Saluting Jared Fogle: 10 Years & One (Subway) BUN At A Time

Y’all know who Jared Fogle is, right?  (As soon as WordPress fixes their latest technical glitch, I’ll upload his picture so as to refresh your memory). Jared is the guy who lost nearly 240 pounds while eating Subway (submarine) sandwiches EVERY day while he was losing weight.

Jared not only achieved his weight loss goal, but he has been at his goal weight for just over nine years…and has been CONSISTENTLY losing/maintaining his weight for over TEN years! And wouldn’t you know it, but he has been eating BREAD virtually EVERY day of his inspiring weight loss journey (GASP!!!).

BUNS (yes, those Subway [submarine] sandwiches always come with BUNS!!!)…And those BUNS are made of lots of ingredients including SUGAR AND FLOUR!!! <I think I just heard the sound of a H.O.W. food plan devotee just passing out from shock (not to mention carbohydrate deprivation!)>.

My point to this rant? Well, other than to salute Jared on his impressive success, I wanted to point out that at least some food addicts CAN eat bread (e.g., CAN eat sugar and flour) and still remain in recovery.

So the next time some devotee of one of those dredful “no sugar, no flour” diets tries to tell you that you MUST avoid ALL sugar and flour or you can’t/wont be successful in your recovery journey, feel free to point out that at least some food addicts (e.g., Jared Fogle) ARE long-term successful WHILE STILL EATING sugar and flour.

Maybe they have to avoid ALL sugar and flour (that is their choice — even if they can’t find a doctor or dietician to sign off on it due to the increased risk of health problems caused by low-carbohydrate diets)…but their choice does NOT have to be yours…and your success does not have to come while attempting to follow a CraZy diet that is based on (at best) whacked-out scientific theories.

Oh yeah…I probably should mention that ALL carbohydrates break down into SUGAR in our bodies!!! So NOT “ALL sugar” is bad or (in one sense) is any indivudal TOTALLY sugar free IF they eat ANY amount of carbohydrates.

 

Feelings: To Feel Them Or Stuff Them Down, That Is THE Question!

Many years ago I had a pastor who impressed me with both his great wisdom and delightful sense of humor. He would often quip that he had been known to “cry at supermarket grand openings”!

I can relate to his comment — at least at times. Sometimes I cry with little or no provocation. At other times I do a pretty good job at “stuffing down” my feelings — ALL feelings — including feelings that lead to tears.

I’ve heard it said of food addicts that if we don’t “Face Our Stuff” we’ll (eventually) ”Stuff Our Face”. I’ve found this is VERY true in the sense that some of my most painful feelings have surfaced during periods of sane eating.

How vividly the lyrics of Simon And Garfunkel’s song I Am A Rock captures the emotional pain that many of us addicts have tried to stuff down…

“I am a rock.
I am an island.
I’ve built walls –
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate…
I have no need of friendship;
friendship causes pain.
Its laughter and its loving I disdain….
I touch no one and no one touches me…
And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.”

As a recovering co-dependent, feeling MY feelings should NOT be too difficult a task to handle since (in active co-dependency) I had NO problem feeling EVERYone else’s feelings. But the reality has been that running from, denying and stuffing down (”stuffing” comes about with my ingesting EXCESS amounts of food) MY OWN feelings has been my pattern.

Many years ago I heard it explained that feelings, also referred to as “emotions” , are “energy-in-motion” (think “e-motions”). My understanding is that ingesting any any mood-or-mind-altering substance can (and does) “block” the processing of emotions. Hence the state of “emotional constipation” that many of us addicts experienced during out days of active addiction.

I don’t know why, but feeling MY feelings CAN seem overwhelming. At times I’ve found myself wondering if I was going to “e-mote to death” by allowing myself to feel my feelings!

