book report to my sponsor.  I gave him a stiff hug and kiss and went downstairs feeling livid.  Because today I do not have my cool.  And even now I know it's nearly three in the morning, my baby is going to wake me up in two hours, and I'm too angry to sleep.

 

But on the positive side - I'm feeling my feelings, and I stayed on program.  I attended my meeting.  I made my outreach calls.  And when I finish this journal post, I'm going to write to my sponsor and summarize my five pages.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Resentment

I attended a phone meeting today* that was discussing resentment.  There is a quote that I love that I heard in one of my face to face meetings:  "resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

I really resent my in-laws.  I am able to get along with most people and look away when people wrong me, but I can't stand these people.  I was fine with them until I had my son, and now I hate that I need to share him with these people.  Part of it is that they were raised [and raised their son] in a way that is very different from how I want to raise my child. 

My mother-in-law is a passive aggressive nightmare who second guesses everything I say.  She has given my lactose-intolerant child ice cream and told me that the doctors can't tell if a child has a problem with milk at this age.  Well, I was the one dealing with the rashes and the diaper-consequences of that little gift.  She will wake the baby and/or opt not to put the baby down at nap time if it suits her mood.  She will opt not to feed the baby because it's a hassle.  She will decide she doesn't want to change his diaper and instead of telling us he made a mess, will simply hold a stinky baby so she doesn't have to stop playing with him - and then leaves us to deal with the attendant diaper rash.  And if I try to tell her that the baby is sleeping, she rolls her eyes at me.  It is like dealing with a 13 year old child, not a grown woman.  And while she is snippy and nasty to me, she behaves like a saint to my husband, so he doesn't understand why I get upset with her.

My father-in-law likes to harass me on a daily basis to tell me how my husband and I should live our lives.  He wants my husband to quit his job [he is the primary income since I work part time to take care of the baby] and fiddle around with an unpaying, no benefits, lab project he has thought up - which experts in the field have already said will not work.  But my father-in-law won't let it go.  He believes this idea will make us rich. . . but my husband doesn't want to quit his job to prove to his father that this idea is a dead end [like the people he's approached have already told him].  And he calls me to tell me how to run my business.  And how to manage my life.  I don't like being told what to do, and all my polite attempts to tell him to mind his own business [and my less than polite attempts] have met a wall.  I have had my husband approach him to no avail.  My father-in-law believes he knows best, and says he is just "offering advice".  I have taken the tactic of refusing to answer his phone calls, instead calling my husband at work and instructing him to call his father back to find out what he wants.  Once more, he is much worse about this when he has me alone than when he is around my husband.

And they always tell us they want to help - but are angry if we don't give them a week of notice.  Unfortunately, we don't usually know we're going to need help until the day of - and a day or two in advance if we're lucky.  But when they want to see their grandchild, they call the day of and are put out and angry when we can't oblige them.  Then, when we try to call and schedule visits with my son, they have odd excuses.  Like - we can't come see the baby on Sunday because we are painting the hall on that day.  They have no deadline on painting the hall - they can do it before or after a visit - but they decide that they have something to do so my son takes second fiddle.  But when we have something to do, how dare we deny them access to their grandchild.  It just is a lack of courtesy that drives me crazy. 

I tell my husband that no matter how much I love him - and I do - his parents would have been a deal breaker had I gotten to know them better before the wedding. 

But it isn't just when they are actively doing something wrong that I feel this outrage.  I can't let it go.  It just gnaws at me and gnaws at me all day.  I hate that I'm trapped with these people and I find myself saying that they will die one of these days.  I look forward to the day when they die and stop plaguing me.  The rational part of my mind says I need to learn to cope with them because they are part of my life, but I just don't know how.  I plead with my husband not to die, because I don't know how I would maintain a relationship between my son and his grandparents if I didn't have my husband there to prod me into seeing them.  I want my son to have the best in life, and taking away two of his grandparents is not in that plan.

So tonight I'm going to stop praying for them to go away and start praying for God to relieve me of my resentment of my in-laws.  Someone mentioned in the call that anger is the luxury of the normal man - something the addict cannot afford.  I can't afford to keep harboring this anger at my in-laws.  I need to let it go.  So if anyone is reading this, any prayers you might want to offer up on my behalf that I let go of the resentment would be appreciated!

*For those who don't know, you can find phone and online meetings at The OA Website - these are a lifesaver since I can't always get out of the house to an in person meeting.