Unfortunately, for me, that is not the case.  At least, not yet.

I am clearly a work in progress.

I hate to admit it, but I am only now just beginning to address this issue in relation to other areas of my life.

I recently joined a gym.  Again.  But with what I hope is a much healthier attitude this time around.  I am there to feel better about myself.  Period.  Losing more weight, if I do, will be a happy accident.

I finally devised a new and improved daily schedule.  Working from home, it is so easy to go off track with respect to my routine.  I am a morning person, so I moved my writing tasks to the first part of the day (when I am at my most creative), and I do my property management work in the afternoons.

I had my food plan reviewed by a professional.  I know that my fellow OA’s can appreciate what a touchy subject this can be, and it was difficult, but I decided it was time to cut back a little more.  I am not going to do it all at once, but I now I have a slightly cleaner, slightly smaller plan than I had before.  I have been following it for a couple weeks now, but I am not counting days.  I refuse to go back to that mind game.

Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

The bottom line is, none of this would even be possible if I was still in the food.  I simply would have no room in my mind to even consider confronting this problem, let alone the mental and physical energy to actually DO something about it.  And the only way I know to ensure that I maintain my abstinence, one day at a time, is by going to meetings, staying in contact with my OA friends, and staying close to my HP.  If I continue to do “the next right thing,” I can’t fail.  And neither will you!

This uncomfortable state usually starts with something as simple as walking past a mirror.  I notice my reflection.  My mood instantaneously changes from good to bad.  The following negative self-chatter, based on years and years of practice, pops into my mind:

“That’s what I look like right now?!  Are you KIDDING me?!  DisGUSting!  I have been abstinent for over THREE YEARS, and I STILL look that big?!  What’s the use?!  Every single day, I use those damn measuring cups and spoons, every day I only eat the foods I’m ‘supposed to,’ I haven’t eaten bread, pasta, chips or (gasp!) CHOCOLATE since 2010, I go to at least 3 meetings a week, I speak when asked to speak,… and THIS is the pay-off for all my hard work?!  I can’t believe I haven’t pigged-out sooner!  Why do I even bother?!”

As you can see, I am a trained professional when it comes to self-abuse.

There is so much going on here, on so many different levels.  Let’s take a quick look at some them for a moment, shall we?

What strikes me first about that whole tirade is the perspective.  I am talking like I am the victim.  There is absolutely no acknowledgement of the fact that following a 12-Step Program is a choice.  No one is forcing me to do all this so-called “work.”  I am doing it because I made the decision that NOT doing it was far more painful.

Next, look a little more closely at my feeling of surprise – I am shocked by the fact that I look bigger than I feel.  This is a miracle in and of itself.  Most of my life, I walked around like I weighed many hundreds of pounds, like a freak and a disgrace, even when I was down to 160 pounds!  And even at that time, I specifically remember walking by a mirror and thinking, “Who is that thin person?  Oh, wait!  That’s me!”  I would feel good for a few minutes, but then I would slip back into feeling ugly and gross.  Nowadays, I feel good about myself most of the time, EXCEPT when I am in front of a mirror.  Maybe not the best way to live, but a HUGE improvement, don’t you think?

Also, where the heck is the gratitude?!  I have maintained a 75 pound weight loss for almost 3 years now!  That has never happened in my entire life!  And I am happier, healthier, more compassionate, more caring, and more clear-minded than I have ever been!  Most importantly, as a result of all the time and effort I have put into this program, I now have a relationship with a Higher Power that comforts me, gives me a sense of purpose to my life, and helps me to want to be a positive example to others.  Isn’t that way more valuable than the number on a scale?  And all this in just three short years!!  That is NOTHING compared to the decades of misery and damage that may food addiction caused!