The Overeaters Anonymous brochure entitled, A Plan Of Eating: A Tool for Living - One Day at a Time (Copyright 1988, 2001, 2005 Overeaters Anonymous, Incorporated. All rights reserved.), addresses the connection between food and emotions with these words:

“For a compulsive overeater, eating is attached to emotions. We are never fully satisfied, no matter how much we eat, because we are eating for emotional reasons rather than physical reasons. We eat for excitement, love celebration, loneliness, escape, pleasure and comfort. We devour food to anesthetize ourselves. We eat out of anger, resentment, envy, jealousy, fear, pride, guilt and grief.”

The good news is that, through working the 12 Steps, I’ve actually been able to discover/uncover whatever feelings I’ve been stuffing down with excess food. Through working the 12 Steps while working with other addicts I’ve found the strength to NOT act out with food in an addictve, compulsive or impulsive manner, despite feeling some intense and pretty crappy emotions!

Recovery doesn’t magically protect me from feeling painful feelings. Recovery gives me the strength and courage to discover, feel and then move beyond my feelings without the need to swallow excessive amounts of food or avoid physical exercise. How does all of this work? One Day, One Step and One Feeling at a time!

 

Should We EVER “Avoid” Food To Protect Our Recovery?

Since I stated in a previous post that I do NOT believe that food is something to be “feared” by us addicts  (either in terms of seeing it, smelling it or (gasp!) even thinking about it), I’d like to discuss the issue of when and if it is ever approriate for a food addict to avoid food.

What I’m sharing about this (like hopefully most everything I discuss on OveractiveFork) is based on my experience, strength and hope. This means that what I’m about to share is based on real life experience and is not some sort of intellectual theory that has not been tested in my own life.

Fact 1: We DO have to deal with food in the “real world”. It surrounds us everyday and everywhere. 

Fact 2: We really SHOULD have to eat some food each in order to survive. So “avoiding” food entirely isn’t a sane option.

Considering the two facts presented above, why is it that some food addicts expect 12 Step recovery — recovery intended to help us overcome our addiction, One Day At A Time – to play into, encourage or enable the fear of facing food?  Authentic recovery, IMHO, recogizes that food is not our problem!!! Our “problem” is the addiction to overeating (and, for many us, we also have an addiction that leads us to avoid physical exercise at all costs). Treating our addiction – not devising schemes to avoid food – is the proper focus of my recovery efforts.

Yes, Step 1 of Alcoholics Anonymous begins, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol…”, but it does NOT state that we are powerless over our elbows, our mouths or making choices that will ultimately enhance our recovery. We addicts ARE powerless, to be sure, but we are NOT hopeless!

Does that mean I go out of my way to “test my recovery”?  Not at all. My recovery from my addiction is a precious gift. My recovery is not a game to be played with. So I do not go out of my way to tempt myself to overeat (or underexercise). Likewise I would never encourage any other addict to play games with their recovery, nor would I encourage them to fear food or take “heroic measures” to avoid it.

My experience in meetings of Overeaters Anonymous over the years has given me exposure to some fellowship members who need to avoid even the thought of food. IMHO, this is more about trying to control the behavior of other members than it is about working their own program of recovery. So if attend an OA meeting where someone states that the mere mention of food is NOT allowed, please find a DIFFERENT meeting to attend!!!!  Telling a member that they can’t mention food by it’s actual, specific name is nothing less than flamingly co-dependent behavior!

I’ve personally checked (on a number of occasions over the years) with Overeaters Anonymous World Service Office (www.oa.org), OA’s Regional Trustees and other trusted servants of the OA fellowship and ALL of them have stated to me that NO official (or even suggested) rule exists about prohibiting (or even discouraging) the mention of food during meetings. To the best of my investigating, it appears that this is yet another crock of crap that has come about thanks to the anti-carbohydrate fanaticists known as the dreded “H.O.W. Movement”. To says the least, these ”sugar-and-flour-phobics” do not represent the besting thinking found within the Overeaters Anonymous fellowship!

