When I lived with my parents as a child, they were in the habit of ordering an annual skip to dispose of junk. Some years construction materials filled up most of it, but there was always space reserved for the ‘crap’ families such as our own accumulate over time. Crap that once served a purpose – toys, furniture, electronics, clothes – but have since become redundant and a burden, was collected, categorized and dispatched to appropriate recycling, charity shop or landfill facilities. I have carried a version of this practise with me to my adult life – with the additional practise of trying to reduce how much crap I accumulate in the first place (with limited success). But no matter how stringent your minimalist practise is in preventing crap collection, now and again, one must clear the crap out of their homes.
However, as you may have guessed from the title, this is not a post about spring-cleaning the physical space you live in. This is a post about addiction and recovery. It is a post I hope you will relate to, because once you broaden the definition of addiction beyond the realm of alcohol, tobacco and heroine, we are all addicted to something to some degree. in his book, The Craving Mind, Judson Brewer characterizes addiction to technology, distraction, thinking and love. In The Little Book of Big Change, Amy Johnson describes addictive thought patterns, such as compulsions for reassurance, one-night stands, online shopping and unfounded anxiety about financial demise.
I was addicted to vicious cycles of starving myself and then eating myself sick.
To recover from any addiction another type of spring-cleaning is required. This is not a revolutionary concept, and the notion in fact echoes the step of “making an inventory” from AA (I don’t like AA for several reasons, but this is not the place for a formal critique). In my words, this involves:
1. taking stock of all of the pain you have incurred for yourself or others
2. allowing yourself to grieve the time lost to that pain
3. forgiving yourself for the actions you took that engendered that pain
4. … and most importantly, being frank with yourself and others about the things you must do to stop incurring this pain.
5. repeating 1-4 as needed
I compare this to spring-cleaning, because we are identifying and flushing out damaging beliefs, ungrieved losses, unshared truths and the justifications we cling to in order to avoid making the hard decisions about what it will take to recover. This is not dismissing or burying any part of ourselves. It is repeatedly processing and letting go of the thoughts and feelings that fuel our addiction until they dwindle from raging fires to embers. Until you have a manageable amount of crap in your home.
Out with the secrets you’ve been keeping from people in your life who have earned the right to hear them.
In with sharing your story and making requests as to how these people can best support your recovery, if they can and are willing.
I needed to swallow my shame and disclose to my parents, partner and closest friends that I did not, in fact, “have my s**t together”, that I regularly felt driven to eat myself into a shameful, sick and hungover state, and that I experienced hopelessness and depression at the thought that I would never recover.
Out with the tears and grief that have not been given the time and space they need to run dry.
In with complete and unconditional self-forgiveness for all of the time you have lost to engaging with your addiction and the consequential pain suffered by yourself and others.
I lost hours to binge episodes, days to food hangovers and immeasurable airtime in my brain to obsessive weight and food thoughts. I cannot get that time back. Yes, I could have spent that time playing, working, sleeping, or even just staring into space, and those hours and days could have been ones of contentment rather than pain and shame. That makes me sad. And that’s okay. On my more optimistic days, I think that if I reach the top of the mountain, I don’t care how long it took me to get here. I can only feel past pain if I engage with that thought pattern, and that is a thought pattern that can be processed and let go too. I have won time for my future self who does not binge-eat.
Out with the non-committal and ambiguous resolutions to change your behaviour for the better.
In with an absolute, decisive, irreversible commitment to relentlessly refrain from engaging in behaviours/substances that hurt you, and to practise routines that help you.
I needed to admit to myself that I could never be totally free of body dysmorphia and obsessive food thoughts; that I could never “just be normal” when it comes to eating, like the other people in my life I envied; that reducing my compulsions to embers was the best I could shoot for; and that even that would require some seemingly drastic practices that those other people don’t need to function. There are some things I just don’t do, like weighing myself or dieting. There are some things I need a “tolerance break” from while my cravings reduce from forest fires to embers, like abstaining from certain foods and eating within a particular time-interval. I needed to make peace with what I could not achieve, and what it would take to achieve what I could.
I hope you, dear reader, are the exception to the “everyone is addicted to something” rule. If this is not the case, I more realistically hope that whatever harmful thought pattern, substance or behaviour you compulsively engage in; that you feel ready, energized and supported enough at some point to order a skip, and clear your home out.
x A
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