Tag: 12 Steps

Surrender Follow Up

I can breath again.  I never understood in the OA book how they wanted me to surrender to a Higher Power, I thought I had given myself to God and Christ years ago, but after the surrender, I realize I really haven’t. I don’t think I fight against Heavenly Father, per se, but I don’t always do things His way (meaning I’m addicted to the hard way) and in that I need to surrender my faith and trust that He will carry me through. I know if I could I would have a higher sense of the peace and comfort I’m feeling now in what I’m doing in my whole life. I can be a stubborn idiot in the face of simplicity..

On the darker side of the depression, I won’t surrender.  Yesterday I was close to tears more than thrice and I have no idea why.  It’s annoying to have emotions.  I know I will eventually need to give in and feel them again, but right now is not a good time.  I’m fairly happy, I’m hopeful and I’m planning for my future.  I have everything I need.  My wants on the other hand……

Control is an Illusion

I know this. I’m not stupid. Yet to gain the serenity promised in the SERENITY PRAYER I need to exert the kind of control over my life that I’ve never really wanted before. I need to become a machine. I need to make a list, check it twice, and then methodically, mechanistically go through each one with the promise there will be sleep at the end. It doesn’t help that my goal of coming off the anti-depressants isn’t working as well as I’d hope and staying in bed hiding among the varied dreamscapes I find there is all I want to do.

The lack of meds, the lack of control over the type of control I want in my life and the anger that’s welling up in me for having to have to shut down a goodly portion of my emotional life again in favor of sanity is making me want to take back the realization of March 2013: my name is Pamela and I’m a compulsive overeater. Maybe I’m not. (Anyone else catch the compulsively long run-on sentence?)

I am. I know I am. And try as one might you can’t unknown something without a fairly major stroke. It’s just right now it seems like one more thing on my over crowded to-do list.

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Anger Stay Down

This weekend was mostly dark and angry but I didn’t let it rule me and I found ways, which in some cases were fairly natural now, of not losing my temper or pecking anyone’s eyes out. But my abstinence took the biggest hit.

Friday I worked a full day, had physical therapy for my wrists and thumbs (really not the brightest idea to type this blog on my cell phone, I know) mother insisted since I promised to do the shopping on Fridays that I needed to do that. I understand her point; she makes out a list based on the sales and spends a food part of her day doing that. My plans fell through for Saturday so I figured I could just stay in….I think you know how my relationship with my mother works. Mother demands and daughter angrily abides. I hate myself for not holding my ground. My reason to her was sound but she wouldn’t hear it.

I came home with food she got out of bed and was just all happy (and feeling so much better physically and willing to eat junk food on her tortured intestinal tract telling me how wonderful I should feel for doing everything I prided to do blah blah I wish I could do everything I set out to do blah blah blah. I tried to explain to her several times how doing that undid all the good physical therapy did and she thought that was a good thing. I had to explain to her again and again. And it just occurred to me I’m not really helping myself to recount the angery exchange when my goal was to illuminate the darkness I’d experienced over the weekend. So that was the ignition. And though it wasn’t a raging flame it was an intense long burn kind of fire and lasted all weekend. Well until S’mores.

I have become acutely aware of how sugar effects mood. This is the second time I’ve become blindingly aware of this effect from sugar. I love it. But no matter how much the wife loves her abusive husband she needs to leave for her own preservation.

I don’t want sugar to be on my abstinence program. I want to be able to eat birthday cake on my birthday or pecan pie at Thanksgiving. I don’t want…I don’t want to be a slave to it for emotional balance either. That’s what the Lexapro, Buspar, and yes, even Xanax are for. I don’t know what to do because I really don’t want to give up anything yet, some days I don’t believe I’ve been blessed with the level of desperation needed to take that first step out of the epicurean forest and then when I have clarity on some days I don’t think it’s bad enough to jump on the abstinence wagon and hold on for dear life either. Even though that’s exactly what I am suppose to be doing.

It’s All About Me……

Everyone has a favorite word or phrase.  Lately my word has been anachronistic and my favorite phrase is “It’s all about me,”  Which, really, it is.  I’m aware of the narcissistic vein that runs through my family line, have been for decades.  And I realize I struggle against that tide of self-interest on a daily basis.  It’s a bit like trying to paddle upstream with anvils as your oars.  I don’t always make a lot of headway, but it keeps me anchored when I’m too tired to row any longer. As long as I struggle to keep ahead of it, the better off I feel I am.

I bring this up because I heard a comment on Sherlock (BBC version) that I liked….”I’m not a psychopath I’m a high functioning sociopath.  Do your research,”  I have been called a sociopath before, never bothered to look up the definition because the person that called me one was just projecting and was mean-spirited child at the time. There are ten questions on the Urban Dictionary that I took, and it turns out I’m just a touch of one, but I think everyone can be everything (unless they are truly stuck in a diagnosis and can’t pry their way out with meds of EST). So, no I ‘m not a sociopath. I have a conscious, I don’t take pleasure in making people cry, I can have an acid tongue, but I use it jovially instead of as a jousting lance.

I have been known to tell people they can’t do something because I don’t like the way it will effect me, but I don’t require them to keep that in mind when they make their decisions. If they don’t want to hear me whine they should do it because my whining can make dogs ears bleed.

