Sugar and Sponsorship--Ask Yourself This Question

A young man in India was suffering from health problems due to his love for sweets and sugar. His mother tried everything she knew to change his eating habits, but he could not, or would not, change. It seemed that the more she got after him, the worse his problem

became.

Finally, at a loss for how to help him, she took him to see Gandhi, whom she knew her son admired. “Mahatma,” she said, upon reaching him, “my son is in ill health because of his love for sugar. Could you please tell him to stop eating sugar? Perhaps he would listen to you.”

Gandhi paused for a moment, thinking. Then he looked at the woman and said, “Madame, bring your son back in three weeks. Then I will speak with him.”

Three weeks later, the mother again traveled with her son to see Gandhi, whereupon he told the boy to stop eating sugar. “Why did we have to wait three weeks for that?” the mother asked, before leaving.

“Madame,” Gandhi responded, “three weeks ago, I was still eating sugar.”

I heard that story read last week in a class I’m taking. After we heard the story our teacher asked the class, “Where are you still eating sugar?”

And of course I immediately thought of the gummy fish, and licorice sticks that I love to gnaw on. But I also understood that Gandhi—and my teacher—was talking about something more than sucrose consumption.

This week I’m thinking a lot about sponsorship. I love having a sponsor and there hasn’t been much time in my years of recovery that I’ve gone without one. But again and again I have lapsed in being a sponsor. This week I am reminded why it’s really important to both have a sponsor and be a sponsor.

And it has a lot to do with Gandhi’s wisdom and the question: Where are you still eating sugar?

I have two sponsees right now and as they talk to me about their experiences as recovering women I do feel like I have a lot to share. I work at my recovery, love step work and I’m committed. But I was brought up short (sugar) twice this week by the advice I heard myself offer the women I sponsor.

In one case I was explaining the importance of Step Ten and actually doing a tenth step. Using pen and paper and writing a mini inventory at night—“We write…” I quoted, yeah, it says, “we write…” As a spiritual director I know that this practice we call Step Ten comes

from the Ignatian practice called The Examen. It’s that old—much older than AA. And there’s a reason we do that in writing or out loud with another person: we do it so we really hear ourselves.

So I was going on and on with that sponsee and suggesting a few short questions she might journal about each night, and after I got off the phone I thought, “Whoa—do I do what I am telling her to do?” And the answer was “not really.” So, I needed to start doing a nightly Step Ten both for my recovery and to have some integrity as a sponsor.

With another sponsee, I was talking about relationships with coworkers and trying to see each person as a person, how to be both caring and detached—to find that royal balance: care about the person but detach from, “Do they like me?” and “Is she wrong?” and I heard myself advise, “You have to pray for your coworkers.”

Yep, again I looked at my emotional self and I had “sugar” all over me. I knew I needed to pray for my colleagues.

Maybe I would have gotten there through reading recovery literature, or I might have heard those good suggestions in a meeting. But being a sponsor holds up a great big mirror and asks me, “Are you still eating sugar?”

Lucia the Wemmick--My Role Model

Do you know the book, "You are Special?" by Max Lucado? Ostensibly a children's book that teaches each child that they are, yes, special. But really introducing the idea that they do not have to be unsettled and uprooted by the opinions of others.

Most people I know in recovery have to work at that concept for quite sometime so when I found this beautifully illustrated book I was hooked. Because we are, in fact, "re-parentng" ourselves or being "re-parented" by the process and love in recovery rooms, children's books work especially well I think. "You are Special" is a perfect example. It's not at all about narcissism or focusing only on yourself (maybe not the perfect title) but rather about how to not get knocked off your center by the opinions of others.

Lucado creates a community of Wemmicks who have the habit of giving stickers to their fellows. They gave star stickers to those they like and dot stickers to those they dislike. And they (like us) compete and struggle with both the stars and the dots.

Except for Lucia. "Lucia had no dots or stars. It wasn't that people didn't try to give her stickers; it's just that the stickers didn't stick."

"The stickers didn't stick."  Well, that's a lot of Alanon I think, and a lot of inner power. And a great big bunch of recovery.

Lucia--my wooden role model. Stickers don't stick. Yeah.

Here's a Youtube reading of "You Are Special" by Max Lucado. But get the book at your library or independent bookstore. It is a beautiful book with gorgeous illustrations. And this is the gift book for everyone you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opBUb3WcimE

The Ego Paradox

I was talking to a colleague today about how some people (yeah, some other people) can be so defended that they can’t hear feedback or own the less lovely parts of themselves. When we see someone unable to look at his or her “stuff”, someone who can’t take feedback, we know that we are seeing an ego in defense. 

And I do know that from my own experience—that my ego will try to protect the fragile, wounded, less-than-pretty part of me and it will go for every defense mechanism to keep me from seeing and owning what’s painful or icky.