So nowadays, when this negative feeling hits, I recognize it for what it really is: an old, nasty, deeply-engrained pattern of negative thinking that gets activated by things that hurt me in the past.  Am I always able to eliminate it from my mind immediately?  Hell, no!  Sometimes it lingers for days, and at those times I feel resentful and depressed (but at least I am finally feeling!).  But at the same time, I am actively trying to replace those old tapes with something like the following:

“It may be difficult to see how far you have to go, but what about how far you’ve come?  You need to start switching the focus.  You are a child of God.  He loves you just the way you are.  You do not have to prove anything to Him, to yourself, or to anyone else ever again.  Even if you decide to stop following this plan right now, He will STILL love you, but you know that you just feel better, happier, and healthier when you do this, so why not try to keep going.  You deserve to feel good about yourself.”‘

What a difference in tone!  This voice is not degrading or insulting.  Neither is it condescending or demanding.  It is confident and loving.  And that question at the end?  There is no question mark at the end of it.  Know why?  Because this Higher Me has an attitude that I will make the right decision.  It already “knows ” what the healthy choice is and that that is the path The Real Me wants to follow.  So it isn’t really a question at all, but rather, a statement of purpose.

And did you notice that the negative voice talks in the first person (“I”) but the positive voice speaks in the second (“you”)?  I did not write it that way on purpose, that is just the way it is.  My theory as to why?  First, because addiction is a subtle foe, and “it knows” that using that point of view sounds more intimate and, therefore, more like “true” beliefs that I have about myself.  Second, because I have finally been able to develop my “Higher Self” to such a point that it actually has it’s OWN voice!  It is a different entity, if you will, than the one doing all the trash talking.  It even “sounds” different!  I believe it was always there, and that it is either part of, or the same thing as, my Higher Power, but the point is, now I can actually HEAR it!  And the best part of all?  It is starting to have real, meaningful influence in my thought-life!  In the past, the “dark side” was the only show in town.  But not any more!!

I have finally arrived at the light at the end of the tunnel!

THANK YOU, H.P.!!

Now I had to call him back.

When I worked with him in the past, I had no choice but to put up with his bad attitude.  Now that I had my own company, I could pick and choose who I worked with.  The problem was, at that particular time, we desperately needed the money.  My husband and I weighed-out the pros and cons and decided that it was best if we didn’t take the account (assuming that he wanted to hire us – – I still hadn’t even talked to him).  We felt good about having made this decision, thinking it was right for us.

If the story ended there, it would have had a happy ending.

Throughout the process of starting and running our own business, we have learned that there are so many things that go into success that have little or nothing at all to do with money.  Choosing to only work with people we like and respect is a big one for us.  But at that time, we let this idea go to our heads and we started feeling very superiuor about it.

“Well, I guess I’d better give him a call and tell him the bad news,” I laughed sarcastically.

“I wish I could see the look on that smug face of his when you tell him we are not interested,” my husband added.

“Me, too,” I said as I dialed his number.  “Wait…let me get out my most condescending voice…”  I then proceeded to imitate the guy perfectly.  I had to cut my comedic act short when I heard the guy pick-up the phone.

We had barely exchanged greetings and his voice was already grating on me.  I wanted to get to my point so I quickly asked if he remembered working with me several years earlier.  There was a brief silence, and then,… “I’ll have to call you back.”

Click.

He “dumped” me before I had a chance to “dump” him!  I didn’t even get a chance to say ANYthing!  I was PISSED!  I told my husband what happened and he laughed it off, but I was still angry!  Then, that still small voice said:

“Is this really the way you want to be acting?  You’re in program now.”

It wasn’t a judgemental voice, but a gentle one, pointing our the obvious and reminding me of what I was trying to do by not working with this person in the first place:

…to live a life of sane and happy usefulness.

Through the process of doing The 12 Steps, I was horrified to learn that my main character defect was self-centeredness.  At first I really didn’t get it, even though the “evidence” was right there in front of me, in my own handwriting.  But how could I, who literally suffered for years from poor self-esteem, be self-centered?!  Didn’t that mean that I thought I was great and only did things to make myself happy?  Wasn’t I always going out of my way to make sure I wasn’t hurting anyone else’s feelings or doing anything that would lead to any type of confrontation?  How could that possibly be self-centered?!

Well, it took a while for it to really sink-in, but by the time I finished the turn-arounds on my 4th Step, I came to the conclusion that there are actually two parts to the definition of self-centeredness, at least in the way that it relates to my warped personality.

The first part has to do with the plain fact that “I Was Always On My Mind.”  I was always, always, ALWAYS thinking about myself, what I was doing, what I was going to do, what I did,…  That ALONE was exhausting!.  But here’s the REAL key – – even though I was constantly putting myself down and thinking of myself in a negative way, I was STILL focused on myself!  I STILL had no mental space for what was going on with OTHERS!  I was self-absorbed with how “bad” I was.