Find me a H.O.W. Movement devotee who has long-term recovery from weight loss — I just dare you to find even one!  Yes, you can find some who have lost lots of excess weight, but find me one who has been at goal weight for more than a year or two?  They just can’t be found! NObody can follow their food plan (rigid, perfectionistic and unbalanced as it is).  That food plan is one of the most extremely dangerous forms of a diet (NOT a “food plan” in the healthy sense, but a “diet” in the worst sense of that word) that has ever existed.

If you know about the history of Overeaters Anonymous, then you know that the original writer of the “Grey Sheet food plan” (which has been mal-adapted by numorous H.O.W. cultists over the years) was written by an OA member who wasn’t even a dieticician! I don’t know about y’all, but I’d trust another addict to write my food plan as much as I’d trust a pyromaniac to be a fireman! –> In other words, It is NOT a good idea!!!

Now that I’ve warned y’all about the H.O.W. Movement, I want to share that – based on my experience, strength and hope — that working and living the 12 Steps (O.D.A.A.T.) is the best way I’ve found to rob food of it’s power to control my thinking, let alone my choices when it comes to what and how much I eat.

Working and living the 12 Steps – over and over, O.D.A.A.T. – relieves me of guilt, shame, fear and a whole host of other negativity that kept me both in bondage to food and yet also fearful of it. The 12 Steps have allowed me to overcome (O.D.A.A.T. — it doesn’t usually happen overnight!) my co-dependency issues that kept tangled in UNhealthy relationships with toxic individuals. I no longer have to stay involved in (or stuck in woundedness from) UNhealthy relationships that only fed into my addiction to OVEReat.

Do I ever “avoid” persons, places and/or situations where I would likely find it only too easy to overeat?  Yes, from time to time (even as recently as this past Sunday) I do avoid such situations…BUT NOT because they can “magically force” me to overeat. Rather I stay away from this persons, places and/or situations because I (stated positively) make choices today that enhance the quality of my life and my recovery. Hanging out around “food pushers” only adds to my stress level. They can’t “force” me to overeat, but why hang out with people who almost certainly get on my nerves? It just doesn’t make sense.

Just for today, I don’t choose to keep certain foods near me (in my kitchen) because I know “my history” with those foods. Why place myself in constant temptation to overeat? Thankfully I’m following a nutritionally-sane food plan that allows me to choose from a wide variety of foods, so I don’t get bored just because I choose to stay away from certain foods. But I’m NOT staying away from any food because I’m afraid of it. I simply respect my history with it and don’t choose to repeat it. I seem to recall that someone once said“Those who can’t remember the past are destined to repeat it”.

 

Notes From The Journey…

Before anyone sends me hate mail because I’ve posted yet another picture of REAL FOOD on my blog (yes, I actually got a message from some guy recently who was all shook up over seeing the picture of a man holding a fork — NO food on the fork, just a fork – in the masthead at the top of this page!), allow me to explain why, when I deem them appropriate, I choose to post such photographs.

Allow me to do a reality check: Just SEEING a picture of food canNOT force any food addict to overeat compulsively!!! If I posted a picture of dog poop would you HAVE TO eat it?  Nope!  The same is true when you see, smell or (gasp!) even think about food.  We addicts are powerLESS over food, but NOT over our elbows!

I used to fear the sight, smell and thoughts of food. But my atttitude toward food has been radically changed by a couple of passages found in Alcoholics Anonymous, the basic text of that fellowship. One of those passages (pages 84 and 85) reads:

“”We have ceased fighting anything or anyone — even alcohol (food). For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in (food). If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We can now react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that this new attitude toward liquor (food) is really a gift of God.

