I've written about this topic recently, still it's continually on my mind. With my substance addictions, surrender is simple. i admit that i'm powerless over drugs and alcohol and i cannot manage my life. i can not control my life. instead, i turn my life over and do what i am told by others who know better. go to lots meetings, get a sponsor, work the 12 steps with my sponsor, read the (AA) Big Book and good things will happen.
in my seven short weeks in sobriety and attending AA, things have gotten better -- amazingly better. i have seen real, serious change in myself and have moments of clarity and happiness i didn't know before.
i can't really tell you how this happened, but there's been more growth in the last seven weeks than in.... i really can't tell you -- a long, long time.
okay, then i think of my eating disorder and eating disorders in general. can we surrender? it seems so much more difficult. To me, eating disorders seem so much about control == control of our food, our bodies, in fact, our very lives.
besides, how can we surrender when we also must eat. i've gone to OA only a few times because it didn't make much sense to me -- how can we abstain -- from certain foods and certain behaviors. we have to live. and people, places and things -- do we stay away from anyone who eats? i probably need to find out more about OA before making judgments or any comments at all.
More, i have a major issue with people telling me what and how to eat. any stranger off the street can tell me to stop drinking forever, and i'm nodding along. but if a doctor suggests that it's best for me to eat breakfast, "TAKE THAT BACK OR I'M NOT COMING HERE ANYMORE. YOU DON'T KNOW MY BODY. I'M NOT HUNGRY IN THE MORNING. ARE YOU SUGGESTING I EAT WHEN I'M NOT HUNGRY. ISN'T THE POINT OF THIS TO LEARN TO EAT WHEN I'M HUNGRY AND STOP WHEN I'M FULL? WHY ARE YOU SABOTAGING ME WITH THIS CRUEL AND DISGUSTING CALL FOR BREAKFAST? I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU, MRS. NUTRITIONIST, WHAT'S BEST FOR ME. MY BODY IS DIFFERENT THAN EVERYONE ELSE'S. GO TALK TO SOMEONE WHO'S METABOLISM ACTUALLY WORKS."
Okay, so i don't quite say this to people, but i do think it. after all these years of recovery. i confess i think i do know best. yikes! that's terrifying information.
by the way, my eating's okay. i do eat some kind of snack in the morning and lunch and dinner and treats. i maintain a healthy weight -- in the realm of those weight charts.
but my thinkingis still screwy. i started working on my ED at 17, years into my issues. nearly 30 years later, i still have the inner voice that tells me i know best. with drugs and alcohol, there's a much shorter period of issues, but i'm so clear that i can not drink and i absolutely do not know best.
why is this one so much harder? what can be done to help us allow others (and God, if we so believe) to help us? how do i/we let go of control?
I'm so proud of how well you have done! Give yourself credit and know in time, you will be able to surrender your ED too. You've done so well.
ReplyDelete*Big Hugs*
Angela
I'm not hungry in the mornings, and neither are my kids. I've never forced them to eat breakfast. I do eat breakfast, but not until around 10am. You have to eat intuitively, when your body is hungry, but before it is starving. It's hard for many of us to figure out when we're hungry and when we are not!
ReplyDeleteHi, I haven't commented before and I hope you don't mind if I read your blog. That being said, what you write makes SO much sense to me. In fact, it is exactly the way I think too. I will admit, I have a whole lot less experience with AA -- I've been to 12-step meetings, but for me, drinking never got out of control unless I was really screwed up with the ED, so I don't know if I qualify or what... it's just like you say though, someone mentions that maybe you have a drinking problem and you go "ok, so maybe I do and I suppose I should fix that." Then, someone suggests that maybe your breakfast/lunch/dinner/whatever meal is no good and needs improvement and the first thought is that they don't know what they're talking about. And, to some extent, I think you're right because it IS up to us to know our bodies best I suppose. At the same time, isn't it crazy that when our judgements might get impaired when it comes to food we don't want to believe it?! I do think that we find out more about our EDs with time... but there is no black and white definition there, whereas with other problems the boundaries seem a bit more clear-cut. That being said, I don't know if you've tried this as well, but I went through the 12-step program when recovering from my ED (I was/am anorexic and I was the only one at meetings -- so the OA meetings that I was told to attend weren't exactly the best thing for helping me, so I actually worked with a sponsor who was an alcoholic and it was very similar to how you describe, with serious changes that were for the better. I also quit drinking at that time as well -- which as I said above is sort of cloudy with me since I probably fit the criteria, but as soon as the ED was gone the desire to drink was also gone). Anyhow, it sounds like you're really familiar with the 12-step program already, so I just wondered if you tried it with the ED too.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far of letting go of control... that one sort of stumps me too. I became very religious when I was in recovery at first, but over time the desire to be normal eventually, for me at least, meant focusing less effort toward recovery and more effort toward making up for lost time in life. I was always caught up thinking that "normal" people don't go to meetings/frequent doctor appointments/support groups/etc and eventually when I began to phase those things out, turning over control of my life to God seemed harder because I wanted to take control of all of things that had been out of control in the past, if that makes sense. So, about the best advice I can give, since eventually me taking control lead to some of my problems resurfacing, is to not fall into that mindset and keep going to support groups or doing something that forces you to be reminded of turning over control -- because if you do that, you will get there in time.
Again, hope you don't mind if I read!!!
take care, Kris