gentle Annie

I've been trying to go to meetings over this past week Alanon, OA, AA, really anything I can find where that language is spoken. I could easily be in a room full of homeless folk and provided that they were reading The Promises I'd be at home. I'm less gung-ho about the OA meetings because the meetings here are so frustratingly food-based; when they go through what it was like, what happened and what it's like now, their stories rarely delve into the evolution of their relationships, their thinking, their relationship with god, in fact their "what happened" is usually simply that they started weighing and measuring every portion of every meal, following a rigorous no flour no sugar diet that was granted to them by the grace of god. Okay. That's not for me, and I know I sound defensive here when I say this, and it even feels a little as though I'm looking for ways to be the exception to the rule, but a strict weighed and measured diet that is not allowed to include any joy (flour and sugar) does not sound like freedom to me. In some respects I can understand how this method allows you to basically hand over your food, it's nolonger your responsibility- it's god's, and you get to turn your attention to the rest of your life (and now I'm confusing myself a little as I write this, because that, technically does sound like freedom to me) but I want my freedom to include choice, variety, and indulgence. I want to temper my relationship with food, not give up on it entirely and restrict it to portion-sizes. I guess I also want to continue working on the part of my recovery that is about paying attention to my body with my eyes closed - not analysis in front of the mirror, but continuing to learn to feel when I'm hungry, acknowledge when I'm full; to me that's a HUGE part of my own recovery that I feel the weighed and measured approach doesn't allow for. I also want my process to be focused on steps and not food. At all. In fact I'm really not sure that OA is the best program for me because of how very food-centric it is (I actually find it pretty triggering sometimes). I was shocked to rediscover how frequently people mention their current weight, their clothing size, the amount of weight they've lost, how much they used to weigh- this is stuff that still drives me MAD to hear! I hear women mention weights that are in the range of my highest weight, my lowest weight, and it doesn't even matter what context it's mentioned in, I'm immediately comparing- if that was their heaviest, and this is my healthy weight, and what I ate today, and what I could eat instead, and what if my weight crept up to that weight again and this same woman saw ME. The crazy creeps in and I can't tame it...which is why I went to an Alanon meeting today where I felt so safe. In a way I don't really fit into Alanon either- everyone there is codependent in the way that I am not, that is to say that they're people-pleasers and doormats and entirely devoted to other people in ways that don't benefit them. I'm a people pleaser, absolutely but in a very different way: I'm bad at it. Yet, that desire to keep everyone around me happy and content, that need to make sure the emotional temperature of those around me is still very present. I feel a little guilty sitting in a room full of people that can only be identified as 'givers', while I myself am no doubt a 'taker', but what we do share is our thinking. The loneliness, the fear of losing, of the people we love being angry with us, or worse- disappointed. The only thing I feel I have that they don't is entitlement...gluttony, and shame, and that's where I think OA will play a role in this.

Guidance?