But then I realized that –quite paradoxically—that it takes a lot of ego strength to be able to look at your own inner life, your motivations, your wounded parts and be able to own them and accept them. It takes having an ego to be able to say—even if cringing—“yeah, that is me”, “I guess I do that”, “there’s that old part of me again”, “yeah, I’m doing it again and I want to stop that.” That kind of looking and owning takes tremendous ego strength.

Vulnerability and humility and self-awareness require having some ego. So is it a balancing act? Maybe like Goldilocks—we need not too much and not too little but the “just right” amount of ego to see and heal and change.

What am I Without That?

Here's something I found in one of my journals. Maybe a good think to prepare to make New Year's goals or  intentions:

If you are afraid of losing a relationship, a job, a house etc. ask yourself:

What am I without that?

Shyness

"Shyness is not so much a wish not to be seen as a wish to be appluaded on sight."

                                                                         --Stephen Tennant

Courage

Have you had that experience of suddenly realizing that you now understand a program saying or slogan—even after many years of hearing it --or even saying it? I had one of those today.

I’d begun to see—yes, working the steps again—that I struggled to take care of myself in fundamental ways. I knew the jargon, I used that platitude about putting on your own oxygen mask first and I never hesitated to buy myself massages or manicures or pretty things. But there was another layer.

Driving to work it hit me—I needed courage. I had to pray for the courage to take care of myself. It was about courage. Then at work—the old “What do other people think of me?” was aroused. Again, I knew what I was supposed to think and feel about that. But the realization: It would take courage to not care what other people think. I reached for my journal and began to write: “I need to pray for courage to take care of myself and for courage to not care what other people think and I need to pray for courage to change.”

Courage to change.

Now I get it.

Academy Awards

I’ll be in my pajamas early this evening but I’m prepared for the inevitable exhaustion tomorrow. I’ll be staying up late to watch the Oscars I’m not alone. The Oscar ceremony is the highest-rated entertainment show of the year, second only to the Super Bowl.

Why such an audience to see movie stars walk across a stage? Well, we live in an awards culture in which everyone seems to be judging or being judged and Oscar night is the night to enjoy as much judgment as you want. From the purely cosmetic to the politically controversial, every kind of statement will be made—and critiqued.

You can join in. Make your self a set of Olympic-style score cards and rate everything: the hair-do’s, the dresses—best and worst-- and of course, the acceptance speeches. We can expect to hear good, bad and ugly thank you speeches. We can hope for the outré and the tears, prayers and peace signs. That’s all part of the show .

The Academy Awards is a show about shows. It’s style on steroids. And part of the appeal is that this is one of the last remaining experiences we have of live television. There are fewer of us now who remember when most television was performed live and therefore had the greater creativity that comes with spontaneity, improvisation, accident and recovery.

I know some people like to pretend they are too smart for the Oscars or that this is some kind of Culture-Lite. I don’t buy it. As Yogi Berra taught us, “You can see a lot by watching”, and it’s truer than ever when watching the Oscars. After all, the Academy Awards is a television show about filmmaking which underscores the ultimate state of our visual culture. When the Motion Picture Academy Awards each year wins an Emmy award for television production we have the paramount example of a recursive universe.

It’s also tempting to disdain movies as just entertainment, but we have to remember that movies, even bad ones, become part of us. They are now what plays or poems were in the past: important sources of metaphor and imagery that we draw on in our own identity formation. Human beings are always making stories and talking to themselves. Stories with pictures are even better.

The best movies, of course though, are the ones in which we star. No need to be embarrassed, it’s a fact: Most of us are narrating our own story a lot of the time: “This is me shopping, this is me eating, this is me walking down the street.”

It’s one of the reasons retailers—even outdoor shopping plazas-- have piped-in music –it facilitates this “story of me” narration that we constantly do in our heads. In the movie version of our lives we’re always seen from our best side so we deserve the car, the dress, the shoes, the meal. Having that little sound track helps the fantasy —and the spending.

Our need for stories and the editing of our own story come together this Oscar night. So pile on the rhinestones with your favorite pajamas. Serve up good snacks and be prepared: What will you say if they call your name tonight?

Projection

I found an old notebook this week in which I had been taking notes when reading Ken Wilbur who wrote a lot about Jung and the concept of our shadow side. What Wilbur said about projection is this:

If another person’s behavior informs us it is information.
But if another person’s behavior affects us it is a projection.

Not always easy to sort the two—but then again-- if we are honest with ourselves we do kinda know whether we are being informed or affected. I mean, if I’m mad, sad, jealous, gloating, there’s a good chance I’m being affected.

It makes me think that this is another way to keep an eye on my side of the street—my reactions, my feelings and yes, ugh—my projections.

