Who flips that switch?

“You think he's gone? He's not gone. That's the whole point! He's never gone!” Dr. Leo Marvin speaking of his patient, Bob Wiley in “What About Bob?”

Lately I’ve been observing what’s behind that switch. You know the one. Maybe. For me, it connects to two things, blind rage or compulsive eating. There’s a match made in hell, eh?

The overwhelmingly tired soap opera about this phenomenon stars me as myself, whomever that is at the moment, usually a woman on the outside but a disgruntled toddler within. I look as if I’m going about my life doing ‘the next right thing.’ Could be something quite mundane, like catching a nap, even.

My experience is that I go from whatever to waking up in this overwhelming urge to yell my head off or, less belligerently toward passers by, eat anything not nailed down (“Katy bar the door,” as my father might say.) All reason goes flying out the window, and in the case of overeating, I can’t honestly recall at those times why I ever wanted to do anything but eat my way through my kitchen, my neighborhood, my country, and this planet (and not necessarily in that order, either).

In OA, some say this is all the proof we need of Step 1, that we are powerless over food and our lives are unmanageable, if not in and of itself, then as a result. In Zen, we speak of these moments as the experience of becoming identified with a regressed part of ourselves, sometimes referred to as a subpersonality.

For me, it’s the real reason I stick out any self-improvement program. I’ve been haunted by this feeling my whole life and at times I feel like it owns me. Because I get there and see only all the food I can possibly eat my way through along with this unstoppable feeling that I must eat it.

I can buy into the notion that it’s a small, needy part of me confused as to what’s needed to feel taken care of. But not when I’m under its spell. Then it’s just me needing to eat and eat and eat until she’s done. I can blame some tangible things like making my hunger wait too long, or eating a triggering food like wheat thins with just enough of a hint of sweetness to feel an overeating switch inside engage. But there are other factors to, before it comes on, completely unknown to me except for what I infer by how I feel when I’m done overeating.

In Zen we meditate to that we can cultivate the mind of sitting still and seeing without judgment what arises. This compulsion is so perfect for this kind of observation, I know, although I feel blindsided every single time. It is a very counter-intuitive process of in essence waiting for the disturbance to happen so you can watch how it comes about. By disturbance I mean that which takes place mentally and extremely discreetly, to result in a landslide of emotion that did not exist but 5 minutes or 5 seconds before.

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." Henry David Thoreau

Someone Like Me

“Guess what? I have flaws. What are they? Oh I donno, I sing in the shower? Sometimes I spend too much time volunteering. Occasionally I'll hit somebody with my car. So sue me-- no, don't sue me. That is opposite the point I'm trying to make.” Michael Scott, “The Office”

In our sangha, we speak of ‘conditioning backlash’ whereby your ‘reward’ for a sought after experience that frees you from an unwanted freedom or behavior is nothing other than an apparent redoubling of effort to seize your sensibilities. That’s what happened following my ability to wait out an overwhelming craving in my last writing.

It wasn’t until several days and binges later, yesterday, in fact that I could ‘catch’ my mind wanting to wander down the alley of what I can only describe as an internal debate over whether to eat something more at the conclusion of dinner and how dreadful I’d feel to just ‘stop’ for ‘the whole evening’. Though it was like averting eyes from a roadside accident I could feel an internal pulling away and some intuitive assurance that I’d be better off if I did. Sure enough, I went on about my evening and had the most peaceful ‘food day’ among other things, I have had in a month—since I decided it would be OK to have a piece of my brother’s graduation cake to be exact.

That experience is my internalization of what is referred to as mastery, although I have no idea if I’ll be able to repeat it at will. That is the point we reach when we really ‘know’ the internal conversations are just that—voices in the head borne from a conditioned past extending who knows how far back—and though powerful and convincing and causing us to identify strongly with its/their pleas—are not us, but simply housed by us. When we really know that to be true, is when we all of a sudden have available to us the choice to turn away and behave differently.

Of course there are no end of spiritual traditions that espouse that reality. In the 12-step program, that experience can be thought of as surrendering to power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity as stated in Step 2. Grace is a lovely way to hear it described as well. Most recently I have heard it described as being blown from the belly of the whale, JUST at the point at which we give up all hope (another way, maybe of describing surrender). In any case, I came, I saw, I let go and eating, along with the rest of life, is more peaceful today.

“You must know that you can swim through every change of

“Won't you help me sing my song

From the dark end of the street

To the bright side of the road” Van Morrison

"You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." Martin Luther King 

I'm avoiding writing in my blog. I'm not sure why but part of my Zen practice is to commit to something, almost for the sake of seeing who you 'become' (what lesser known part of you appears) when you don't want to keep, or can't even remember (!) your commitment. I committed to the blog this last time to take note of the feelings that arise as I relinquish food and eating patterns to excess, and I can't say why I'm turning away today from writing about it.

I suppose there is a part of me that wants to think my urge to overeat doesn't exist when I'm not struggling with it, and of course in Zen practice that is absolutely the truth. Suffering cannot exist in the present because when we are present we are attending as fully as possible to our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Though those might not always feel good or in sync, we are usually able to take them for what they are and not so much see them as an enemy tide sweeping us into whatever unpleasantness conditioned mind would have us lunge toward.

