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

A Job for Howard

“It's a terrible feeling, isn't it — the self-will run riot? Here you long to inwardly resemble the Dalai Lama humming to himself, or Therese of Liseux at dawn Christmas morning in prayer.”-Anne Lamott

I snapped! Well, some "I" did. I hate hanging in there to watch it, too. That’s worse than the snappage. To date, I have lost about 18 pounds (I strive to weigh myself once monthly only) and I had the sense I underate at lunch yesterday. A few hours after when John was snacking on blue chips a part of me ‘went wild’ and just ‘had’ to have chips and cheese together. That I did and that was that but I felt rebellious after and really not happy after dinner was over. 

That was of course yesterday, not necessarily related to what happened this day. Yet today I did have enough at lunch but I still went for a bread/cheese snack and not in the way it’s recommended either, at least by my sponsor. I’m having a hard time knowing what is right for me, separating it from what I feel I should be doing according to my sponsor, even though my sponsor says there is no wrong way.

I like her a lot. She is younger than me—but that barely comes up. Her background is highly resonant with my own -- most especially when it comes to spiritual beliefs. She has defined her higher power as a guiding force of connection through us all, and that very much is how I've come to think of 'my' higher power. She’ll refer to God and that suits me fine, as it’s rather cumbersome to refer to praying to "my inner guiding feeling of human connection".

Whatever the definition, I am struggling with lining my eating up with my inner sense of what makes sense for me, my higher power, or my mentor, as it’s sometimes called in my Zen practice. I feel myself lining up instead with an inner rebellious child who is hopping mad that she’s being forced to do what she doesn’t want to do. She has her system of control, flawed as it is, in place and tolerates the horrid inconsistencies around her by paying close attention to her food kingdom, reveling in the knowledge that there she lords over her ‘loyal’ but inanimate subjects of chocolate kisses, chocolate chip cookies, and an array of warm, buttery comfort food. She isn’t going down with a fight on this one.

I know she’s not after food. She’s after reassurance that there are steady, dependable things available just for her. The toleration of her as only one part of me after so many years of thinking I am the part she comandeered is in and of itself a huge undertaking. I can. I will. I want to—I know that, how? Ah…. Looks like a job for the mentor.

“I like to think that some even turned to Howard, who can be kind of a generic god for agnostics, a big warm caring galoot of divine presence — Howard, as in, "Our father, who art in Heaven, Howard be thy name."—Anne Lamott

Fruit of My Labor

"It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life."
— Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

I can't describe this last month in simple terms. I resumed going to Overeaters Anonymous meetings after an 18 year absence. In 12-step terms, that's some relapse. "Why'd I leave?" I've been asking myself. That alternates with the more timely, "Why am I back?" Incidentally, when I was overwhelmed by the emotions associated with how tethered a nursing mom feels toward her new infant, I'd often wonder why women had second babies. Who could know how life would change with one, but to go back for more?

 

I left OA because I wanted to try a more moderate way of eating, sometimes referred to as 'demand feeding'. Back in the early 90's there weren't the wide range of food plans in writing available that there are now so that had something to do with feeling I needed to go elsewhere. Honestly, though, I think I was just tired of dragging myself to 2 or 3 meetings a week on top of 4 days of psychotherapy, work, and all else that was going on at the time. I was in the process of buying my first home and, unbeknownst to me, about to get pregnant.

 

I had been thinking this over a while because my weight has ballooned and binging in the form of all night grazing is a big part of my life. I happened upon an excerpt from a book called Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore by Rachael Brownell about her own path to AA and couldn't put it down. I know that feeling of being insatiable for something I deep down realize can't be quelled by excess versus the reality of feeling like stopping isn't an option.

I put a little post-it note in the back of her book when it arrived into the library that read "OA 24" indicating a challenge to myself to attend an OA meeting within 24 hours of finishing up the book. The weeks leading up to the end of the book (as if I couldn't go anytime I wanted!) had me obsessively reading and re-reading the online schedule of meetings in case today or tomorrow 'happenned to be the day'.