The second part was that I made whatever was going around me (including the actions of others) all about ME!  What I believed others were thinking about me, what others might be saying about me, how I looked to them, what kind of criticism I was going to get,…  I would read all kinds of things into what people were doing, like thinking that people were doing things to purposely hurt ME, rather than acting for themselves with motives that had NOTHING to do with me!  I saw everything in terms of being against me, because of me, or about me.

To top it all off, it was at about this same time that I slowly began to realize that even during those occasional times when I WAS thinking of others, it was usually with MY best interest in mind!  So even my “good intentions” turned out to be based on selfish motives!

Apparently, for decades I had been The Center Of The Universe, but this was the first time I was seeing it!  I suddenly could relate to my dogs really well – – the way they think that people coming over, bags of groceries being brought into the house, snowstorms,…are all things that happen for them, and for them alone.  But I digress…

Back to my original metaphor…

At first I was amazed at how easily I took to this blog-writing thing.  You might even say I was obsessed with it for a while there.  But like a good addict, I tend to get overly-involved with projects in the beginning and then trail off and leave things unfinished.  So I think I shocked even myself when I continued writing after all these posts.  But then I thought about it.  And here’s what I figured-out…

The reason why I continue to maintain an interest in writing this blog is because it is all about my favorite subject: ME!!  I would have never in a million years thought that I would write something so selfish-sounding as that (especially on the Internet!), but it is the truth!  Analysing myself, my thoughts, and my motives comes so naturally to me because I have been inside my own head for over 40 years!  Being self-centered in this way is my default.  I am comfortable here.

I must say that it has been quite the humbling experience to recognize just how self-centered I have been and how that has effected, not only me and my self-concept, but my relationships with others, including the way others perceive me, the way they interact with me, and the path that our interactions take.  I find all of it quite interesting, oftentimes painful, but, at the same time, very hopeful.  If I had never been through this process, I would have never realized any of this, and if I didn’t know there was a problem, there would have been no hope of it ever getting fixed.  Now I CAN get out of my own head (at times) and at least make an attempt to help others, like with this blog.  Yes, there is a lot of “me” going on here, but maybe this is one of those times when we can “see” God taking a character defect and turning it into something that can actually help other people.

At least,…that is my hope.

The whole reason behind why I never buy raffle tickets (even to this day, unless I buy one and give it to someone else) has to do with my fear of being the center of attention.  You would think that as a true addict (a.k.a., the epitome of “self-will run riot”), I would LOVE to buy raffle tickets, under the false presumption that I am sure to win, since, after all, I am The Center Of The Universe.  However, the longer I am in program, the more fascinated I am by the strange “varieties” that are out there with respect to the make-up of the addict mind.

In general, I see two major categories of addicts.  You have your “arrogant addicts,” and then you have your “doormat addicts.”  But when you look at a specific addict, I believe that he or she falls somewhere between these two extremes on a continuum.  For the real irony is that BOTH groups are self-centered, varying in degree only.  The way I see it, the first group is “positively” self-absorbed while the second one is “negatively” self-absorbed.  Before this time around in program, I would have told you that I was neither of these.  Since I had no self-esteem what-so-ever, I “knew” that self-centeredness was not going to show-up on my character defect list.

WRONG!

“Stunned” is a mild way of expressing how I felt when I found self-centeredness infiltrating most (if not all) of the resentments on my 4th Step inventory.  But when I took a long, hard look at myself and got really honest about my inner-most thoughts and motives, I had to admit that even in the midst of my self-hatred and my delusions of victimization, I was still focusing on myself!  I would make EVERYthing about me!  I may have done that in negative, self-judging, and self-pitying ways, but everything that happened around me always had ME and MY FEELINGS at their core!  So it is only now that I have come to understand that, even with some degree of recovery to my credit, I am just your typical addict who vacillates between “positive” and “negative” self-absorbtion, depending upon the circumstances.

