I was never the type of person to easily surrender to anything. Always on high alert due to anxiety in childhood, I had to be in control of every nano second of my life. It was my coping mechanism and it was utterly exhausting.
Fast forward at warp speed to the half century milestone that happened a year ago and I found myself reminiscing by reading old journals, only to realise that EVERY journal I'd written in over the years had a running theme. All related to food, all related to body image, all related to feeling less than, all filled with angst and anguish about when I would ever love or feel good about myself. From the age of 17 - 50 that's a whole lot of SSDY (same sh** different year) going on.
I had a serious talk with myself after this journalistic wake up call and made a vow. A vow to do no matter what it took to learn to love myself, to heal, to become emotionally strong, to surrender my compulsive overeating relapses and to stop hating myself. I was tired of the hell I put myself through. My friends liked me so why couldn't I ?
Little did I know the journey that vow to self would take me on and truthfully, if I had known what some of it entailed I may well have piked out before I'd even started. However, Divine Wisdom prevailed and Karen embarked on her recovery with blissful(ish) ignorance.
To condense the intensity of my trip into pretty points here's what happened in 2013's road to recovery.
- Got myself a spiritual Counsellor (best thing I ever did for myself in my life to date)
- Commenced on a type of healing therapy that took a lot of courage and complete trust in the process.
- In May 2013 a massive physical/health wake up call - heart issues, hospital admission and sheer terror at how out of control I was regarding my physical health and how life changes in a heart beat (pardon the pun!).
- Battled the psychological fall out from the health trauma; panic attacks, constant fear of living/dying/health issue recurring.
- Relapsed into compulsive overeating again due to the fear I was feeling, yet not dealing with. This hiatus in my recovery journey was so painful at the time, but with hindsight I am extremely grateful to have experienced that pain as it taught me a whole lot about my emotions/eating link that needed some serious sorting out.
- Finally, total surrender to life in the moment; giving up trying to control everything. Resistance was futile, it made everything so much worse. I had to give in.
I knew in my head for many years that I had to surrender to get well from addiction. I knew that what you resist persists. I knew all the right ways to DO recovery, yet here I was at 50 still battling those diabolical addictive demons.
My problem was I had not surrendered in my heart. I had not truly surrendered anything. I resisted internally kicking and screaming all the way. My self will running riot with all talk and no internal action.
Remember addiction is not a respecter of persons, occupation, age, social standing, financial situation, gender, race or belief systems. So do what you need to surrender and LIVE; resistance really is futile!
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