Before recovery, my typical food day started at about 9:30am with a chocolate milk, big chocolate chip cookie and a ham and cheese croissant from the school cafeteria where I taught high school. I would survive the rest of the day on a full bag of candy and a large caffeinated beverage - usually mountain dew or dr. pepper. When I say a bag full of candy, I mean the large bags of candy that you find in the store, not a single serving bag of m&ms or something. My bag of choice was sweedish fish or starburst jelly beans. Then, at 7 or 8 pm when I was driving home, I would stop for food. I typically ordered two drinks, so the people at the windows didn't think I was going to eat all the food myself. But then I did - and both drinks as well. I would eat until I was way beyond full. Then I'd force myself to sleep using a sleep med. I'd wake up two or three times with severe stomach aches and by morning felt horrible. That was my eating disorder.
My food addiction comes in the form of making cookies. It's not the actual cookies that I'm addicted to -- it's the process of making them. If I am angry, I make cookies. If I am frustrated, sad, lonely, happy, excited or proud , I make cookies. I finally admitted the addiction, when, in a very trancelike state, I got all the way though adding flour before I kind of woke up and realized what I was doing. I had no memory of starting the cookies or making them. But there was the dough staring me in the face. It was scary to me. It felt so much like the ritualization I do around my sex addiction. There was no denying it was an addiction.
Back to the point...... I've had this feeling the last few weeks that my world is closing in on me a little bit. Things in my life have always been so compartmentalized. But recently, things have changed. My sister and one of my good friends started seeing my nutritional therapist. My sex addiction sponsor started seeing my regular therapist. One of my really good friends from my church moved and now lives on the same street as one of my really good recovery friends. Things just seem to be closing in on me.
Yesterday, I'm sitting there with my nutritional therapist discussing my last few weeks with food. I tell her about the day I made cookies. I ate two, and left the rest for my sister. I was quite proud of myself. She asked how many I left for my sister (10), and then said something like: "You might consider not leaving so many for your sister to eat and enabling her to overeat." I let that come in for a second and then was a little upset by it. How is leaving cookies for my sister enabling? She's an adult, she can make her own choices about how much and what she eats. I wasn't even in the house. I left them on a plate and told her to help herself. It's not like I held a gun to her head and said EAT THESE NOW! I waited a minute and said these things to her. I'm not responsible for her eating habits or her choices. I've spent nearly two years and thousands of dollars to break that enmeshment with her and my family. She is an adult. She's my OLDER sister. What she chooses to do is her own responsibility.
I didn't say it quite so emphatically. Nor did I rant about it. I only said that part about not being responsible and her being an adult. I could tell that she felt bad about what she said and she acknowledged that I was right and that I was not enabling her. I say the wrong thing and make mistakes all the time. No worries.
Later in the conversation, when I was going to say something negative about my sister, I found myself editing. And that is where my problem lies. I don't want to be editing what I say to my therapist -- I feel like that kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? Aren't I supposed to be able to say whatever I need to say? I mentioned this, that I was editing. She assured me that what I say is confidential, and I totally believe that is true. But I still edited. And now, it's just different.
Later she brought up family therapy -- suggesting that maybe my sister and I see my regular therapist together. I assured her that was never going to happen. Though I didn't tell her, I tried that once. I asked her to come to one of my therapy appointments when we first moved to Seattle in 2009. It was a disaster, as the therapist took her side and started ganging up on me. Of course, the therapist apologized at my next session, but the damage was done. I felt betrayed and my sister felt empowered. There was no coming back from that. I quit seeing her.
I suppose I should see this for what it is -- a beautiful opportunity to practice boundaries on steroids, right? Exactly what I keep telling myself that I want!! It felt really good to stand up for myself. No, I am not enabling my sister by having cookies in the house. If that was the case, having food in the house would be enabling my sister. She is an adult and I am not at all responsible for the choices or decisions she makes. I held the boundary and even discussed it with the person involved in the moment. I didn't hold onto it and let it fester and then become angry, bitter or resentful, all behaviors I would have exhibited in the past. I'm not any of those things nor do I have any negative feelings towards my therapist. Like I said, we all say the wrong thing and make mistakes some times. No worries.
What I need to do now is let it go. Boundaries on steroids recognizes the issue, discusses the issue, then let's it go and doesn't continually analyze it. I don't have the mental time to do that. I could be doing much better things with my time. I feel confident in the way I handled it. I don't feel like I could have done better or differently, so let it go.
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