Stuffing Feelings

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to my own potentially addictive behaviors, such as overeating. I am especially noticing how I eat (in the evenings mostly) to relieve stress, how I feel anxious prior to eating, how I get hungry "for" certain comfort foods (as opposed to just being hungry) etc. This isn't a new concept to me, but I am seeing it with fresh eyes this time. All of this has had me wondering if I need to look into some more intensive "treatment" for potentially addictive overeating behaviors--perhaps OA? But OA scares me a little, I have to admit.

I should probably mention that I have always had issues with food and weight. In brief, I struggled with eating disorders in my teen years, and as an adult gained weight steadily until I was obese. In the last few years I have lost a lot of weight, and am now very close to where I want my weight to be. Some of this (the weight loss) was probably an indirect attempt to again control my husband. Most of it was a continuation of the struggle I have had my whole life. My parents both have an unhealthy food addiction: my father is a compulsive overeater, my mother a lifelong anorexic and bulemic. My mother may also be a sex and/or love addict. These things are why my family acted and looked from the inside like an alcoholic home, although no one in my family was drinking. Food addiction was something I never really believed in before I began my recovery and started to wonder why my family acted the way it did when there was no obvious "substance" abuse in sight. Now I understand a little better how it becomes addictive, in a similar way that sex can be an addiction.

I've been reading a new book lately called America Anonymous by Benoit Denizet-Lewis. It came out a few months ago, and in this book the author follows eight addicts along their recovery through 12 step groups, and other recovery modalities. The addicts include a grandmother who is a crack addict, an elderly man who is an alcoholic, a bodybuilder addicted to meth and steroids (and the discussion of the possibility of chemical dependency on steroids is interesting), a compulsive shoplifter, a sex addict, a food addict, a heroin addict, and an addiction counselor in recovery for multiple substances and for gambling. The author himself is a recovering sex addict.

The author spends a lot of time with each of the addicts in question, and interviews many addiction experts. He assembles a fascinating portrait of addiction and recovery from multiple perspectives. Today I was reading about the food addict and was really struck by a passage in which the food addict discusses using food to escape emotions and how it relates to spirituality. What struck me was that what the speakers described could be considered an addiction in itself, or it can also be seen as a part of codependent behavior. In our S-Anon readings using food to manage our emotions is specifically mentioned as part of "the problem." I guess it was just the first time that it really struck me how this is all a part of the same process, and how much codependence really is not only a response to living with addiction but is very similar to addiction itself--and often it really IS addiction, to another person or relationship. I like it when pieces start to fit together in my mind.

Food addicts are familiar with the idea of eating to avoid experiencing feelings--they get a brief "high" from the actual eating, then they may feel full and sick for a while, but even that feeling allows them to avoid whatever emotions they were avoiding in the first place. I can certainly relate to both of those things. But as a codependent, I also learned to avoid feeling my own feelings, because they upset other people, because they made me seem "weak", because it was easier to focus on other people than myself. Anything I could do to help make the feelings disappear so I didn't experience so much dissonance was helpful. Certainly as co-addicts, many of us use weight gain and weight loss as (mostly unconscious) ways of controlling our sex addicts, and misuse of food helps control our own emotions and control our sex addict at the same time. Like many of the coping mechanisms we learned, they may have helped us at one time, but eventually they become more harmful to us than the original problem was, and we have to learn to let them go. Food addiction versus using food as part of codependence or co-addiction: are they any different from each other?

Anyway, tonight, rather than being overwhelmed that I have this whole other "problem" that I have to find a "solution" for, I can find a little peace in the thought that it is part of the same problem that I am already working my recovery for, and maybe, just maybe, it will get better as my recovery progresses. I hope my thought on this makes some sense to someone. It's a little jumbled yet in my brain, but it feels like an important emotional realization, even if the intellectual knowledge was there all along. Sometimes my brain just doesn't communicate correctly to the rest of me...