Attack of the Mini-Huni's, and the CHOICE of Gratitude

So just the other day, okay it was actually yesterday, I was sitting in my therapist's office.  I go to this place because I find that I'm able to unwind the "tangled Christmas Lights" that are my thoughts with some sense of grace and with my essential sense of humor in tact.  Yesterday was one of those days I was taking myself WAY TOO SERIOUSLY.  Do you ever have one of those days?  Trying to be not only the director but also the lead actress in the drama of your life.  I see my mental guru at 2:30 once a week and trust me when I say that I was fairly exhausted and annoyed with myself.  I was overly emotional and also choosing to focus WAY more on everything that wasn't going well, what I was doing wrong, and how crappy I thought I was.  I'm such a hot date, right?  I went into my weekly session convinced that I was a bad person, and just was hating myself at 2:30pm.

As we began to untangle my string of lights, I was being gently reminded that I wasn't exactly in the same place that I was just a year ago.  October the 3rd is a significant date for me because on this date one year ago, I began the liquid diet program of the medical weight loss program that I continue to participate in today.  As we talked, I began to reluctantly unfold from my origami sculpture of negativity and was asked to reflect on things that were different from this time last year.  Was I happier?     YES.  Was I healthier?  YES. Was I doing more in my day to day life?  YES.  Was I 100lbs lighter?  YES.  You would think after considering the evidence I would immediately snap out of my snark-fest and just be happier.  But I am a tough nut to crack, and I kept trying to convince my therapist that I DESERVED the pity party that I was throwing in my own honor.  He then made some comment about not being taken captive by the Mini-Huni's.  I erupted into giggles that I couldn't avoid despite my desperate attempts to take myself seriously.  Mini-Huni's?  I'd never heard of them.  My therapist explained that Mini-Huni's are Hawaiian leprechauns.  Leprechaun's you say?  I'm 75% Irish, so say no more, I get the vision of a leprechaun.  My therapist explained that my thoughts were like a hoard of mischievous Mini-Huni's who were trying to reek havoc in the more well intentioned parts of my life.  They were running around, giggling, throwing shame and negativity around like confetti, trying to get me distracted from the true work I was trying to accomplish.  Confetti is an annoyance, but not a game stopper.  It's not a game stopper IF I DON'T LET IT BE ONE.   I understood intellectually what he was driving at but it had not seeped into my heart.  I left feeling a little bit better but not wholly convinced that I should not be paying more attention to the Mini-Huni's than I already was.

So today I woke up had to go to a doctor's appointment, and when I got home I got online and read one of my favorite blogs:  www.wantadumpsterbaby.com.  Today she was celebrating 11 years sobriety from alcohol.  Her positivity is infectious and she shared a gratitude list that she uses as her base of gratitude every day.  She reminded me of a super important idea, that gratitude just like picking up foods, or even engaging in battle with the Mini-Huni's IS A CHOICE.  You ever have that experience where you hear something for possibly the 100th time and NOTHING happens and then all of a sudden CLICK!  You get it".  Well in reading her great post about what being 11 years sober looks like,  I got that gratitude, just like even the first compulsive bite, IS A CHOICE.  While I may very well be powerless after the first compulsive bite, I can chose if and when I take the first compulsive bite.   I can also chose if and how long I let the Mini-Huni's run the show.   Gratitude is not just something that I get delivered to magically as if deposited on a magic island.  I can chose to see that I've come as far as I have.  I can chose to see that I GET to be in recovery today, not that I HAVE to.  I'm not entirely sure why it made sense today, or why I put it into practice today, but I got it.  I'm super glad.  Because it makes life for not only myself but those around me a whole lot more enjoyable.

So for today, the Mini-Huni's are in their proper place.  Tomorrow, who knows?  But I do know that I can wake up tomorrow as I prepare to go to the DMV to renew my driver's license and CHOSE to be glad that the weather's cooler, that I have great friends, that I have family that loves me even if they occasionally get frustrated by me.  I can chose to be calm and patient in the DMV office, and if I can just get that far, I bet the Mini-Huni's will go find someone else to harass for the day.

One can only hope. I've seen enough of them in the past couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading.

The Experience of Joyfully Living in The NOW.