The night I selected to attend, 24 hours upon finishing Rachael Brownell's book, as promised (to whom? to what?) brought with it a driving rain. The rigid rulemaker in me didn't care and off 'we' (rigid rulemaker and me) the 25 miles to the meeting, driving in circles as raindrops pelted the car, trying to make out the street number in the church driveway where the meeting was held.

It was a 'Big Book Study,' referring to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous used in most 12-step programs. I nervously took my seat along side one of 2 8-foot 'craft' tables pushed together, and was amazed at how little and how much had changed all at once. Cross talk is discouraged but members had big smiles for me, and it was amazing how welcoming people could be just hearing that I was a newcomer, returning to meetings.

Everyone at the table takes turns reading from one to three paragraphs in the big, blue book, that is the cornerstone of AA, and is now in its 4th edition. People can then share for up to 3 minutes, moderated by a timer, on anything they have read or anything at all. No one cuts them off when the timer beeps. The meeting secretary just resets the timer for 3-minute increments until the speaker winds down.

I don't remember what I said exactly, but I did share that I was returning after a 20 year absence. I remember being amazed that the meeting secretary had lost somewhere around 100 pounds, and was in another 12-step program, in addition to OA. I also remember coming home and immediately heading to the pantry to eat-- as much to calm the rush of adrenaline that accompanied my excitement in feeling so welcomed, as out of the well worn habit of night eating to which I was quite wedded.

So I've been going to a month of meetings and somehow find myself with a sponsor, a food plan, and a 7 pound weight loss. I didn't try for any of those things, they just seemed to evolve from the decision to incorporate meetings regularly and sanely into my schedule. The most helpful part of it all, is the sense of feeling completely in sync with everyone I encounter, regardless of their size or current ability to suspend their compulsive habits. And what's making this all hang together is the 'promise' that this can and should be faced *at most* one day at a time.

"E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.'" Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Zen Train

"We say, "Love your brother." We don't say it really, but... " Davd St. Hubbins in 'This is Spinal Tap'

Cheri is fond of commitments- making them actually. You'd think that might not be the case, because so much of what everyone thinks of as Zen involves living in the 'now'. But in the now, when we commit to something 'then,' we get to observe the changes we experience if any between this 'now' and that 'now'. Was that as confusing to read as it was to think up? 

For example, I made a commitment to lighter eating every day, several days ago. Today, I hardly remember the commitment at all, let alone why it seemed so important. Consequently, I ate a lot starting last night when John and I decided to do fondue for dinner, a favorite indulgence of ours, and the only time John *ever* eats the least bit unhealthily.

All I know is, this was the longest weekend ever and at the same time it flew by. There was so much to do, yet it involved suprisingly few 'action items,' as I used to love to say in the corporate world. In the service of getting things done, in addition to my sanity, I made a decision to forgo a workshop centered around annual goal setting, and I think therein lies the answer to why all this overeating, in part.

I've never been fantastic at knowing or setting (these are different) healthy limits-- I guess that's obvious in a blog devoted to overeating. Well, add two ex-spouses and children from those unions to your current marriage, and all bets are off as to what constitutes appropriate rules of engagement. In short, John requested I participate in something that would benefit one of his children, and the only day to get it done in a sane manner was the day devoted to the workshop. Giving up the workshop wasn't so bad in and of itself but the project I agreed to undertake was excruciating-- not so much physically although it was no fun to look up volumes of personal data for financial aid forms, but because it was like a trip through the memory lane of hell that was often our early family life.

But the heartburn here is that I saw this freight train coming a mile away. We call that the good news in Zen because here to fore the freight train of wanting something other than 'what is' would come, take us aboard, spit us out somewhere along the track and be bounding on to the next station before we knew what was happening leaving a wake of destruction in its path.

Other than being able to 'see' opinions and emotions bubble up to the surface, sometimes before, sometimes after I spouted them out to my husband of endless patience, otherwise known in these stepchild situations as Mr. Rock and a Hard Place, I see no value at the moment in my new found powers of observation at this moment.

 "Whatever you are, be a good one," Abraham Lincoln