Wishing there were more food on my plate is not in and of itself a crisis. Believing I "deserve" more and that I can't resist the call toward more tips the balance of contentment and pain toward suffering. And the endless debate of "I know I shouldn't but I can't resist," is the ultimate stronghold for suffering because we can spend a lifetime believing that that debate is something other than a pointless sham, designed to pull us out of present awareness into an unresolvable, futile conversation-- a thinly veiled, if very compelling, "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

I now write down what I eat each day and email it to my sponsor. Some folks commit to what they are going to eat ahead of time and send or call that in to their sponsors. I chose the former because that seemed more do-able and it has the benefit of helping me really see what I eat and, even more illuminating how. Many things have been predictable, some have caught me by complete surprise. The revelation that I'm not in need of more than 3 meals a day is huge and strikes me as funny all at the same time. I was so sure I needed a snack between lunch and dinner but that snack was a small meal (!). I noticed instead that having an actual snack, in the form of an apple or the fruit, is more than sufficient to last until a dinner at most any hour.

The largest surprise has been the depth of what I am forced to call affection for food. I am at turns grateful for the realization and embarrassed that something inanimate and eventually deadly when abused can have become an object of adoration for me when I have so much love in my life and within myself. Seeing all of this clearly, without what's called a food fog, is more than anything joy producing because I no longer feel led down the garden path of delusion that eating out of control will solve some sort of emotional deprivation in my current or prior experience and that feels like the way out of emotional bondage. I suppose it's not unlike being in an abusive relationship and then 'one day' waking up to the knowledge that you do not have to keep participating and the future though not certain, is sure to be brighter than the past with this knowledge.

Avoiding writing these things down provides another decoy to really seeing, which of course is the path toward true freedom. Both my 12-step program and my Zen practice speak of 'the key' as willingness. While those keys abound, I figure I'm good.

"It is not my experience that we are here to fix the world, that we are here to change anything at all.  I think we are here so the world can change us.  And if part of that change is that the suffering of the world moves us compassion, to awareness, to sympathy, to love, that is a very good thing." Cheri Huber

See More Food

“It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.” J. D. Salinger

I flushed my last sweet roll down the toilet. Not just any sweet roll. Not just my last sweet roll. My last, one of my last, my fourth from last roll sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. And OK it wasn’t the toilet. (No need to ring the spousal alarm bell) It was the garbage disposal. I know it doesn’t sound final and of course with 3 left, it certainly isn’t. But it sure felt final. Actually it felt like the most I could manage after finally having it sink in that maybe some of my cravings are physical with my conditioned self gone riot in tow.

That was almost a week ago now. Since then, I dumped one other and ate the remaining 2. I’ve eaten a lot of things since last week, but I’ve also *not* eaten a lot of things. That’s true of most weeks, except here lately I find myself pacing around an idea the way a detective walks around a taped off crime scene, studying the area carefully, long after the body has been removed, and fingerprints dusted, pondering things only she or he can visualize.

My idea, new, if not original, is that I begin attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings as I used to more than 20 years ago, when I was in my 20’s. I’m not sure what makes this idea revolutionary, except that when I stopped attending, I never once looked back and regretted it. I belonged there, and still do because I am a compulsive overeater, even if I bristle against the word compulsive. I don’t mind being called an overeater. I figure this is
pretty obvious at a size 18 or even 20 depending on the clothing manufacturer. Moreso if you consider I’m just barely 5 feet 1 inch tall. But being compulsive makes me feel like a person who can’t stop washing their hands, or must reenter the house through the exact same door from which they exited. Since my youngest days, I can remember feeling very pulled to eat and overeat, LOTS, and often unable to limit or stop even when I wanted to and I think that’s where the word compulsive and I shake hands.

So now we are 17 hours into this experience, and I just ate lunch, but now I want a Snickers bar. I don't just want it, I *am* it- in that I have no life outside my connection to the Snickers bar. I'm not hungry any more. I certainly don't want the apple I packed in my lunch. I WANT THE SNICKERS BAR. Rachael Brownell in Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore written about her first year of sobriety from alcoholism talks of the way in which she began to see 'crisp white wine' everywhere once she gave it up. She saw it in the clouds, her kids' faces, everywhere-- and so it is for me with the Snickers bar.

I want it because there is a physical craving for sugar that follows lunch and can be confused for the need for a nap (a thought to which I am unopposed even though I'm at work). I mostly want it because it feels like a cuddle with a special someone. In my Zen practice, we'd probably define it as the experience of being identified with a small, part of me, a subpersonality looking for a special connection with the larger being that goes around as 'Celia'. Somewhere along the line, probably in childhood, this little self split off from the mothership of other Celia's linked together and came to believe that food, especially 'certain' types of food, was her answer to the lonely, confused, and sometimes bitterly angry feelings harbored by other 'selves' within and outside herself.

So I've spent a lot of time studying this problem-- decades in fact but none of that changes the fact that in this moment it's me and my craving. I'm choosing something different, because I don't want this for myself anymore at this age. I choose something different because although the experience isn't the one I'm having at the moment, I do know what that little self doesn't and didn't know years ago-- there is so such thing as being apart from ultimate comfort and caretaking. There are just very convincing illusions that we are. Nice place to be. Lucky her. Lucky me.

""My faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear," Anne Lamott