Protected & Obscured

Enjoy this 9-minute read or listen!

I look around the room at all the middle-aged white women at my Saturday morning OA meeting sharing stories about what they did and didn’t eat at Thanksgiving – what they abstained from, what they had one little bite of and regretted – and I wonder to myself, “Is this what it’s really about? Whether I take one little bite of food?” I think of all the advice I’ve received from my sponsor and fellows over the past few months – “one day at a time”, “surrender your will”, “forget yourself in service”, “everything is from Higher Power” – and it suddenly strikes me as not so different from what I heard living in a guru-based spiritual community. And the messages I hear internalized in myself every day as a woman who has gradually mastered cheerful appeasement to survive in male-dominated businesses that appreciate just enough directness to earn respect but not too much to challenge their authority.

I think about why I eat, why I continue to eat even after finishing all twelve steps, even though I know how these foods trigger my misdirected immune system. I know it has something to do with pleasure, with rebellion, and with hopelessness. Some moments I binge feel like scenes from sci-fi movies where the two main characters finally kiss, even though a relationship would never work, just because it’s the end of the world. If they are going down, they want to go down blissed out and together. Yes, I have an allergy of the body. I crave the foods that I am allergic to and that make me feel like crap. It’s a cruel joke (and scientifically-proven aspect) of human anatomy. But to say that my compulsive overeating is just the result of an allergy of the body and twist of the mind is to completely divorce my body and mind from the very real social, economic, and environmental crises they are shouldering day in and day out.

This past month, I participated in a three-week on-line training with Lumos on the resilience toolkit – a series of techniques for recognizing and de-escalating the various stages of a triggered nervous system. A main highlight was the need to discern whether the nervous system is triggered into fight, flight or freeze by the imprint of past trauma or by a very real threat in the environment. I experienced this directly through my general resistance to using the tools. Each time I tried anchoring myself in my physical surroundings, tapping my shoulders, or elongating my exhale, a rebellion began to stir inside of me as if a distant voice was protesting – “Don’t tell me to ignore this. Don’t put me to sleep. Something is not okay!”

What could possibly be wrong with feeling more calm, more peaceful, more accepting of life? Don’t all of us want to feel as though we have enough food, enough money, enough love? Desire does appear to be the root of all suffering. If everything I need can be found within, I will never be shaken by impermanence. And if exerting my self-will in the world brings only short-lived gains or total disappointments, trusting everything happens exactly as it should brings a sense of relief. The problem is that these concepts have come to us through organized spiritual traditions that upheld harmony in their respective cultures. Happy people are docile and compliant people. People with desires are restless and sometimes outraged, especially if the governing body is disinterested in the individual’s well-being or self-actualization.

Practices like yoga and meditation, which gained traction in the West as a revolutionary rejection of social norms, are increasingly becoming tools for our capitalist society to further oppress and exploit. Are you overworked and stressed? Don’t unionize – meditate! Are you exhausted from raising kids alone on a minimum wage job? Don’t protest – take a yoga class and drink a green smoothie! Outrage is so anti-social – and who has time for activism anyway? Taking another look at the 12-steps reveals them to me in a similar light. Every disappointment, every conflict, every resentment and fear is about a defect in me. I’m the problem and all I need to do is get over myself and pray and find serenity everything will be fine. Except sometimes it isn’t. I have spent my life analyzing the crap out of myself. I have dedicated years to spiritual practice and service-based jobs. I have made the vast majority of my amends and pretty much everyone told me I had nothing to apologize for. And I have made outreach calls just about every day for almost a year. So why am I still eating?

I’m still eating because I’m lonely. I’m surrounded by people who do their best to show care, but the handful of people who really see and celebrate what makes me tick are scattered across the country. I have spent the past two years working in the shadow of someone else’s vision with little opportunity to do what I am best at or to co-create something personally meaningful. I feel baffled by and ill-equipped to navigate the current job market in a way that gives me any sense of security in meeting the rising cost of living over the next decade. And I have challenging, expensive health needs that leave feeling tired, hungry, and divorced from much of what has always brought me joy and how most people in my culture connect and celebrate. I am barely able to stay afloat with the bits of nurturing I receive. I am far from thriving. I know, because I remember what it felt like, and that memory haunts me, bringing with it explanations that leave me torn between the equally futile options of blaming myself or blaming the world.

When I tried to put down the alcohol, the men, and the food the overall quality of my life got much, much worse. It wasn’t until I tried abstaining from all my vices that I got suicidal. It isn’t my place to define wellness, fulfillment, or sobriety for anyone else. I know many people whose lives have been permanently transformed by the steps, but I can’t speak to their circumstances or their resilience. What I know is that for me, sometimes taking that first bite is not a failure, but a victory – a victory over a self-imposed binary tyranny that tells me there is only abstinence or addiction, salvation or damnation. Sometimes it is an act of mercy and fierce self-compassion to numb out when despair is tugging me down and overwhelm is threatening to crush me. Would I like to have other tools to cope? Yes. Do I acknowledge that eating isn’t the solution and often makes the problem worse? Yes. But am I going to berate myself for seeking comfort and taking the edge off when life is too much? Absolutely not. While I acknowledge that addictions, if they run their course, can all be fatal, I also believe that they have, on occasion, saved my life and will likely continue to do so.

I used to believe the only path to abstinence, personal growth, and spiritual development was to go through the middle of whatever I’m feeling. I don’t believe that anymore. I am an addict, but I am also a trauma-survivor who continues to be traumatized by the circumstances, large and small, that I am living in. Compulsive behaviors are a way to establish routine in an uncertain world. A high takes the edge off of fear and overwhelm. And while I acknowledge that friends, meaningful service, and a spiritual connection are all more effective long-term supports, sometimes we don’t have access to any of them, or they just simply can’t get through to us.

I thought 12-step was the answer, as I so often do with the next best thing. But I have walked that path long enough now to know it isn’t that simple. A nightly inventory does nothing for me. And sometimes setting my pain aside to be of service to someone else is another way to abandon myself by saying my needs don’t matter. There is trauma trapped in my nervous system and I am starving to be deeply seen and loved, and to feel safe. I think most of us are. This isn’t about transcendence or acceptance. It isn’t about perfecting ourselves. Nor is it about railing against the toxic structures in our lives that cannot be toppled. The best I can make sense of it today is that it seems to start with seeing more clearly what is in and around me, and closing my eyes when that is too much. It’s about starting to take actions based on what I know, and pulling back when the fear begins to consume me. This is how anything emerges from what has protected and obscured it – one cautious bit at a time.

Our culture loves heroes. I am over that archetype. The only thing about my story that feels heroic is that I am still talking about what I love and what I believe. But I eat because it has dawned on me that I am no longer capable of acting in service of what I love and believe in any sort of consistent or truly meaningful way. I am trapped in my life and succumbing to the slow death of a thousand compromises devouring the hope I once had for what is possible. What’s left to be done isn’t about overcoming. Nor is it about surrender. It’s about the two things I still feel able to do – calling in the right reinforcements. And taking breaks to comfort myself until they come.

Nancy