Hey there my friends!  Most of you know that I've been off the technology reservation for a while as I had a rather emergent removal of my gall bladder that included a 4 day stay in the hospital.  I will say, overall it was not an awful experience, with the exception of the pain between the surgery and the endoscopy needed to remove a wayward gall stone that was stuck.  I have to emphasize that NURSES ARE THE GLUE THAT HOLD THE HOSPITAL WORLD TOGETHER!  I have much respect for the physicians who did the surgery and other procedures, but as far as the day to day comfort, pillow fluffing, pain medication dispensing and general bolstering of my spirits when I was on day 2 1/2 of nothing my mouth water included; it was the nurses who insured my sanity as well as the coverage of my derriere when I started walking around the ward post surgery.  Save one nurse who had a verbal confrontation with my very worried 80 year old dad, ALL of the nurses were wonderful, humorous and deeply concerned with my physical and emotional comfort.  I'm sure you've all seen the bumper stickers that say, "If you love your freedom, thank a VET."  I have a new one to produce, "If you love your health, thank a nurse."  I have so much gratitude for how they made my first ever hospital stay as painless as possible.

Now that I'm home and getting back to my usual life, I thought it was about time to do another post.  And because I've pretty much caught people up on the back history of my growing up as a morbidly obese youngster, teenager, young adult, and now not-so young adult;  I'm now embarking on writing about the CURRENT journey.  I've lost a lot of weight, more than once.  What I'm constantly amazed by is how different the experiences have been each time.  Twelve years ago, when I originally came into recovery I lost 189lbs in about two years and at the time my brain was not moving as fast as the scale was going down.  There's a slogan in recovery, "Came for the vanity, stayed for the sanity".  And the first time I lost a great deal of weight, it was about what I was going to look like, and how fabulous my life would be when I got "there".  And as anyone who has embarked on a significant life change of any kind knows, RARELY if EVER, does "there" meet the expectations we place upon it in our heads. And I had also bought into the misconception that I couldn't really be happy UNTIL I got.  So while I was putting forth a great deal of effort to change very ingrained behaviors, I thought that I had to almost literally suffer through the process.  If I wasn't struggling in angst and borderline martyrdom, I wasn't working hard enough toward the goal.  I grew up with a mom who literally said out loud to herself, but also to other's around her, "I'll be happy when I'm thin."  That comment presupposes that if one is currently not thin, they are not happy.  And I believed that concept to be true for a very long time.

As I've said before, one of the great experiences of becoming part of Twelve Step recovery was finding an entire community of people who were happy WHILE working towards attain a healthy body weight for them.  And so while I saw these people who were happy, and I was certainly making great progress towards a more authentic level of happiness in my own life, I was so happy purely because I'd found such a loving and accepting community of people who so intimately understood the pain of being a compulsive overeating.  As it says in the Twelve Step literature, identification with others often is the most powerful component of the recovery process.  It certainly was in my experience.

Fast forward a decade, and I've had lot's of success and recovery, along with taking my own will back which resulted in gaining back all the weight I'd lost.  When I came back into the recovery rooms in July 2011, I'd also started seeing a great therapist who was rather adamant regarding the idea that I could be happy NOW.  I was over 400lbs, having to use a wheelchair because I need both my knees replaced, living with my parents because I'd lost my job and on permanent disability, living what I believed to be a VERY small life.  I was encouraged to consider the concept that the whole point of recovery wasn't just to put down the substance that was simultaneously irresistible and destructive, but to find things that are enjoyable and interesting to me.  And for someone who has spent a great deal of my life consumed with the idea of losing weight and how great life will be WHEN I got there, I intellectually have a very hard time buying into the concept of being happy in the moment. I say that in the present tense because after a year of being focused on physical/emotional/spiritual recovery, I feel like I'm still struggling with this idea.  I am once again aware that my intelligence certainly can be a hinderance in my recovery.

So in the past year, as I was very focused on my goal, I became acutely aware of how lopsided my thinking was when it came to my weight.  If someone I haven't talked to in a while asks me how I'm doing, my instinctive response was to go into a detailed discussion of how much weight I've lost,, (because that makes me a better person right?) and how I'm progressing towards my goal of being able to get my knees replaced.  And like so many things I've experienced in my life, when the universe wants to provide you with a lesson, you will keep getting that lesson, OVER AND OVER until you've sufficiently absorbed the intended message.  My therapist suggested that I undertake a hobby or activity that was group oriented that would help me to break out of the isolation that had become a crutch and a curse in my every day life.  After some thinking and no small amount of resistance I joined a choir at a church that I felt a lovely family-spirited connection to.  It has turned out to be a great experience and an opportunity to sing, which I've enjoyed in the past, as well as be in a place where I can naturally spread my spiritual wings.