Of course blogging is sort of a self-fulfilled sociopathic exercise in me. I’ve said things here that I felt at the time and now I’m sorry I put them in writing. Not enough to take them down, but I am ashamed at some of the things I’ve called some of my family members, I might do some redacting to take out bits, but not the whole, so they won’t get hurt if they should read it…..I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to figure out how it’ll truly affect me either way.

Oh, and for a general update on me…..I’m down 15mg on my Lexapro and 20mg on my Buspar…..and I haven’t unraveled yet. True it’s only been two days on the Lexapro so I’m still floating at a larger dose, but still, I’m working both sides of the program….getting drug free and trying to work the 12 steps…..it’s exhausting, but I’m feeling better all the way around. I cringe at the amount of work that is left to be done, but I will do it. I’m the only one who can because, well, it’s all about me.

Slowly I Turn, Step by Step, Inch by Inch

There are twelve steps and twelve traditions in the OA handbook. I’ve been stymied by the first three.

  • Admit you have a compulsive eating problem

Okay, admit you have a problem. I wouldn’t allow myself to believe it even when I admited aloud that I have a problem, even though we are required to introduce ourselves at the meeting as “Hello, my name is Pamela and I am a compulsive overeater”. Even when they are listing the things that overeaters do and I’m nodding my head in a silent confession, even when more of me oozes off the folding chair than is on the seat, I’m not a compulsive overeater. I’m not, I’m not I’m NOT!

I am.

With the lightening of my psyche, coming out of the depression and controlling the anxiety I see myself more clearly. What used to be hiding in the shadows or under all the other fluff of my life is cluster of barnacles that won’t come off by wishing, hoping or praying. My standard operating procedure in things that I don’t want to do, say housework, is to either shut the door or turn off the lights. If you can’t see it, it’s clean. Tada! I could do just that, deny that I have a problem, let the barnacles continue to infest, grow legion until they ultimately sink me. Careening is the process of beaching a ship at high tide to expose one side of the ship to scrape off the parasites. The sole purpose is to allow the ship to reach its full potential on the water. Yes, I’m well aware of the easy fat jokes I’m not utilizing, but the days of being the jolly fat girl has come to an end. In my own best interest I’ve beached myself and scrape back the shell that hides the real reasons for my compulsive overeating. Believe me, I don’t think I eat this way because I’m physically hungry. I need to do the hard work but thankfully, not alone.
 

  •  Locate your Higher Power (Heavenly Father/God in my case)

I have always had a Higher Power. Even when I wasn’t actively engaged in His good cause. I’ve always known God lives, that He loves me. I’ve been blessed with this innate knowledge that seems to have eluded most of my family. However, knowing it and living that knowledge hasn’t always gone hand-in-hand for me.

 

  • Admit you can’t handle your life anymore, God can. I’ll give it to God to deal with.

I’ve seen His miracles, both large and small, I’ve seen the power in the Priesthood, and felt His healing touch when I was sick and afflicted with things I didn’t want or need any more. Knowing that the path I’m on will only lead to a double sized cemetery plot of I don’t do something about it, I still won’t can’t seem to reach out to Him for help in this. It’s my problem, my weakness, my life and I am trying to live it as close to His book as I can. It’s like I want to be perfect now and then give myself to him as a testament to my beliefs and how I’ve lived them in the world.
Unless perfection weighs in at 300+ lbs, I’m as far away from perfection as the Mariana Trench is for shell-seeking scuba divers. Perfection isn’t for this life, I’m not even sure it’s attainable in the next, but it is the conglomeration of knowledge and our ability to act on that knowledge that perfects us for exaltation. I know this. And yet perfection seems to be my goal in EVERYTHING. This is a trap because I know I’m not perfect yet and I need to be perfect, or at least perfect in all the things I can be perfect in, otherwise I’m sinning, and as a sinner I cannot ask nor expect help from a caring, loving Heavenly Father.

Yea, I caught that little oxymoronic paradox. If He is a loving and caring Father in Heaven, He wouldn’t care that I am perfect or not, only that I’m struggling and suffering. Even if the suffering is self-inflicted. He loves me, and He wants what’s best for me. I lack faith. I have been going through a dirge of hopelessness for what seems like ever, but it twinkles back every now and again, so I know it’s not dead, but those two small words are the key. We are to have faith, even if it’s the size of a mustard seed, and when planted in prepared soil (hope) it will grow to bring shade and provide homes for small helpless animals of the meadow. I lack these things, the hope and the inner-wherewithal to act on that faith. Faith, is a verb, I know it doesn’t sound like it is, but it is. Faith without works is dead. Maybe I’m afraid of the work, maybe I’m afraid of the success, all these things need to be examined but nothing, ever, will get done unless I jump.

I’m not ready to jump.

Last night I did it. I took the first small step, well actually all three. I am a compulsive overeater. God knows this and I have turned my life and sanity over to Him. Yes, I’m still prying fingers off one at a time to relinquish full control over to Him, but slowly I’ve turned and, step by step, inch by inch I will turn my life from compulsive overeater to humble personal achiever.

 

Footnote:

[1] When I hear the word “Careening” I think about careening out of control, which is what I am, but now careening seems to represent “caring” and that is the type of careening I need done.