That is the miracle of it.  We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.  We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected.  We have not even sworn off.  Instead, the problem has been removed.  It does not exist for us.  We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.  That is our experience.  That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.” (pages 84-85)

So you might as well get used to seeing pictures of FOOD within the entries of OVERACTIVE FORK, because I’ll continue to post them when/if they fit the topic I’m writing about! Oh yeah…you might want to consider working the 12 Steps so when you do see ”recovery-threatening pictures” you wont CHOOSE to eat whatever food is pictured on my blog! :-D Working the 12 Steps, not just mentally masturbating about them, is how one gets to the “position of neutrality” discussed in the AA Big Book passage listed above. Hiding from food is NO substitute for working the 12 Steps. Being afraid of food is, in an of itself, NOT a hallmark of authentic 12 Step recovery from food addiction. On the other hand, being afraid of what acting out with our addiction can do our health and physical well-being IS something to fear, IMHO.

We now return to the subject of this entry…

I’m pleased to report that this week, my second week of back-to-back food sobriety and exercise sanity this time around, is going very well. Thank you, God!!! Thank you, fellow addicts and others!!!

Occasionally I hope to write about “little but important experiences” I have along this “journey known as recovery”. This is the first such entry.

* To help remind himself that he really is NOT the center of the universe, a good friend of mine in the AA and OA fellowships is fond of saying, “I may not be much but I am ALL that I think about!” What? An addict with an OVERinflated ego? Say it ain’t so! I don’t know about you, but I can certainly relate this  line (at least occasionally). <blush>

One of the ways that I’ve finally figured out that my ego is getting OVERinflated is when I find myself REALLY ANGRY (then ultimately resentful) for the seemingly smallest things that other people “do to me” To paraphrase another AA member , “The bigger the target, the easier it is to hit”. So true!

One of the things that would (normally) send my anger level into the stratosphere is when fast food drive-thru workers would get my WRONG. I just knew that they “were out to sabotage my excellent recovery efforts”. If you go thru many a fast food drive-thru lane you know how (if you are lucky) one in ten of your orders comes out wrong. So I’ve had LOTS of occasions to get pretty mad over the years — Once last year I even managed to use the terrible “F Bomb” when a fast food worker tried to INSIST on giving back to me the WRONG food ALONG WITH the food that I (finally!) had actually ordered (“Just give me the f—ing food that I ordered!” I yelled). <still blushing>

FINALLY, earlier this week, I “got it”!!!

At last I realized that NObody was trying to mess with my recovery (REALLY!!!) when I was handed a food item that I had NOT ordered.  When I went back to thru the lane I was given the CORRECT item that I ordered and was told to KEEP the item that was given to me INcorrectly…And yet I did NOT explode! It may not sound like a big deal, but for me this IS progress!!!

I’m so very thankful that someone finally told me that Health Department regulations PREVENT restaurant employees from serving food that (for any reason) has been returned to them. So when they say, “Go ahead and keep it (the WRONG food item)…” they probably would rather I eat it (or that I give it to someone else to eat) because the only other option is to throw it away.

Even if I feel “terribly weak” in my ability to NOT eat something that I was given in error, it is MY responsibility to take care of myself and NOT eat it. This really is NOT about what other people are doing to mess with me and sabotage my recovery efforts!  I (yes, me) CAN choose to throw away something BEFORE it enters into my mouth (”I may be powerLESS over food, but I’m NOT powerLESS over my elbows!!!). <amazed look>

And really, NO food is my “problem”…My “problem” is the DISEASE OF ADDICTION living INside of my body…NOT an INantimate piece of food that exists OUTside of my body. I have a program of recovery with LOTS of tools that CAN (and HAVE) help(ed) me defuse tense interactions with food.

 

Impulsive Overeating

Some people refer to themselves as “compulsive overeaters”. Others refer to themselves as “food addicts”.

Some people with a “food issue” make a big deal about how they identify themselves and insist that others identify themselves exactly the way they do when it comes to identifying problematic food-related behavior.

My position, when it comes to identifying my out-of-control food behavior, is that ultimately I’m an addict and that excessive food intake and avoidance of physical exercise are merely manifestations of my underlying addictive disorder. As I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to agree with a friend who believed that codependency was underneath every single self-destructive addiction.

Whatever.  How I identify my disorder isn’t all that important. What is important, IMHO, is what I’m doing about.