I'm more aware than ever that I have arrived at a place where I use my size and my weight as the defining characteristic when I think of myself in the world.  It's always been a negative connotation because I was so overweight, and the easiest reason to feel like I was "less than".  I am also aware that I need to be willing to let go of the old thinking that says I am primarily defined by how I look, rather than who I am as a person.  My intelligence, humor, compassion, ability to be a good friend, daughter and sister SHOULD account for so much more than the weight on the scale or the size written on the tag in the back of my pants. And yet it frequently doesn't.   I have also recently become aware that it's not solely society's fault that I buy into thinking like that.  I am a big fan of personal responsibility, on lots of levels.  And if I am going to be a fan of that concept, it certainly should apply to me.  And while society's view of overweight people isn't exactly helpful, as I believe that Compulsive Overeating is an eating disorder just like anorexia or bulimia, but not treated that way by society and the medical community, that's NOT a good enough reason for me to remain stuck in thinking that no longer serves me today.  The same goes for fashion magazines, reality television and other forms of severely superficial mainstream media.  Now that I'm aware of the overwhelming prevalence that thinking has in my day to day life, I have a choice about how much energy I give to it, and how much work I do towards deconstructing those thought patterns.  THANK GOD for my support system; meetings, sponsor, program friends, therapist, support group members, and lots of good friends who remind me that I am lovable just as I am, today.  It gives me the willingness to stay diligent on the path of truly learning to find joy in living in my body and my life TODAY.  It will be the only way that I will be able to reach my goals, whether those goals have to do with my weight or my life in general.

It continues to be a very interesting journey.  Thanks for coming along.

Missing the Forrest for the Trees......

I don't know about you, but every once in a while, I like to wind  myself up in a good old fashioned snit.  I'm not quite sure why, but it just feels good to get completely wound up in a topic that trends towards the unimportant or ridiculous.  Recently I have found myself getting wound up in the lives of people that I know, and am even fairly close to.  I'm writing about this because I have discovered through some introspection and help from outside sources, that this "activity" directly relates to myself and my journey as an overweight person who is trying to morph into a someone living in a normal sized body.  Doesn't quite make sense?  Let me explain......

Growing up as an obese child, adolescent and young adult...the goals I set for myself ranged from the weak to the downright non-existent.  Because I was most definitely a compulsive overeater from probably the age of about 12 years old, I didn't understand why I was so perpetually unsuccessful at trying to manage something that I've only recently realized that I was powerless over.  Sort of like a surfer trying to control the waves of the ocean.   I thought my eating was something I "SHOULD" be able to get a grasp on, and was certainly told many times, by many different sources that if I just had enough "willpower" and was "disciplined" enough, I should be able to put the food down.  As I amassed ample evidence in my own life of my failure in controlling my weight, I think there was a part of me that just thought that having goals was a fruitless endeavor.  If I couldn't conquer this one seemingly basic task, why try and reach for anything bigger, better and higher.  Striving for mediocrity became the best case scenario for me.  I certainly approached my academics this way, along with other areas of my life.  It certainly became the not so rose colored lenses through which I viewed myself.

As a way to compensate for this rather depressing situation, I developed a coping skill of becoming overly focused on the lives of my friends.  In retrospect I think it was for the simple reason that they had the lives that I wanted, more than I wanted the life I had of my own.  It became easier to become immeshed in their romantic lives and their drama, because it not only allowed me to vicariously live through their excitement, but it also allowed me to ignore what was wrong in my own life.  I was always ready and willing to ask deep and probing and seemingly endless questions of my friends to get even the most minute detail of an adventure from them.  I would use these seeds of excitement to engage in my own fantasy life, while never having to do any concrete footwork towards developing my own exciting life.  While I truly believe it filled a vital need at the time, it certainly was also a double edged sword that I would eventually have to fall on.

Interestingly enough, as I entered into recovery, and began to look at my own life and its' complexities, I found my friend were genuinely pleased that I had started talking about what was going on in my life. They apparently had been patiently waiting for me to start doing my own thing, and they were nothing but supportive in my speaking up.  It was NOT a comfortable place for me to be a great deal of the time.  My internal self-centeredness had left me unable to distinguish between open and honest sharing of my life versus being a conversation monopolizer.  I thought if I talked about myself and what I was going through, that I was being "selfish" or "self-centered".   It has taken me a great deal of time and consideration to realize that while it's entirely possible to monopolize conversations on occasion, it's a normal part of the give and take of long-term friendships. And while I genuinely DO want to know what's going on in the lives of my close friends, it can also be perceived as selfish if my interest is based on my on need to focus and fantasize on how great "their" lives are.  It does not allow me to be a fully present listener at certain times.  A trait I've caught myself in more than once.

