After the last class of Horrible Food Wonderful Food today I was thinking, for the millionth time, about how people successfully stop doing behaviors that are harmful to themselves.
I used to overeat so frantically, it was like I was getting out of a concentration camp and absolutely insane with the compulsion to get food.
Not one bit of stopping, forcing myself to stop, succeeding in stopping, remembering that I’d like to stop, or that stopping might feel better in the long run. It was definitely like a herd of cattle going flying off the cliff to the death.
If you ask me right now how I got to this place where I never ever binge, or overeat much at all (I do get nicely full on delicious large meals sometimes)…I’m not sure I could even tell you exactly how I did it. But there are elements to the journey that were vital.
- admitting and expressing my deepest feelings
- not lying
- forgiving myself, not condemning myself
- questioning my beliefs, especially the ones that scared me
One moment 25 years ago that I always like to tell that was a turning point in my recovery was when I was participating in a therapy group of people really committed to looking at themselves honestly, who wanted to stop suffering.
No one else in the group had an eating disorder. I felt so weird. Like the twisted strange addictive one who was really screwed up.
There were some ground rules in the group. One was “I will not harm myself”. Another one was “I will not get sick or go crazy”. Another, “I will not lie”. There were six of them altogether and periodically, we would be asked to say them out loud as a way of reinforcing these commitments.
The catch about these ground rules was that if you broke one….only you know you broke it. And then you were “required” to take the step of writing about what happened, why you thought you broke it, and speak it out loud to the group.
You were asked to do everything you could to understand what was going on when you didn’t keep your commitment to the ground rules.
A few months into participating in the group, I realized that I was breaking the rule “I will not harm myself” every time I ate frenetically, with panic and fear and anger.
If I was going to honestly participate in the group (and keep the commitment to NOT LYING) then I was going to have to arrive at group and then tell about my process to all the participants there. TERROR!
I could stay in my little world, which included isolated episodes of binge-eating and making myself completely sick….or I could speak my feelings and experience out loud to a group of 10 people and 2 therapists who cared about me.
I actually considered choice #1.
This shows the power of fear in revealing oneself honestly. Even though I was filled with self-hate, I thought keeping my secret self-harming behavior might be easier or better than letting other people know the real me.
Fortunately, I made choice #2. I told everyone in the group, with shaking hands as I read my paper, that I had broken the “I will not harm myself” ground rule. I could hardly speak, but I managed to choke it all out.
When I looked up from my paper, the group was looking at me with love. What I received back was compassion, other humans listening to me with loving eyes and ears, and kind words of wisdom.
I was not rejected, hated, kicked out, slapped, silenced or criticized.
That began the journey to self-expression that was so much more authentic. And, I found that if all my feelings were “allowed” then I didn’t feel like eating so much, or drinking or smoking or doing anything else that I didn’t like doing.
“Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be cause by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.”~ Byron Katie
It is easier, at least this has been my ongoing experience, to be who I am, which only means revealing all that is here in this moment, without resisting it or hiding it. Including uncomfortable feelings. Perhaps, especially uncomfortable feelings.
“If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength”~ Eckhart Tolle
No more hiding, no more radical, crazy behavior, no more need for addiction escapes. Just mediocre, regular human.
Human who is not hurting.
Love, Grace