I’m certainly cmpulsive when it comes to food and exercise avoidance.

I’m definitely an addict when it comes to these two things.

I’m also very much of what I would call an “Impulsive Overeater”. “Impulsive” to the point that when I want to eat something (or want to avoid exercise) ALMOST NOTHING will stop from having my way!  If this isn’t a classic definition of “addiction” I don’t know what is! <blush> As I’ve also heard this reality described, we addicts, “want what we want when we want it — if not BEFORE!!!”

I can really relate to the following definitions of “impulse” and “impulsive”.

IMPULSE
* “Sudden, involuntary inclination prompting to action.”
* ”A sudden desire.”
* “A sudden pushing or driving force.”

IMPULSIVE
” Without forethought.”
* “Determined by chance or impulse or whim, rather than by necessity or reason.”
* “Characterized by undue haste and lack of thought or deliberation.”

Being impulsive explains a LOT about my behavior with food and exercise avoidance…especially with the food part of my addiction process! How many times it seemed almost if food MAGICALLY came FLYING into my mouth! No forethought, just an INSTANEOUS action took place, over which I felt powerLESS.

And when I am powerLESS, what a great place to “tap into the power” I find when working the 12 Steps, praying, working with other addicts! I find it of absolute importance that I share HONESTLY (with both God and other addicts) about at those moments when I want to act out in a self-destructive manner. Mentioning food and behaviors by names often does much to diminish the power of my self-destructive behaviors.

I bring up this issue of “impuslive overeating” because this issue is related to one of my few frustrations with the Weight Watchers POINTS food plan.

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I think the POINTS plan has to be one of the nutritionally-sanest food plans ever written. Because it is so very “sane” when it comes to nutrition, I have found it to be the easiest food plan I’ve ever tried to follow. This is NOT another “diet”. Given the variety and volume of food it allows me to consume, for the most part it is a sheer joy to follow. Figuring up the POINTS value of foods takes some work, but my experience is that most things in life that are worthwhile DO take work.

So when it comes to MY impulsiveness and working the POINTS food plan the “rub” is that I really can’t just “grab and inhale” any old food whenever I feel like it.  In order to honestly work the POINTS food plan I must know the POINTS value of every food item I consume. It doesn’t great math skills to work the POINTS food plan, but it DOES take some discipline. And discipline makes it pretty hard to act out impulsively with excess food! This is NOT necessarily a bad thing. The only problem is that my “addict within” doesn’t particularly care for this!

 

Back On Track: The First 72 Hours

Today is the first day AGAIN of my recovery journey!!!

By the grace of God I’m beginning again, after an approximately 11 week relapse that resulted in a 3.3 pound weight re-gain…Three of those “3.3 pounds” I re-lost over the past six days.  To clarify: While I had some success getting back on track over the past six days, TODAY is the FIRST day of REALLY doing this “recovery thing” right.

I “begin again” with a weight loss of 80 1/2 pounds below my top known weight (which was 510 pounds, circa in mid-1986).  My lowest known weight during this period of time (reached around 1990) was 335 pounds. At this afternoon’s weigh-in my weight was 429 1/2 pounds.

Don’t we addicts just LOVE “quoting our numbers” as if they are the ONLY evidence of our value as a person (or lack thereof).  I (and you too, if you are an addict) are so much more than the “numbers” the Scale Monster spits out at us! Weight loss (and gain/re-gain) numbers are important to keep track of to be sure (they serve to “mirror back” to us [and others] what our recovery (or relapse) looks like — but they are JUST one set of numbers to consider (waist size, cholesterol, triglycerides and many other “numbers” are also worth considering and have great significance in how we judge our recovery, IMHO).

In any case, the subject line of this entry refers to a concept I learned in my earliest days of recovery (circa 1977) from my first REAL sponsor in the Overeaters Anonymous (OA) fellowship (my ACTUAL first sponsor had to dump after just three days because her husband was jealous of me).  Back “in the day” we males were (at best) a really small minority within the OA fellowship, so my first several OA sponsors were FEmales out of sheer necessity.

