Acceptance

So, I log into Facebook and see that a high school acquaintance has updated her profile picture. She’s bald and beautiful! She goes on to explain that she has Alopecia and has finally decided to cut her hair and embrace her condition. I found this so courageous and inspirational!

I have Hashimoto’s Disease which causes me to lose my hair. Well, actually, it’s probably more from the side effects of Synthroid. It eventually grows back but over the past three years the growth has been thinner and thinner. I thought about shaving my head back in 2008. Now I have this new sense of inspiration to embrace the fact that I am slowing losing my hair and just shave it off. I don’t even want to wear a wig. I’ll just be bald and beautiful!

I sent her a message. It turns out that she also lives in the Atlanta area so we’re going to get together to chat about her journey. Spirit is awesome. You never know why people are in your lives. I see this as part of my journey of recovery and learning to accept life on life’s terms. So, today, I am taking the first step and sharing this with a few people. So far the response has been awesome! It is truly a blessing to know that there are people who love you for you.

Karma

I spent some time this morning praying and meditating about how to best share my story on justifiable anger. I really want to speak from a place of experience, strength, and hope. I know that if I come from a place of Thy Will be done that I will be of usefulness to someone.

I found myself having to stop and pray and go meditate because there are still residual seeds of anger still present.

I also did some writing this morning that I won’t share here. It occurred to me that all the details do not matter. The details have the makings of a Lifetime movie or an episode on Snapped. This is just how surreal and frightening this whole situation was to me. What does matter is that I was extremely hurt by this individual. She betrayed my trust. She lied and manipulated. She was extremely cruel, deceptive, and unkind. I felt I had a right to be angry with her.

The truth is that I do not have a right to be angry with her or anyone else. What happens is best left up to God and Karma to resolve. If I want to recover, I must release all the anger I feel about the situation. I also need to acknowledge my part. I am not without blame. I am not a victim. It is also true that she is pathologically ill. If anything, I must demonstrate love and compassion toward her. Plus, it really wasn’t about me so I shouldn’t take it so personally. Accepting this really hurts because I thought I meant something to her, I thought we were friends. This, more than anything, really hurts me to my core.

I am very grateful I can look back at it all with a sense of peace. I will be forever grateful because it brought me to the place I am today. I probably would have never given up on that relationship. I wanted it and her so badly. However, today I know I deserve so much more. She never really had much to offer. I don’t have to be in a relationship with someone who expects more than she is willing to give.

I was ready to end the relationship five years before this all happened and I let her talk me into staying. That also pissed me off. I was willing to give her another chance but when it came to me having another chance for whatever reason she thought only of herself. But, I do not regret it. I still believe in treating people the way I wish to be treated. If they do not receive it in love, that is their problem not mine. The law of Karma works for so-called good as well as so-called bad. What I put out into the Universe, will come back to me also.

Speaker Meeting: Justifiable Anger

Speaking at a meeting next Saturday. I've been praying about a topic for weeks and today I received my answer -- justifiable anger. I am very grateful to Spirit for guidance on this topic. It's right in alignment with what I have been working on in my meditation group. I just found the perfect reading too. It's a piece titled Justifiable Anger in OA's Seeking the Spiritual Path. I just starting taking some notes on what I plan to share. I'm sure I'll be back over the next couple of days to process it.

No Magic Pill -- Part Two

Sometime ago a coworker asked me how I lost weight. She seemed disappointed when I told her it was due to OA and exercise. I remember walking away thinking, sorry, there’s no magic pill. Well, I saw her today and she looks great! She’s probably lost about 50 pounds! I didn’t recognize her when she walked into the conference room. I have to admit part of me was so jealous. I thought, whatever she did, I want to do it!

I thought about it during my drive home. Then it occurred to me. We’ve been working together for 11 years and I’ve seen her go up and down. I remember that she’s been this size before. It’s none of my business how she got to that size. All I know is that I need to stay on my path. While she may have found a magic pill, there’s no magic pill for me. My problem goes beyond the food and weight so I need to stay the course of working the steps and following my food plan.

Insight: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Just finished sharing with one of my meditation buddies…. He wanted to follow up on something we discussed during my Tuesday night talk. We were talking about how to create and maintain healthy boundaries without anger. For me, anger has been the catalyst for my boundaries.

Yesterday while I was sitting, it occurred to me that I forget to mention something very important that I learned in therapy last year. While I paid a great amount of attention to my ex’s words, I was not being as attentive to her behavior. This was a huge opportunity and breakthrough for me. Not everyone has the same level of integrity; they don’t mean what they say. While this was my value, it definitely was not hers. It’s not a judgment. It is what it is. For whatever reason, she’s a compulsive liar (and some believe may be a sociopath.) Anyhow, this is where it gets tricky for me because I need to figure how to pay attention, create healthy boundaries, and not feel this resentment that I’m someone’s babysitter. I know it will be better. She was just a master manipulator. She complained that I treated her like she was 12 yrs old. I gave her what she wanted and she couldn't handle it. This is the bottom line with that relationship. I’m so done with that.