So back to raffle tickets…  In this particular case, both types of addicts would assume they are going to win.  (The idea that someone ELSE might win doesn’t even enter our minds!)  But the “positive” addicts see winning as a good thing that they deserve, while the “negative” addicts see winning as a bad thing meant to make them look foolish.  So in the end, when it comes to raffle tickets, I am definitely a “negative” addict.

A few minutes after buying her raffle tickets, my friend won a prize.

“See?”  I said.  “Had I gone up there with you to buy a ticket, that would have been ME having to go up there!”

“The HORROR!” my friend laughed as she happily dove into her basket of trinkets.

I was shocked and disgusted.

For the first 15 minutes, I watched with the look of someone hypnotised by a car crash – it was just too horrible to look away.  Then my husband and I spent some time making rude comments about the people on the show – – things to the effect of “I would NEV-er!”  Sad to say, we were actually making fun of the woman and her blatant denial of how bad the situation was.

Then, halfway through the program, it hit me…

I was doing exactly the same thing with food.

All at once I could see that the way I was judging this woman was the EXACT SAME WAY I had always feared that people were judging me!  I had spent my entire life trying to “pretend” there was nothing wrong on the outside, while inside I was consumed by an obsession to binge AND hide my my 345-pound body (which is impossible, by the way!).  Suddenly it was crystal-clear to me that this hoarding-thing was a visual representation of what I had been doing to myself INSIDE my body.  The same way that she crammed her house with trash is the same way I crammed my body with trash!  The same way that she stopped caring about the up-keep of her house was the same way I stopped caring about the up-keep of my appearance.  Her external environment was a reflection of her internal addiction just as my physical appearance was a reflection of my eating disorder!

I am sure that the only reason why I was able to see this at all is because I am involved in a 12-Step Program.

It was very humbling.

Talk about “food for thought.”

One of the biggest surprises to me has been how angry I can get.  I don’t think I have a full-blown anger management issue going on (at least not YET, anyway!), but I had never thought of myself as an angry person at ALL until after I did The Steps last year.  I really believed that I was always easy-going and that if I ever DID get offended by anything, it was only with good reason.

That is SO not the case!

Now that I am not eating over my feelings, I can see that, on any given day, there are potentially HUNDREDS of things that could offend me!  Whether it be the way someone looks at me, or the fact that my day doesn’t turn out the way I planned, around every corner is an opportunity for me to have hurt feelings.

If the 12 Steps ended with this revelation, we’d all be in trouble.  For myself, I would be trapped in a sea of negative emotions, day after day, and eventually I would turn back to food for comfort.  But fortunately, in program we are taught what to do about all these negative feelings that are beginning to surface, now that our drug of choice is not there to to push them down.  What I try to do with these emotions (which are valid feelings) now is to think about them before reacting to them.  This is a completely new concept for me.  In the past, someone or something would provoke me and I would engage.  Now (usually, but not always) I take a step back and think about the best way to handle the situation.  Sometimes I get into it, but at least it feels like a choice rather than an impulse.  I feel more in control of my actions.  This is not to say that I am perfectly at peace all the time, but my anxiety level has come way down, and when I feel my anger rising, if I can step back from the situation, even if only for a few seconds, I am beginning to see that I am starting to have the ability to control that, as well.  My best reactions, however, are those I ask my Higher Power to help me with.  Every time I remember too invite Him into the discussion, I always, always, ALWAYS have better results.

Now if I could just keep this in mind 24/7, my life would be great!

The following week, I was relieved to see that that person was not at the meeting.  But when it got to be time for sharing, many people spoke about him and the positive impact he’d had on them.

I was floored.

Almost everyone who shared that week said that seeing that man in the throws of his disease strengthened their gratitude for the gift of sobriety that they had been given.  Some of the old-timers even went so far as to say that God was using that man to speak to all of us about how horrible addiction is and that they were praying for him every night, hoping that he would come back so they could help him the way that he had already helped them.

Powerful.

I felt like such a jerk after that meeting.  As I drove home, I took a hard look at the way I had completely taken that situation and made it all about me – – that guy was disrupting MY meeting.  He was making ME uncomfortable.  He was taking all the time away from the people I wanted to hear.  But since when are the 12 Steps about SELF?!  Then I started thinking about this whole thing in relation to food, and I realized something very…disturbing.

