I had reached my desired weight and size many times, so why didn’t despair and restlessness leave me?
I vividly remember the first time I entered the Anonymous Overeaters community. The weight of my body and the heaviness of my emotions, doubly pulled me down, and I could barely bear the weight of my soul. I entered OA with numerous doubts. I was a true bankrupt:
- a physical bankrupt, living with heavy weight, large size, and a figure that had deviated from its underlying form;
- a mental bankrupt, feeling anger and hatred, day and night; and
- a spiritual bankrupt, filled with feelings of inadequacy and unpleasantness.
The day before my first meeting, I had a harsh argument with my husband and son about an ongoing issue. I was under the influence of my own obsessions, bizarre dogmas, strict boundaries, and perfectionism. After creating this tension, I regretted it. Food was the currency of reconciliation for all my battles with life, so again I decided to cook dinner to restore the lost peace of our lives. We enjoyed a few moments of that peace, but with a single inappropriate joke from my son at the dinner table, I turned our home environment into a battlefield again, and this time my husband, who always played the role of peacemaker, could not handle the tremors of this breakdown.
Angered, I left the dinner table and sought refuge in the bedroom. I pulled the blanket over my head, and cried from the bottom of my heart just as I used to do as a child. After I calmed down a few moments later, I took a picture of myself with my phone. I’d never had the courage to see myself in moments of anger and frustration. But before I deleted the photo, I saw myself for a moment and realized I was destroying my life.
Later, in the Fourth Step, I realized my life had two colors, black and white, with no middle ground. I realized that the nature of my illnesses was such that I would not engage in any game unless I was sure of my victories. I easily passed by the big issues of my life but dwelled for a long time on the trivial matters. I had always tried to be the hero of others’ lives and the bankrupt of my own. Like at that dinner table, which was supposed to bring peace, it only made me more restless and despondent. That night, I was a loser, an emotional bankrupt, and a broken person seeking attention aimlessly, which I could not find. So I sought refuge in my room. And when my husband and son went to sleep, I found myself standing in front of the fridge, facing the cold food inside the pot, and I ate as much as I could.
In that very first OA meeting I attended, I heard the shares of other OA members, and it seemed like everyone else had experienced the bitter night I had gone through, searching for food in the cold pot, fridge, and cabinets. They all shared a common pain with me. My only question was what problem did we have? I recalled clearly in my mind that as I got up from the dinner table, I saw the puzzled looks of my husband and son, asking themselves what had they done wrong that caused mom to fall apart again? Why did I never know what I was doing to myself?
My frameworks were constantly changing, and my frustrations with others were growing. The boundaries of my relationships with others were getting narrower and narrower, encompassing the instability of my entire life. In the course of working the Steps, I realized that I had made weapons out of food and emotions, which I had used to hurt the lives of those around me and, of course, my own life.
“The most anonymous servant of the meeting is God.” A member said this beautiful sentence in one of the meetings. I thought a lot about this and realized that the most anonymous person who had been harmed by me in the past is God. I had always blamed God for all my despair and restlessness. I’d said, “Don’t you see me?! Who said you are just?” And with kindness, he just listened to all of this, like the guides and longtime OA members who often have this godly attitude. In the face of all my restlessness, they have patiently listened to my words and invited me to peace. When we pass through this restless state, we find comfort and we realize how much we have been arrogant and ungrateful. The first one at the top of my amends list in Step Eight was God.
I do not remember what happened in that first meeting that brought me back—maybe there was nothing extraordinary, but I kept coming back. As I followed along in the next few meetings, I heard things that I had not learned in any of my previous diets—no colorful chart of healthy foods was laid in front of me here. Instead, after saying the Serenity Prayer, they took my hand, embraced me, and said, “You have come to the best place in the world; we have been waiting for you.”
I have never, even until today, understood the cause of my despair and restlessness, but I know things can happen to me suddenly that empty my heart. Even though everything is in its right place, fear and anxiety will engulf my entire being. My heart races, and I will see the person in the mirror as inadequate once again. I will see myself as an unworthy mother, an inadequate wife, and an unworthy member of OA. When I was younger, I had the same feelings about myself: I saw myself as an unworthy daughter to my parents, I did not like myself, and I thought I was not enough. I put myself under the microscope and indulged in self-criticism. I condemned the behaviors of the past few years and the past few days and became a factory producing negative thoughts. Over and over, the same thoughts and feelings: If I hadn’t said this! If I hadn’t written this sentence! If I hadn’t said that, it would have been better! Now that I have done this thing, I am no longer likable. It has caused me to forget all the good promises of the program, and then I find myself in front of the refrigerator. The cycle would repeat itself, and when I got stuck in different emotions, I chose different foods.
I thought I was supposed to receive a diet plan at the OA meetings to reach my ideal weight, but this has not been the case! My story, food, weight, and size are complex. In Step One, I realized that, in the mental storms that were created for me, I sought the best feeling and behind every inclination I have towards a particular food, there is a mental image or hidden memory and emotions that convince me to use a particular food to soothe myself. I call this “special foods at times of special emotions.” But what I truly needed was the presence of God for spiritual peace, the God who is right here.
In the mental storms . . . . I sought the best feeling . . . . a particular food to soothe myself. What I truly needed was the presence of God for spiritual peace.
It is wisely observed in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, Second Edition, “even a ‘perfect’ body (if there were such a thing) would not make us happy” (p. 18). I had reached my desired weight and size many times, so why didn’t despair and restlessness leave me? Because this is a spiritual hunger linked to a compulsive physical hunger, and the compulsive physical hunger had always impersonated the spiritual hunger and deceitfully said, “Food will solve your problems and issues.” I was not living by the rules that God had designed for order in life; in fact, I had disrupted the order of existence. My first disorderliness was weight, size, and an inappropriate idol, food, which had been entrusted to me. I could not be a spiritual person, but I saw that I needed to push myself into the position of a spiritual human. I needed to gradually return to normalcy from the issues that had set me back.
My help came from aligning my program and abstinent plan of eating in a triangle:
- I learned to refrain from choosing food when experiencing spiritual hunger,
- I learned to use food for energy so I could be a worthy instrument in God’s hands and serve, and
- I learned to spend my time empathizing with others.
I am not seeking extraordinary feats for spirituality, but I have learned to do even the smallest tasks with calmness; for example, closing doors more gently at home, driving more sensibly, or being a calmer citizen. While I will not claim to be free from tension, more often the duration is shorter than before. I am calm. I sleep more peacefully at night and have a better balance in working the Steps. Today, I am certain that amidst all the problems and thoughts that occupy my mind, there is a God who is completely protective and watchful over me.
—Sepidah, Alborz, Iran