Another thing that came up was that behind all the anger is fear. I'm afraid my ex probably never loved, appreciated, or respected me. I'm also afraid I never loved, appreciated, or respected myself enough to allow myself to be duped and manipulated.

I'm still so very grateful for the lessons I am learning. My relationships with people who do truly love and care for me and vice versa are so much better. I no longer waste my time with lopsided relationships.

This process also applies to myself. I want my words and actions to be in alignment. Working my program, working the steps is all about right relationships with myself, God, and others.

Insight: Anger and Resentment

Lately no matter where we start in our discussion (tonight we started with impermanence and integration) we end on anger and resentment. We had a great discussion tonight. Left remembering one thing – it’s all based on fear. While I am very angry for loving someone who was so deceptive, I am also afraid it could happen again. As I shared tonight, while I am no saint I do feel like I did all the “right” things. I did my best to address red flags, express my feelings, ask questions, work on myself, compromise, create boundaries, etc. If I could invest all that I did in a relationship and still end up where I am today, I do not know what else I can do.
Truthfully, I don’t even know what I can learn from the experience except never to trust anything that comes out of anyone mouth. I don’t want to live like that. Yet, I don’t want to be stupid and gullible again either. So, I find the middle way, balance, somewhere in between both extremes, which is where I thought I was in my last relationship. This is why I’m so confused.
I have to constantly remind myself that it is not a bad thing to trust another. You should be able to trust what your partner is saying to you. However, I also need to pay better attention to what the person is doing. Actions speak louder than words. Here is where my opportunities lie.
So this week we are focusing on Metta Practice. I pray this helps. I have been doing better in my waking state. Now, the anger is manifesting in my dreams.

J says I need to stop blaming myself, stop being so hard on myself. I really didn’t think I was blaming myself. I thought I was simply accepting my part in the situation in order to clean up my side of the street. I understand why he said what he did. B thinks I should read this book called The Socialpath Next Door. I just read the description and it gave me chills because most of this describes my ex:

In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be sociopaths too.

We are accustomed to think of sociopaths as violent criminals, but in The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard psychologist Martha Stout reveals that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people—one in twenty-five—has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.

How do we recognize the remorseless? One of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma that makes sociopaths more charming or interesting than the other people around them. They’re more spontaneous, more intense, more complex, or even sexier than everyone else, making them tricky to identify and leaving us easily seduced. Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others’ suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win.

The fact is, we all almost certainly know at least one or more sociopaths already. Part of the urgency in reading The Sociopath Next Door is the moment when we suddenly recognize that someone we know—someone we worked for, or were involved with, or voted for—is a sociopath. But what do we do with that knowledge? To arm us against the sociopath, Dr. Stout teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game.

It is the ruthless versus the rest of us, and The Sociopath Next Door will show you how to recognize and defeat the devil you know.

Holy Shift: The Importance of Mindful Eating

As I shared on my other blog, I have been getting all sorts of gentle nudges from Spirit about mindful eating – tweets, forwarded emails, my sponsee mentioned mindful eating in one of her check-ins. So, yesterday I committed to eating one meal a day mindfully.
I chose yesterday because I knew I would be able to share my experience right away with my meditation/ discussion group. I had mentioned mindful eating the previous week. I shared how I found the experience both enlightening and challenging. I realize how much I miss by not paying attention while I eat…I’m usually working, reading, watching TV, or talking to someone. The challenges I found were being afraid to truly enjoy the meal. The compulsive overeater in me is really afraid to enjoy food as much as I did pre-OA. The other challenge was time. It takes a great deal of time to enjoy the sights, sounds, and tastes of a meal. I tried the exercise during lunch. I’m sharing in my group about how I only have an hour for lunch and I finally gave up and just ate the salad my “normal” way…so J says, if your hour was up, maybe you’re just done with the meal. What? I thought holy shift…this is exactly what a normal eater would do. It’s the compulsive overeater in me who feels I have to eat everything on my plate. I was so grateful for this feedback. So, I’m going to try this approach today.

Here are the tips I’m using from The Importance of Mindful Eating Blog:

• Set an intention before my meal
• Focus on the food
• Put the fork/spoon down between eat bite
• Chew food thoroughly
• Consider eating in silence
• Enjoy food without judgment or criticism

Recovery Update

Recovery is going pretty well these days. I have been working on releasing resentment and staying present. It’s been a slow, painful process but it has also been rewarding. It’s extremely difficult to come to terms with the fact that someone you loved with all your heart and soul could dismiss you like trash. Then, on top of all that, I learn about betrayal. I feel so stupid. When it’s all said and done, I am VERY grateful. My prayers were answered. I always wanted to know her better. I cannot be upset that what I learned wasn’t what I was expecting. It’s all about acceptance.

This experience has brought my capacity to love to a new level. Not only did learn some things I may not have wanted to learn about her, I also learned many things I didn't want to learn about myself. There’s no way anyone could have told me I had this much patience or self-control. I cannot believe I was able to keep my ego in check. However, I have to remind myself I am dealing with dis-ease. I can only do my part.