The “Compassionate Recovery” philosophy
Some “Compassionate Recovery” meetings read a document entitled “The Ideals of Our Meeting” each week. This is an expanded version of it.
1) We believe that recovery from compulsive eating involves more than physical abstinence. It involves emotional and spiritual growth, hopefully while maintaining a physical abstinence.
Many of us have tied our self-worth to a number on a scale. When that number was going down, we were “good.” When it was the opposite, we were “bad.”
Of course, weight and goodness have no correlation. Many criminals in prison are at a healthy body weight. Does that make them good? Widely admired people like Orson Welles, Adele, Lizzo, Oprah Winfrey and others are overweight, does that make them bad? Of course not. So, if we can see that logically in other people, we should be able to see it in ourselves as well.
2) We believe that all we have is today’s abstinence. While we may want to keep track of days for our own purposes, the counting of days of abstinence is an artificial construct and should not be equated with true recovery on any level.
As with weight, we shouldn’t tie our self-worth to our days of abstinence either. Long-term back-to-back abstinence should be the goal, but that might not be the story for many of us. That doesn’t make us bad – or worse – than someone with 20 years of abstinence.
There are people with many years of abstinence whose lives are not ones most people would want. Others, despite being long-timers, are simply not very kind. Some long-timers have no life outside of O.A. Recovery is about how we change and improve our character, not the number of days on a calendar.
3) We believe that since compulsive eating is a disease, guilt and shame about relapsing have no place in our recovery. The main person who is harmed is us.
Many of us found that the amount of guilt and shame we felt about our relapses became exponentially worse after we got to OA. We would hear other people at meetings talk about their relapses and their guilt and shame, which gave us the unspoken message that relapsing was something to be ashamed of. In reality, there is no need for guilt or shame about a relapse. Should we feel some disappointment? Sure. We set a goal for ourselves and didn’t achieve it.
We need to remind ourselves that we are the people most harmed by a relapse. If we can view it with curiosity instead of condemnation, we can learn from it and it can become a doorway to deeper healing.
4) “We believe we came to program for ourselves, and shouldn’t feel answerable to anyone except a compassionate Higher Power.”
Somewhere along the way, most of us lost track of the reason we are here — for ourselves. We began to think that we were performing for a sponsor or other people at the meetings. This is evidenced by how we lied to sponsors and others about our food. That dishonesty thread is the disease’s way of roping us – its victim – into covering for it.
5) “We respect everyone’s opinion on recovery, but agree that anything said about program and the Steps at meetings are those peoples’ opinions and might differ from ours. We have no gurus or leaders in program, as we are all just one bite away.”
There are people in program who other people see as gurus and cling to their every pronouncement as if it were gospel. Those people don’t try to sell themselves as gurus, but they often don’t do much to refute that thought either.
Things that other people say at meetings may be totally right – for them. But some of what they say might also be wrong – for us and our reality. We need to assess the validity of everything said at meetings and determine what will work – for us.
6) We remain open to new ideas, even those that challenge long-held beliefs about program, the Steps, and the Big Book.
Many things said at meetings and stated as absolute facts are nowhere in the Big Book, the Steps, or any other program literature. Our only guide is a loving God for both our individual lives and our meetings, as revealed through the group conscience.
7) We believe finding a conscious contact with a Higher Power is highly personal, and should never be influenced by others’ beliefs. We maintain disbelief in a Higher Power is not an impediment to recovery, as there are many atheist meetings in all 12 Step programs.
All of us have to come to terms with what we believe – or don’t believe – when it comes to the concept of a Higher Power. Some meetings talk about God in such a uniform way that we think there’s something wrong with us because we don’t relate to our Higher Power in the same way. There is nothing wrong with those people feeling the way they do, just as there’s nothing wrong with us if we do not. There are many atheists in all programs and they manage to stay sober and abstinent as well.
8) We define powerlessness as recognizing that food cannot be an option for dealing with difficult emotions or situations.
As someone once said, “If you are a compulsive eater and you’ve made eating an option, it will always be the only option. It will be the path of least resistance.”
We can all have periods of putting down the food, but if eating is still an option at one level or another, our abstinence is living on borrowed time.
9) We believe we are adults with agency. We should never allow ourselves to be talked down to by others, even sponsors. We came here to help ourselves, not please a sponsor or others in program. We have the right to decide for ourselves what foods we should or shouldn’t eat. However, we believe that discussing our food plan with another member helps ensure that it’s we—rather than the disease—making those choices.
If we slip, we’re not errant children who defied mommy or daddy. We are grown adults with a disease and we wouldn’t be in program if we genuinely wanted to continue to compulsively eat.
We also understand that everyone has some foods that they can tolerate without triggering a relapse, and other ones they cannot. It should be up to us to decide, keeping in mind we have a disease that includes a component of denial. Discussing food options with someone we trust helps keep the disease from distorting our choices.
10) We believe that because compulsive eating is a spectrum disease, there are many ways to work the program. The only barometers for success should be no longer using food as a crutch and being happy, joyous and free.
There are people who can eat all foods moderately. Some people use the red, yellow, and green light food classification to keep their abstinence on track. Others need to weigh and measure their food. Some may need to write down and communicate what they’re going to eat to their sponsor.
We have to figure out where we are on the spectrum of compulsive eating. This can be tricky, as our disease will sometimes tell us we can do less than we really need to do.
11) We believe that our fellows in relapse are victims of their disease — not its perpetrators. As such, we try to reach out to support them in any way we can.
The best service we can be to someone is to be there as a non-judgmental fellow traveler, just there to help. Perhaps sometimes it’s just to lend an ear to someone who just wants to talk about what happened.
Sometimes, our main job might be to remind people that shame and guilt are of no use in terms of recovery. At other times, we may have to wrestle the stick out of their hand that they are beating themselves up with and remind them that they have a disease and that unfortunately they just experienced one of the main symptoms.
12) We believe that the best way to carry the message is through the “here’s what I do” method, not the “here’s what you should do” method.
Too many of us have been lectured to about our shortcomings and handed a rigid definition of what recovery should look like. Obviously, that way didn’t work or we wouldn’t now be a part of the Compassionate Recovery meetings.
If a way of recovery does not work for us and we keep trying the same thing, we are the jaywalkers of recovery. We just need to find a different street where we won’t continue to get hit by the disease. Hopefully, the Compassionate Recovery meetings are those streets.
Remember:
We believe that the only absolute should be not leaving the program.
If we leave, the disease wins.