Coming back into recovery in 2011, after the passing of my mom, I was blessed to find a WONDERFUL therapist who has extensive experience in psychology and recovery and just has a genuinely loving ability to call me on my shit when necessary.  In the course of our getting to the meat of things, I was told what may be one of the most important things I've heard in the past year, "The problem with addiction is not necessarily that you're abusing X, Y, or Z substances.  It's the bigger life that you give up because you're pursuing your drug of choice to the exclusion of everything else.  Recovery is about having a FULLER, BROADER, MORE DIVERSE life."   WOW!  There it was. My conundrum in a nut shell.  I had been using food, and chasing food, to the exclusion of many life experiences that people of my age have typically had by now.  When my therapist first mentioned this idea to me, I took it in at the cerebral level like I am typically want to do.  But like a great deal of things in my life, it has taken a bit of time for that concept to go from my head into my heart and soul.  The greatest distance between two points for me is often the distance between getting an idea from my brain to my gut.  I certainly wish the journey could be quicker, but hey, it takes what it takes.  But understanding that concept has been a huge catalyst for me in the current portion of my journey.

When your life has been completely focused on ONE thing to the exclusion of everything else, how to you even begin to IMAGINE bringing different things in.  For me, the ONE thing has been food, and not just food but my overwhelming preoccupation with the size of my body and my place in the world framed by my body size.   I was asked by my therapist to start looking into some hobbies that weren't related to food in any way, and you would had thought I'd been asked to cure cancer while traveling to Mars.   Something other than getting thin, what I'm going to do once I'm thin, planning how fabulous my life will be WHEN I'm thin, and all the great things I'll get to do once I'm THERE.  And it's only been after the gentle repetition of counseling that I'm becoming more and more acutely aware of just how much that thinking has organized my life.  Because there are certain physical limitations that I have due to the stress my weight has placed on my body, some future thinking is warranted.  But there is an organic sadness sitting on me as I look back at all the wasted time, the experiences I haven't felt I deserved, and the life I didn't think I was worth.  It's certainly not pretty to look at under bright lights, but the fact that I'm even conscious of how much I've limited myself in the past is I believe a sign of progress.

I've recently found myself back into that place of obsessing about a friend of mine, and their life and what I think they SHOULD be doing with it.  And I can honestly say I'm grateful that the voice of my therapist pops into my head and gently encourages me to "Get my own life".  Once again, consciousness is a great thing, if not always comfortable.  I know that I'm on the path and will eventually get to the point where I will be able to have a more concrete picture of where I want my life to go, and what I want it to look like, beyond the size of my butt.  And so the journey continues.....

It's a Long Way Down to The Bottom

Returning to my home environment was a nerve wracking process for me.  I'd never been out of my home town of Sacramento that long before, and I sort of felt like I was returning from a trip from outer space.  Before leaving the treatment center, we had to schedule appointments with our primary care physician, a registered dietitian and a psychiatrist and/or counselor.  I had not been in therapy before I'd left for treatment so I had to start treatment with a doctor brand new upon my return.  I selected a psychiatrist and called and talked with a doctor over the phone who said that he would be willing to meet with me.  He sent me the introductory paperwork to fill out and we scheduled a time to meet.  Once I met him I decided because he could do medications as well as therapy, he would be a good way to kill two birds with one stone.  Because I was returning back to work, I needed to insure I could have as few disruptions as possible.

My return to work was chaotic to say the least.  I decided to return to a full day's work the day I came back I had my first major anxiety attack by noon.  I'd never been someone who had to deal with anxiety in a major way before, so I was completely shocked to have an attack that left me feeling like my heart was going to jump out of my skin, as well as being unable to control my crying and fear.  I left work and was able to get an early appointment to meet with my new psychiatrist who gave me some medication and suggested that I do a half day or work and then build up to full 8 hour days.