I went to OA meetings “drunk” all the time!

This last time coming back to program, if I hadn’t been “allowed” to show-up at meetings feeling bloated and sick from the binge I just had in my car on the way there, I would probably be dead right now.  How DARE I be so judgemental of a fellow suffering addict who, even in his drunken state, knows that AA is the only place on earth that will welcome him with open arms!

This was a hard lesson for me to learn, but it is one that I will never forget.

At that very moment, I started down a path of self-discovery that still continues today.  Right up until then, my entire life had been spent changing my behavior depending upon what I believed others were thinking about me.  Now, for the first time, I was questioning my ability to “know” what these thoughts were.  To my utter amazement, I soon found that the stark, cold reality was that I had no idea whatsoEVER what people were really thinking about me…and that I NEVER had!  My entire life had been spent doing all this posturing based upon a complete fabrication!  Or, rather, MILLIONS of complete fabrications, which, ironically, turned out to be the very thoughts I had about MYSELF!  All my life, I had been unconsciously projecting all the harsh and critical thoughts I had about myself onto others, and then blaming everyone around me for the reason why I felt so bad about myself!  WOW!  Did THAT ever blow my mind!!  And to see the actual evidence of all this IN MY OWN HANDWRITING was UNBELIEVABLE!  It’s not like this was something someone else had written.  This was all straight from my own heart and mind, and there it all was in black-and-white, sitting right in front of me in a huge four-inch-thick binder.  I immediately started feeling depressed and overwhelmed by all the wasted years, energy, tears,…

That’s why we do all this with a sponsor.  We talked about all of it.  She told me that none of us will ever know what everyone is thinking about us and that – – get this! – – it is none of our business, anyway!   She said that all I am supposed to be doing is looking at what I am thinking about me.  Suddenly, I felt relieved.  Here was a way out!  For 35 years I had been worrying about what everyone around me thought about me and changing my behavior accordingly, but NOW, all I had to do was look at MY OWN thoughts?  Just the thoughts of ONE person as opposed to the thoughts of HUNDREDS?!  AMAZING!  I immediately realized that this would make my life SO much easier, and it HAS!

About a year later, I had a similar yet not-so-profound revelation while I was sharing at a meeting.  I was sharing about this “e.s.p.” thing when it suddenly dawned on me that this was only half the story.  Not only did I really believe that I “knew” what people thought about me, but I also thought that everyone thinks exactly the same way I do, AND that they therefore “know” exactly what I am thinking and feeling about THEM!    I really thought that everyone always “knew” how their actions would effect my feelings.  In other words, if anyone ever did anything that hurt my feelings, it was done purposely!  No WONDER why I was so pissed-off at everyone!  How crazy is all THAT?!  But at the same time that I recognized all of that, I also understood that all of it was not true!  NO ONE thinks exactly like me, and MOST people think a whole lot DIFFERENTLY than I do, and, as shocking as this may seem…..some people actually say and do things that are NOT IN ANY WAY RELATED TO ME!!  DOUBLE-WOW!!

So ended my theory that I am the center of the universe.  Do I still think I can “read” people?  Sometimes.  But at least now I stop myself and realize that this is an old behavior that I am trying to change, and then I ask my Higher Power to help me to remember that it is none of my concern what people are thinking about me, and that, if someone does hurt my feelings in some way, they probably did not do it intentionally.  All that really matters is how I treat others, what I think about myself, and what my Higher Power thinks about me.  And ya know what?  I am finally starting to believe that He thinks I’m a pretty cool person!  Ya know what else?  He thinks the same about you, too!

It was only at age 43, when I finally did the 12 Steps exactly the way they are outlined in the Big Book, that I was able to see any of this.  Years of counceling, seminars, self-analysis, journaling,… never brought any of this to light for me.  But now that I can see what a narrow, limited life resulted from this character trait, I am able to see it for what it truly is: a character defect.  As soon as I came to this realization (half-way through Step 4), I’d say that 50% of these ridiculous rules I had been living by for decades just fell away (and with them, 50% of the stress in my life!).  Since completing the rest of the steps, I’d say another 25% of them have been removed.  The remaining portion, I believe, will slowly but surely leave me as well, as long as I continue to work my program and stick close to my Higher Power.