My first “REAL sponsor” was actually the friend who first invited me to OA. M.C. (her initials, used to protect her anonymity) wisely taught me that the first 72 hours (= 3 days, lived JUST one day at a time) one attempts recovery are to marked by “cutting ourselves some slack”. While one of the definitions of this phrase that I’m familiar with means “…to allow for some latitude in enforcing the general guidelines…”, what M.C. was referring to specifically was the important of “being gentle” with ourselves in every way possible while focusing (or re-focusing) on our recovery process.

“Being  gentle” is pretty much a foreign concept to me, since (in addition to being an addict) I’m also an Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACOA) type of co-dependent.  We ACOA types (and most all co-dependents for that matter) tend to “judge ourselves (and others?) withOUT mercy”, which means that if we don’t do whatever we’re doing PERFECTLY (and perfectionism often leads us feeling STRESSED, right?), then we usually don’t feel that whatever we are doing is “good enough”…and when we aren’t “good enough” we have an EXCUSE to give up and not try at all, right?

So for the first 72 hours of my recovery I’m remembering to be gentle with myself and avoiding (as much as humanly possible) all people and situations that typically/historically cause me stress (Stress, as we addicts know all-too-well) is a MAJOR trigger into active addiction.)

Also for the first 72 hours I’m NOT trying to over-do anything – even my recovery! Follow my food plan? Yes! (Thankfully the Weight Watchers POINTS food plan allows for variety, moderation and IMperfection — along with discipline). Follow my exercise plan? Yes! (BUT I’m NOT to become a “well-chisseled stud” overnight! MODERATION IN ALL THINGS — At least for the first 72 hours of continuous recovery!!!) And I’m NOT going to try to work ALL 12 Steps in one sitting — Working (re-working) Step One is a GREAT place to focus for at least the first 72 hours!

So as I detox from excess volumes of food and a lack of physical exercise, I’m working a plan of recovery, without (hopefully) the way I work it and the way I live my life in general becoming stubbling blocks to my recovery.

In the wisdom of the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship, we addicts are reminded about the importantce of BALANCE in recovery: “Easy does it, but DO it” as a certain bumperstick reads (emphasis added).

Speaking of BALANCE, in addition to the AA phrase quoted above, I also remember the ACOA axiom that states, “I’m a ‘human BEing’ – NOT a ‘human DOing’”.

So in addition to being gentle with myself, what else MUST I do during the first 72 hours of recovery in order to experience authentic recovery (as opposed to just engaging in ”mental masturbation”) from my addiction? Here’s my Short List of MUST-Do’s:

1) Stop Overeating (which can best be done when following a moderate food plan, as approved by a health care professional familiar with one’s health situation/history).

2) Work An Exercise Plan (this is on my list because I’m addicted to “exercise avoidance”. Yet in order to experience a sane “lifestyle change” that will support HEALTHY weight loss and avoidance of weight re-gain, daily exercise is important. Just like my food plan, my exercise plan is approved by a health care professional familiar with my health situation/history).

3. Work With Other Addicts (Recovery isn’t done in isolation: “Together we can do what we could never do alone!”).

4. Work the 12 Steps, JUST ONE Step at a time.

5. Repeat #1 - # 4 as needed, one day at a time.

And if you aren’t familiar with the meaning of the phrase “mental masturbation”, here are three definitions I’ve found on the Interest today that my help you understand what it is and why it defeats authentic recovery…

“Intellectual activity that serves no practical purpose.”

“The act of engaging in useless yet intellectually stimulating conversation, usually as an excuse to avoid taking constructive action in your life.”

“The act of engaging in impractical/nonproductive mental exercise / thinkings / writings / etc., through which a practitioner only comforts oneself mentally. Such acts don’t lead to any constructive results what so ever in the real world.”