I realized upon my return that divulging the reason for my medical leave was a risk that I don't know I'd take if I had a chance to do it over again.  When your mental health is the reason for taking a medical leave, having people knowing that when you come back to work left me in an incredibly vulnerable place.  It's so strange the way we continue to view with mental health issues in our society today.  If I had broken my arm, or had a surgery of any type, my returning to work would be proof enough that I had recovered.  Upon my return I found myself being questioned about my "health" with all good intentions by my direct boss.  I don't believe there was any malicious intent behind it, but I began to immediately regret telling my boss where I was during my leave once I was back on the job.  It left me feeling INCREDIBLY INSECURE AND VULNERABLE.  I think they were worried I was going to crack under any sort of pressure, and knowing that just made me more self-conscious.  I tend to be someone who wears my heart on my sleeve and I will divulge things about myself and THEN regret having open my mouth about something.  This was an acutely vivid example of this.  Having a substantial panic attack the first day I returned to my job was not exactly a way to instill confidence to my employer, but I just had to suit up, show up and get back into the work.

As defined by Overeaters Anonymous, abstinence is "refraining from compulsive overeating".  Even after 52 days of intense in and outpatient treatment I was not able to remain abstinent for any significant period of time.  It was heartbreaking and frustrating that even though I had been through what most people would think would be a significant bottom of leaving my life and going into a hospital, I couldn't put the food down.  Within approximately 6 months of returning to my home, I was basically in full blown relapse again.  I was in active therapy, meeting with a registered dietitian, and going to twelve step meetings but I was still using food to alleviate any emotional turmoil that I was experiencing; whether those emotions were good or bad.

I have to say when I look back at things,  I was once again placed into a position where I wanted to be "fine" for other people, as well as myself.  Growing up in the family I did, where we were expected to put a smile on our faces when leaving the house, I began to feel like that was acutely necessary again.  I didn't want people to think that I was the "mental case" who couldn't handle my life, even if that was indeed the case for a brief period of time.  In addition to wanting people to think that things were fine, I also actually wanted things to be fine.  I didn't want to be feeling bad, anxious or uncomfortable in my own skin.  And that is the part of addiction that I feel is so insidious and cruel.  WANTING to put an addiction down is not enough.  NEEDING to put the addiction down, is not enough.  LOSING things that you hold dear in your life is not enough to put the addiction down.  Doing the mental gymnastics to try and figure out what will be enough for someone to put the addiction down often turns out to be a futile endeavor that wastes time and leaves the person feeling life a failure.  When looking at addiction, the thing that gets a person to put down the thing that is killing them is different for everyone.  And what is truly frustrating for myself as a compulsive overeater is how the majority of society continues view food as different from drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, or anything else that is traditionally viewed as an addiction.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard in a Twelve Step meeting that it would be easier to be addicted to ANYTHING else, other than food.  It is just like any other addiction once you get hooked, the physical allergy to food creates a mental obsession that tells you "I MUST HAVE MORE" of the very thing that is ruining your life.  A frequent slogan heard in all twelve step meetings is, "One is too many and a thousand is never enough".  It certainly rang true for me when it came to food.  Compulsive overeating is NOT a moral issue, and for many it's not a matter of will power, strength or even choice.  Like I heard someone say at a meeting.  Dancing with an addiction is like dancing with a gorilla, you may start out leading, but eventually the gorilla decided when your done dancing.  And unfortunately my gorilla was no where near done dancing with me yet.

A Story Without a Catchy Title......about Treatment.

Now I'm going to share about when I decided to go into an eating disorder treatment center.  And for once I'm without a snappy intro or a funny line.  For once, I've.Got.Nothing.  I want to share this part of my journey because if I begin to keep things secret, it means I'm embarrassed or ashamed of something I've been through.  I'm working very hard on letting that sort of thinking go.

So in 2005 I was in my first full year of being a supervisor, and was struggling with the new responsibilities and duties of my job.  Being responsible for my self in the work place was never a problem.  Being responsible for the efforts and motivations of others and the production of a department of 8, that's a horse of an entirely different color.  I was certainly using food as a crutch to handle stress, anxiety and the fear that despite all my fervent attempts at people pleasing.  As I desperately tried to keep my fingers in the dam, the overwhelming depression that I had experienced in college was beginning to rear it's ugly head.   I was pretty much doing NOTHING other than working, and going to my apartment after work and eating large amounts of binge foods as a way to relieve the pressure cooker of stress and anxiety that was brewing.  The damn finally broke one weekend when two people  in my recovery community  were working at my house to help me break out of my isolation, and when one of them had the gentle care about them to ask me, "How are you doing?", I just completely lost it.  After 45 minutes of crying it was apparent to me that possibly drastic measures would be necessary.  After some serious thought, and consultation with trusted member's of my support network at the time, I made the decision that it would be necessary to take a leave of absence from my work and seek intensive inpatient treatment for my depression and also help handling my compulsive overeating.  That meant deciding to check myself into an eating disorder treatment center.

