Ok, this sounds pessimistic, but it isn't really. Well, sometimes it does get me down. I suffer from a compulsion to overeat. I thought that one day I would lose weight and all the hard stuff would be over. No more dieting, I would be one of those people who just sat at a healthy weight. No extra effort needed, I would just be like normal people and get on with the rest of my life. Lost weight, tick that one off the to-do list. Yeah, right. The bad news is, it seems to be a chronic issue. I still struggle with my compulsion to overeat. I still have food thoughts, I still get waves of nostalgia for old binges.
The good news is, I have so many more things going on in my life that I didn't have when I was morbidly obese, and so I have less time to dwell on the food. All in all, my life is better, but it isn't an, excuse the pun, cakewalk. I need to work on this new life, and when I take time daily to recommit to living a better life, it is easier. It's like the antidepressants I've been taking for years, I have to remember to take them every morning. Or the antihistamine I have to take daily in the spring to keep me from sneezing my head off with seasonal allergies. I have to write, here and privately. I have to think, I have to pray. All of this is necessary for me to deal with the chronic compulsion I have to eat. Through lots of therapy and lots of Overeaters Anonymous meetings over almost five years, I have come to believe that my disease has much to do with using food to comfort myself, deal with life when it feels unmanageable, which is often. The twelve step model offers an alternative way of dealing with my issues which seem insurmountable, and I have plenty of people in the meetings to mirror myself and my insanity back to me.
Often it is very frustrating, ok, often people in meetings piss me off! And usually, when I analyze why someone is driving me to the point where I want to stick my thumbs in their eyes, I find that it's my disease that's being triggered: I may need to stick up for myself, or just remember that I am fine and I don't need them to tell me I'm fine. Just because I didn't get that reinforcement when I was a kid does not make them responsible for my happiness right now. I don't have to love them, spend time with them outside a meeting, I just have to be there and be present in my own skin.
I recently had an issue with someone in the OA programme that was upsetting, but I drew a boundary with this person and I'm very comfortable with it. The other person did not take it well, and while I was angered by the pettiness of her response, it was affirming for me to know that drawing a clear boundary with this person was a wise decision. More importantly, I did not try to save this person from her disease, because that's an old pattern in my life---decades in the making---I want to stop repeating.
There's one of those 12 step maxims that seems self evident, but today I quite treasure it: Nothing changes if nothing changes. If I want freedom, I need to change a few things, things that I never thought had anything to do with me & food. Admitting that I was wrong about that assumption makes it possible to shift things that have felt unshakeable.
No comments:
Post a Comment