Note: I’m currently doing EMDR for childhood trauma, and it’s made me wanna eat my face off.  I also used to have an eating disorder, have been in recovery for 11 years, and left evangelicalism about ten years ago.

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My friend Kate sent me a meme today that said “You are free to choose but you are not free of the consequences of your choice.”  I loved it.  I also love this meme, which basically describes my entire existence.

I totally had the ability to not-eat a donut yesterday.  I truly did - there was a big pause, a space, an openness where I could have easily made a phone call, gone to a meeting, even driven to an exercise class.  I call that pause “grace.”  One could also call it growth, but I call it grace because I can’t manufacture that pause directly, so when it shows up it’s like a free gift.  It’s a reprieve from the boogeyman.  This is one of those paragraphs only a drug addict would understand.

Relapse-Brain. Even though I ate the donut...ok, three of them...I’m thankful for the pause.  I’m grateful for the space between me and the drug.  In “binge-mode,” there is a rushed, addictive drive that propells me to the food...it’s a force that cannot be stopped.  It’s as if my body is on a mission to abuse itself with sugar even though my brain is screaming “nooo!”  And there is no space, no pause, no second guessing, no choice.  I’d have to be physically restrained.  In those moments, I will abandon appointments to get my fix, steal food that isn’t mine, or lie to my husband.  I call this “Relapse-Brain” because it is the same feeling/thinking/doing I used to have before I ever found Overeaters Anonymous (and AA), even though I don’t vomit or starve or take laxatives to “undo” the done.  In Relapse-Brain, the addiction feels reawakened and alive like a parasital virus that’s just using my body to do its will...and in case you’re not sure, it’s will is always to destroy me.   It’s the same self-punishing mentality that injurers and cutters have; the virus just wants to punish me for existing.

EMDR is Helping Where Program Can’t. Relapse-Brain started happening to me a few years ago, despite my active participation in recovery.  This is why I started the EMDR, which seems to be making a big difference.  I’ve been bulimia-free for about twelve years, but the binging part came back sometime after getting married (about seven years into recovery).  It’s as if the dormant “Trauma Virus” reawakened...it was never fully eradicated, because I never knew it’s roots.  Whereas 12-Step programs seem to address addiction head-on from the top-down (symptom first, behavior second, thinking last), EMDR seems to burn away the roots from backstage...through emotional/sensory entry.  It’s like finding a trap-door and being like, “haha, trauma, I totally tricked you and found your hiding spot, bitch!”  Very interesting.

One Model Can’t Fix Everything.  A long time ago, I tried to “cure” my eating disorder and depression with church.  My resources for help were limited by my fear of “going outside familiar territory.”  I was told I’d be endangering myself or abandoning God if I listened to secular professionals.  Contrary to the dogmatic and authoritarian messages I received from Christian leaders, leaving the bubble of bible-based counsel is what gave me a totally new life.

Looking back, I can see how this self-limiting pattern revived itself using the slogans of AA.  The difference, however, is that my peers in recovery never discouraged me from getting outside help.  In fact, they encouraged it!  Nonetheless, I still had to battle the Miniature Fundamentalist living in my head.  Instead of using the Bible to keep me boxed into a Christian model for living, my ego insisted all my problems could be arrested using the 12-Step model.  It had been incredible effective, after all, what more could I need?

This pesky Fundamentalist Trauma Voice used the same tactics it used with religious ritualism.  It would say things like, “if you keep relapsing, then there’s something wrong with YOU; do more 10 and 11 Steps.  Find what’s defective and get it out, you lying sack of shit.  What are you suppressing?  Are you helping enough people?  If you’re still hurting, just do another workbook or go to ACA meetings or start another Big Book Study or make more outreach calls.  Suck it up.”  (I know, she’s so rude.)  Listen girl, if you’re doing a written inventory everyday, reading meditative literature, actively sponsoring people, AND still in pain, you gotta break out of the fuckin’ box.  Find a new model, get a new pair of eyeballs, and resign to the fact that you can’t fix yourself without trying something totally different.  As a psychiatrist said to me over a decade ago, “you can’t fix a psychological problem with a religious solution.”

What 12-Step Program Is Good For.  I needed (and still need) help beyond my recovery group; program isn’t the end-all be-all, even though I’d like it to be (I love one-stop-shopping).  It’s offers a good foundation and principle-based living; increased awareness, letting go of outcomes, taking responsibility for oneself, altruistic participation in life, etc.  It helps us recognize our subtle dishonesties and live one wholistic life, instead of multiple “personas.”  And if done thoroughly, it can lessen shame and self-hate, increase forgiveness and self-esteem, and arrest behavioral trauma projections.  The Big Book is great for cognitive healing - for aligning oneself with reality and not allowing thoughts or feelings to dictate behavior - but it isn’t the best for “traumatic emotional” healing...there are some deeply unconscious wounds that aren’t accessible via Step Work or “acting as if.”

Neuroscience is real; we live in 2018 and I gotta capitalize on the times, yo.

Getting Better.  Until now, when Relapse-Brain wanted to run the show, she’d turned on, and she’d win.  But yesterday there was a pause.  There was a choice.  Like a normal person who wonders if they want the caloric consequences of eating a donut.  EMDR is working...

...Whoa.

Thank you, Laws of the Universe for the pause.  And thank you, Karen, my especially cool therapist.  And thank you, Anna, for telling me about Karen.

Peace be with you, Brotheren.  (I don’t know why I said that. )