Someone I knew had recently had received successful treatment at a facility that was located in Southern California, and for lack of better options I researched that facility as a possible option.  The only other facility that I was considering was located in Florida and due to my weight, I was not prepared to undertake air travel to get to a facility.  After speaking with an intake coordinator at the facility which was located in Ventura County, I made the decision that I would check into the facility on the following Wednesday.  The day I made the decision was on Thursday.  When I called my parents to let them know what was going on and what I the action plan that I had prepared, the only words that I received were words of encouragement.  I will forever be grateful for their IMMEDIATELY supportive response.  They told me to do what I needed to do, and if my insurance would not cover the treatment they stated they were prepared to take a mortgage on their FULLY paid for home, to assist in making sure I received the help I needed.  I don't discount their tremendous gift of generosity.  I also made the decision to tell my boss ONLY what was required by law, which was that I was taking a medical leave and that I would be gone from work for at least a month.  She was surprised by my announcement but was very respectful.

I had given the women who had been at my house the permission to share with the recovery community that I was seeking inpatient treatment and would be leaving town for a rather prolonged time.  The supportive response I received was truly wonderful.  A couple who attended meetings together graciously offered to foster adopt my 9 year old kitty Maya.  They were true kitty lovers and lived quite close to my apartment and I knew that she would be well taken care of and possibly spoiled to the point where she might not want to come home with me when I returned.  Many people asked me what they could do to offer support and I just asked for good thoughts and that I would let them know after I'd had a chance to get settled.  On a Monday morning, after kissing my beloved fur child the day before when she was picked up for foster care, and having a friend hang out with me all day before to provide support and encouragement, I got in my car and began the journey.

Upon getting to the facility I was rather surprised to find it located in a somewhat residential neighborhood.  I discovered when I arrived that I had decided to check in on the day that the treatment team did their  team meetings and so to say that the staff was a bit scattered was an understatement.  I was shown around, met with the intake person who did a brief interview and then given one of the most thorough medical exams that I'd ever received.  It may or may not surprise people to learn that being a compulsive overeater is not a sufficient diagnosis to be admitted for inpatient treatment at an eating disorder treatment facility.  What got me admitted was a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, which qualified me for inpatient support.  The first night I was sleeping in a bed in a room with other girls for the first time in my life, I was homesick, scared, and totally convinced that I wasn't really as bad off as I thought I'd been.  Little did I know the journey that lay ahead.

For someone who lived with my parent's during college, being in this treatment center was my first opportunity to be living in a communal situation with other people, who were primarily young women. Because I was choosing to check in during the summer, I didn't realize that many young women would be there because they were on break from college.  I felt like I was 20 years old.  Learning to coexist with others was a very positive opportunity for me.  I learned a lot.

One of the overriding emotions that came up when I was admitted was insecurity.  Because 95% of the patients who were receiving treatment were suffering from anorexia or bulimia, and were extremely thin, I immediately began to feel like I didn't deserve to be there.  After expressing my feelings to the counselor that would be my small group counselor, she put me on the spot to share my feelings to the group that I would be participating in daily.  I just felt acutely insecure and vulnerable, which in retrospect I learned is a good place to be if you're looking for significant change.

After consulting with the psychiatrist on staff, I was placed on a dose of antidepressant medication that began to help me out of my malaise.  Daily therapy and group sessions made for full days and challenges.  One of the things that drew me to this facility was their use of the 12 Steps as the foundation of recovery.  My first big writing assignment was to do a first step examining my powerlessness over food and the unmanageable state of my life.  After writing it, I was required to share it with the group.  My aversion to verbal confrontation that I had developed at home because of my parent's constant arguing was put to the test living with people who were seeking help mental health issues as well as potentially life threatening eating disorders.  It was a truly educational experience and that's all I'm going to say about it because specific detail I don't feel is necessary.

Because I had previous experience with 12 Step recovery I felt grateful to feel a bit ahead of the game.  I also had a built in support group at home waiting for me who OVERWHELMED me by sending cards and letters of support.  My fellow patients thought I was special in some regard because after I told a member of the fellowship that getting mail could be the most helpful thing, I believe I received 2-3 letters every other day at least while I was in my inpatient phase of treatment.  I also received some photo post cards from my kitty's foster family, showing her lounging around and looking rather unfazed by her new surroundings.  I was glad to see her getting love and special wet food for her time away.   About half way through my inpatient treatment I also decided to divulge to my boss where I was and what I was doing while on my medical leave.  Part of the reason was because I was located less than 15 miles away from where she lived.  Her response was very supportive and she came to visit during the weekends when family time occurred.  It helped me to feel not so alone.  I received other visits from coworkers that I typically spoke to only on the phone.