 

Underneath All Addictions . . . Codependency?

Back in the mid-1980’s, a friend of mine who had a 12 Step perspective on addiction recovery, shared his belief that underneath overeating and all other addictions exists the real addiction that needed to be treated: codependency. Overeating, underexercising, indeed addictive/compulsive behaviors of every sort can all be traced back to this one common denominator.

To this day I believe my friend was on target with his theory. Yes, most addictive behaviors do seem to have some underlying biological connection/cause (e.g., physical addictions to substance like booze, mood-altering drugs, sex, food, compulsive spending, etc.). Yet, pardon my codependent observation here (Isn’t it codependent of me to speak for others?), but aren’t most of us addicts ”flamingly codependent” — even as we experience recovery from other addictions?

OK. Maybe it’s just me who should self-identify as being a flaming codpendent (sometimes less flamingly, other times more flamingly). Then again, if you’ve ever observed fellow 12 Steppers interactive with each other, you might be inclined to believe that I’m not the lone codependent in 12 Step recovery.

Here’s an example of codependency amongst 12 Steppers: Have you ever heard the saying that “The only requirements for starting a new A.A./O.A./N.A./etc.-A. meeting are two members, a coffee pot and a resentment”? My experience is that most resentments are caused when one 12 Steppers can’t control another — can’t have their way, can’t win a group conscious vote, can’t succeed at shoving their approach to recovery down the throats of other group members, etc.

If you’ve read Melody Beattie’s self-help bestseller, CoDependent No More, then you might be skeptical (as I used to be) about whether codependency really is a legitimate problem since (based on her book’s all-encompasing definition) surely 99% of ALL persons – not just us addicts – are codependent, while the other 1% must be in denial.

Beattie seems to suggest that viritually any imperfection in how we deal with others makes one a codependent. Yet who can honestly claim to act with perfect relationship skills all the time? Not moi.

If, on the other hand, I focus my definition of codependency on just the major relationship problems/issues, then codependency makes more sense and can explain most of the “triggers” for most of my addictive behaviors.

Some of the relationship issues that appear to be legimate symptoms of codependency include: controlling behaviors (either we attempt to control others or we allow others to control us), distrust of ourselves and others, perfectionism, stuffling/avoidance of feelings, problems with emotional and sexual intimacy and excessive caretaking of others. We also tend to judge ourselves without mercy.

Many of the codependents in my life (including myself) end up experiencing megaloads of anxiety (and even panic attacks), depression and ftustration as those we care about often appear to be “spinning out of control” (Heck, no wonder they need us to contol them! HA!). A name for those individuals spinning out of control that I like is “crazymakers”.

We now interrupt this otherwise serious blog entry (some of us codependents overdose big time on being SERIOUS, so a hmor break is certainly in order!) for some Codependency Humor:

– You might be a codependent if you refer to your friends as being a “caseload”.

– Am I a codependent? Depends what you think…Do you think I’m codependent?

– Why do codependents always flunk Geography class? Because they can’t distinguish any boundaries.

Now back to more serious blogging about codependency as the underlying cause for addictions.

Perhaps codependency is the underlying cause for the 12 Step reminder to “H.A.L.T.” — In our lack of caring for ourselves we too easily forget to keep from getting “toooooooo” Hungry, Angry, Lonely and/or Tired.

Perhaps codependency is at the cause for some of us having UNhealthy expectations of others. A member of Alcoholics Anonymous shares the how he overcomes the stress caused by his codependent thinking: “I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.”

Perhaps codependency is addressed in the line from the Serenity Prayer that asks God to give us the “Serenity to accept the things we cannot change…”.

Agree or disagree with my friend’s theory that codependency is the addiction that exists underneath all other addictions (therefore is the ultimate trigger for other addictive behaviors), what I know for sure is that the pain caused by my codependent behaviors have lead me to acting out with food (and other substances and things as well). So I personally see a great value in working on my codependency issues along with my food and other addiction issues.