Self-less or Self-more?

Conflicting voices in my head. Conflicting voices from program and from therapy and from Oprah too. Do you have this battle in your head? It’s hitting me hard now with a new job and the holiday season and it goes like this:

@ Be of service

@ Be selfish

@ Think of others before--or instead--of yourself

@ Take care of yourself first

@ Let go of what others think of you

@ First impressions matter

@ Think less of yourself

@ Put your self care first

And on and on…I’m trying to find the middle ground. Some days I sort of have the balance, I think, but other days the pendulum swings too far to self, others days too far to putting other people’s needs or expectations first.

How do you balance this? How do you find the middle?

What's my Business?

I’ve heard in Alanon that “What other people think of me is none of my business”. But I’m also learning that what I think of other people is also none of my business. Their lives and their behavior are their business.

What this leaves me with is keeping the focus on myself.

What a concept.

It's Not About Who You Are

Here is one more delightful bit of wisdom I brought home from the International Conference in San Antonio:

A woman shared the guidance from her sponsor when she was a newcomer and starting to work the steps:

“You don’t need to spend any time finding out who you really are. We’re gonna take away all the things that you are not and who you are will show up.”

Should

Isn’t it easy to see what other people should do? What they should change in themselves. The fights they should give up on. The people they should stop fighting or the relationship they should leave. We can see the career they should pursue and even the ways they should wear their hair or edit their wardrobe.

But what about me? What about us?

Some days I catch myself when I am thinking, “Doesn’t she know?” and “Doesn’t he get it?” and I remind myself: There is something just a startling and just as clear to others about me: Things –for today-I just simply do not see.

On those days I can give other people and myself a little tiny break.

Circling Back to Robin Norwood

Today I pulled “Women Who Love Too Much”, by Robin Norwood from my shelf of recovery books. This is the book that was there at the start of my recovery. She linked food and drugs and men and family dysfunction in a compelling 240 pages of stories, insight and direction.

Today I opened the book to a page that I had underlined and starred in the margins many times. It says:

“True this generates from lifelong patterns reaching back into childhood, but she must first of all deal with her patterns in the present in order for her recovery to begin. No matter how sick, or cruel or helpless her partner is she must understand that her every attempt to change him, help him, control him or blame him is a manifestation of her disease, and that she must stop these behaviors before other areas of her life can improve. Her only legitimate work is with herself.”

Oh baby, this is so much more of a gut kick than Al-Anon’s “Keep the focus on yourself.”

Her only legitimate work is with herself.

Dam!

Who am I...

Last week in Orlando I had five days alone. I was at a conference and participated in workshops. But each morning I woke alone and swam alone and at night had dinner alone and went to my room alone and read alone and went to sleep alone.

I began to watch myself and this question formed: Who am I when I am alone? When no one is watching: what do I eat; not eat; what do I read; watch on TV? What is my fun when I’m alone? What do I laugh at when I’m not sharing a joke or anecdote with any other person? Where does my brain naturally go? What genuinely interests me—as opposed to what is supposed to interest me?

The first delightful surprise: I am never lonely or bored when I am alone. I entertain myself mightily. The inner voices that used to chew me up are not all gone but they are partnered with voices that say, “look at that” and “hey, you like this” and “what if…” And the “what if’s” are not all bad things about to happen to me.

I liked living this question: What do I want when left only to myself?

Selfish People are Happier

I know, we are not supposed to be selfish; we are supposed to be getting better and more caring and we have to give it away to keep it etc. But really. This week I seem to have to learn again: When I take care of myself and take care of my needs instead of expecting someone else to or waiting for someone else to do it then I am happier. The past two days I have been pissed. I have been trying to take care of and be very accommodating to the man in my life who is sick. And today I am mad. I feel unappreciated and I can count—and name for you—all the supposedly selfless things I did for him—and I can tally also all the places where he could have done something for me and did not.

So I think selfish people are happier because at least they get their needs met and they are smarter because it’s way more efficient to say “I want…” and “I need…” than to do for others hoping they will reciprocate.

But here’s the clincher: I think selfish people are nicer because they get their needs met, and so they do not get all pouty and pissy and withdrawn and moody. They are easier to be around.

Projection

I was reading an old journal today and I found this. It was from a book about Jung and facing one’s shadow:

When you find yourself having a strong reaction to another person or their behavior use this sorting criteria:
If something informs you it is information.
If something affects you it is projection.


Ouch! In the course of a day I notice a lot about other people, and yes, I am often affected: “She is never satisfied” “He is so selfish.” “She is just trying to get everyone to like her.” “He must be thinking about another woman.” “She must really want to beat me at this.” Then I use the criteria above and I find I have all of that in me. Is it true that we are most bothered by other people who have the characteristics we do not want to see in ourselves?