All in all, I am grateful that I made the decision to seek such intense professional help with regards to my issues surround food and depression.  I wish I could say that I never compulsively overate again after treatment but that would not be accurate.  There were things that I didn't necessarily find helpful specifically related to the treatment center I had decided to go to.  But I will say that the facility saved me from a potentially life threatening depression and gave me a chance to focus solely on my emotional well being, which was necessary.  I would definitely encourage anyone who believes they need intensive psychological and focused therapy for an eating disorder to seriously consider inpatient residential care.  My only word of caution would be to research the facility you choose thoroughly.

Old Habits Are Hard to Break

If you ask anyone who has an addiction what led them to relapse, there could be one of a thousand different answers.  I am someone who has experienced relapse in my journey of recovery.  I wish I didn't have to learn lessons in quite such a painful fashion, but sometimes it takes what it takes.  After being in OA for 2 1/2 to 3 years I had lost 189lbs and was slowly beginning to approach a more normal body weight.  I remember when I weighed in and the scale registered a number that started with the number 2.  I believe there was a subconscious decision that I made at that point that I wasn't going to lose weight, and in fact I started putting weight back on.  I moved from the first apartment that I was in to an apartment that was closer to where my social life, but it also enabled me to make choices that did not serve my health of continued weight loss.  My weight started slowly creeping up and I put on a happy face and was doing my utmost to make people feel like I was "fine".  In the midst of no longer making progress in my physical recovery I had taken on two substantial service positions within my recovery community.  My need to people please and do for others left me in a position where I was unable to be honest with myself about what was necessary to place my recovery first in my own life.  LET ME BE VERY CLEAR:  I believe with every fibre of my being that the 12 Step recovery process   WORKS.  The trouble that I got into was that I stopped doing the things that brought me success in recovery in the first place.  My relapse in recovery is NOT the result of a failure of the program, it was my failure to work the program.

As I continued to work at the health care agency I knew that I needed to move out of the department that I had started working in.  I spent concerted time working for a promotion and finally was offered the position of being a Customer Service Supervisor of a small call center team.  It was a big sign of external support for me that I needed at the time, but in retrospect I think that the stress of the new position was a trigger for even more uncontrolled eating.  I made the approval of people I worked for more important than my physical, emotional, and spiritual health.  Part of the challenge was that my direct manager worked in Southern California while I worked in Sacramento.  It left me feeling like I was sort of hanging out on a limb in this new position.  As I learned at a training seminar for new supervisors, being good at what you do, DOES NOT make you good at supervising people who are doing what you used to be good at.  While I don't blame ANYONE for my choice to pick up food and behaviors that I had put down, I realize that I was not set up for success.  As my stress and anxiety level grew, it just became easier to make poor food choices, go to fewer recovery meetings because I was "tired" after a long day or work , and generally let go of everything that had gotten me to where I was.  Anyone who has worked in a call center will attest that the wind blowing from the east is a good enough reason for a pot luck, and as I began to participate in those pot lucks, it was one of the final nails in the coffin of my progress.

As I continued to put on weight I began to have more substantial consequences due to my weight.  I had to start using a cane because of the inflammation in my knees that was creating balance issues.  I wasn't able to walk effectively with my left hip being do degenerated and my knees had started to exhibited inflammation and loss of mobility.  I began to have incidences where my balance would fail and I would fall down.  Because of my weight and my joint problems I was unable to get up myself.  It was absolutely MORTIFYING to not be able to get myself up after falling.  It would take calling the fire department to help me get up.  Being 30 years old and having that happen was such a shaming experience if I could have crawled in a whole and died I would have gratefully done that.

As my disease became more and more encompassing, my depression grew again.  I couldn't accurately voice my shame and anguish about being in relapse, to the people in the program who had become so important and vital to my life, and whom I had grown to love so much.   There is nothing worse that feeling shame and being unable to be honest about what was going on.  I wanted SO BADLY to feel like I had my "S%*T" together.  I wish even today I could surgically remove my ego from my mind and body.  As far as I can tell, the only purpose it serves is image management and making me feel "separate from".  But that may change over time.

In my next post I will share about my decision to seek inpatient treatment for my eating disorder and what I experienced during that time.

The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

As I continued in my journey in recovery, life began grow in size and complexity.  I began to live with a zest that I had not known before.  Where I had previously enjoyed being around my friends because I could focus on their lives to the exclusion of my own real issues; I now was able to be open and honest about my life and enjoy receiving genuine friendship and support from people who I shared my life with.  In addition to being more emotionally connected, I also was finding that life was getting progressively easier as I began to lose weight.  I had made the decision that I would work on finding a scale the would accommodate me and weigh in once a month.  This allowed me the accountability I needed while not making me a slave to the number on that scale.  I was consistently losing 10 pounds a month while using a plan of eating that involved eating three meals a day, nothing in between and no sugar and certainly no Wheat Thins.  As I'd mentioned previously, living in my own apartment allowed me the freedom to have autonomy to pick and choose what foods were in my house.  It made things a lot easier.

Other things that began to get easier as well.  My second year in OA, the annual convention was in Southern California and I decided that I wanted to attend and was going to fly down to Los Angeles for the first time in over a decade.  I was nervous about the judgement that I anticipated I would receive from fellow air travelers as well as the general anxiety about being so exposed.  The good news was that I was traveling with fellow "trudger's on the road to happy destiny" which made the experience easier to some extent.  I could be as honest as I was able about my feelings and what support I needed to make this journey successful.  I think about the myriad of things that I hadn't been able to do because of my size, and it takes someone who has either been there, or been close to someone who has, to understand what it's like to be able to get on a plane after that long.

As I made friends with member's of the fellowship from lots of other areas around the state, I had an opportunity to go to OA events in the Bay Area and South Bay.  There is a great comfort in going to a meeting where there is a level of understanding and genuine love that seems to be so readily available in the rooms of any recovery meeting.  I met a wide variety of people from every walk of life that shared the common problem but more importantly the common solution.

I also realized that although I was not in a work place that I would necessarily make a career, having freedom from constant food obsession made me a better employee and I found that I genuinely enjoyed being of service to the customers that I spoke with on the phones.  I found that my skills and experience led me to be able to apply for promotions and become party of a working team.

During the weekends I found that I was packing in as much social activity as possible.  I would go to the Bay Area and visit 4-6 friends in a weekend and while it was enjoyable, I think in retrospect I might have been trying to avoid sitting still and having down time.  This would lead me to be exhausted and overwhelmed by the end of those weekends.  As with many other areas in my life, program was teaching me about balance in food, work and play.  At the suggestion of my sponsor at the time I had to institute a one day a weekend rest policy where I could do whatever I wanted to on one day of the weekend, but on the other day, I needed to be having a down day, at home just hanging out.  I was not always easy to have a down day but I was learning the important lesson that rest was as important as work.

Clothes shopping also became an enjoyable hobby as I was losing weight.  I was able to pick clothes not simply for utilitarian purposes of fit, but for how they looked and their style.  When I reached the point where I'd lost 100 pounds I decided with my sponsor that I would light one of my "fat girl" dresses on fire.  Before OA I was forced to wear loose fitting tent like dresses only available from catalogs because I was at the largest size available.  When I asked my friends about possible dresses to burn, they all had strong opinions about which dress I was suppose to torch.  I torched this turquoise plaid dress one day in a large metal kettle with 103 matches representing each pound of weight that I had lost.  It felt like an amazing gift.

Emotionally as my life began to get larger and fuller, I'm not sure in retrospect if my heart was catching up with my brain and the size of my body.  I began to feel like there was a Grand Canyon size gap between my brain where everything was logical and things made sense, and my heart where I was still a 400+lb woman who was getting treated differently and getting more attention because of the ever shrinking size of my body.  After feeling invisible because of the size of my body, I was suddenly in a position where I wasn't sure if I was entirely comfortable getting attention because of my smaller body size.

As I think about that level of discomfort now, I realize that the real challenge was realizing that my whole identity and internal compass had become focused on my body size.  I was either good or bad, worthy or not, happy or unhappy based on how my body weight made me feel on any given day.  And As I've continued this journey, that hasn't changed for me.  As I have approached my weight from a truly multi-disciplinary approach of Recovery, a Medical Weight Loss program, personal training and therapy, it's become even more apparent to me how much my weight and body size has been the thing that I have allowed to become the ONLY defining characteristic that I use for myself.  Changing that is the an ongoing challenge that keeps me on my current path as much as getting to a normal body weight does.  Getting to a place where I don't use my weight as the first thing to describe myself either in a positive or negative fashion is proving to be quite a journey.