Question for Today

At our last meeting, each person took a card out of our hope box (without looking). Each card contains a word/phrase related to recovery. These were the ones picked out of the box:

• Forgiveness
• Commitment
  
• Taking Responsibility
• Acceptance Vs. Judgment
  
• Connection Vs. Isolation
• Asking for and Accepting Help

We talked about what these words mean for us in our road to recovery. What do these words mean for YOU in your road towards recovery?

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Choice for Today

Today I choose to honor my body in this way...

what is one thing you can choose to do today to honor your body?

I Am Beautiful

Today, my mom gave me the most beautiful little gift book called I am Beautiful: Affirmations for Women (Thank you mom!!) Great to carry in your bag, your pocket or to give as a gift!! I am going to carry it in my bag. Here are a couple of quotes from it...


...I am beautiful when my hair is a mess
and I haven't put on my makeup yet.
Perfection is overrated.
If everyone in this world were perfect,
we would all be exactly the same.
It is the very things that make me
different that make me beautiful...

...Sometimes I lose myself
in what the world expects of me.
I will not try to conform
to what "I should be."
I will create my own box
and step outside it as I wish...

...Today I will write five things I like about myself...

~ I Am Beautiful, Affirmations for Women by Diane Mastromarino

Get It?

Pain can turn our focus inward and we then spend our days and our lives thinking and saying to ourselves: Why me? Why me? Why me? If we live self-absorbed in negative thinking patterns, we will miss what is going on around us: opportunities to heal, to grow, to help others, to be happy, to be free, to learn to live life to the fullest...

I saw this video online today, and wanted to share it with you...

May you give yourself permission to learn to live outside of yourself. There is a whole world out there waiting for you.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

The Hurricane Post

I spent the day at home yesterday..Tropical Storm Fay was on its way to South Florida.

For the last 14 years I have lived in South Florida, every summer I have heard a lot about Hurricane Preparedness. It is important to be ready for the storm. We have to be prepared.

These hurricane preparedness tips from The American Red Cross Website can teach us a lesson about staying in recovery and recognizing the warning signs of a possible relapse:

1) Know what a WATCH and a WARNING is. If you find you find slipping and falling into old /unhealthy habits. Learn to recognize warning signs of relapse. You might want to write down in your journal what you feel like physically, cognitively, emotionally, spiritually when you are in a "good place" with your recovery and refer to that list to make sure you are still on track.

2) Prepare a PERSONAL EVACUATION PLAN. I often hear people in group express fear about ending back up in the hospital, of relapsing. Having a plan for when you feel that you are struggling / might be heading for relapse can help relieve the anxiety and fear of relapse. Have a list of people that you can reach out to for support. Know what coping tools have worked for you in the past and consider going back to the basics of recovery for a while. Ask for help. Listen to those that you trust, are experienced and trained to help.

3) Assemble a PREPAREDNESS KIT. that you can use in case you feel the storm. approaching. These are some of the items in my preparedness kit in early recovery:

• Therapist appointments
• Nutritionist appointments / meal plan
• Personal Journal
• Food Journal
  
• Support groups
• Medicine prescribed by my doctor
• God, Prayer, Faith
  
• Family and Friends
• Nurturing / doing something for myself
• Books on recovery

So can you recognize warning signs that there might be a storm coming? Do you have a personal evacuation plan? Do you have a preparedness kit to help you stay in recovery and prevent relapse?

Something to think about during this hurricane season.

Stay safe.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quotes for Today

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

~ Carol Burnett







We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.

~ Harrison Ford

Cognitive Distortions

I know I have posted these before, I just think it is so important to be aware of them...

"We all tend to think in extremes...and when traumatic events happen we think that way even more. Here are some common cognitive distortions. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way.

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

• Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out.

• The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow's imperfections). This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel it, therefore it must be true."

8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. "Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, "He's a damn louse." Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible."

source: HealthyMind.com

From: Burns, David D., MD. 1989. The Feeling Good Handbook. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

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Do you see any of these getting in the way of your recovery? I know these used to be my stumbling blocks. This is part of what our professional support system (psychiatrists, psychologists, nutritionists, etc.) are trying to help us understand, so we can substitute these cognitive distortions with healthier ways of thinking and being.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Peace and Courage

Here are two words often misunderstood....

PEACE













Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

~ Unknown

COURAGE









Courage. It does not mean the absence of fear. It means moving forward in the presence of fear.

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These are two important concepts in the world of addiction and recovery. Feeling numb, isolating, avoiding risk, does not bring peace of safety. People engage in addictive behaviors looking for a sense of peace, pleasure and fulfillment that is never enough and never lasts...

Many times addicts stay in their addictions because they are afraid of what might be on the other side of recovery...they think others that achieve recovery are somehow fearless, more courageous, different. The truth is, we all experience fear...We have to choose to move forward in spite of it...

May you take your next step in recovery in spite of fear and may you find true peace in your journey towards freedom.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quote for Today

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.

~ Ben Okri

Functional MRIs and Eating Disorders

I found some interesting research in Aimee Liu's book Gaining. Recent research shows that anorexic thinking, as it relates to food, can be mapped by functional MRIs.. Janet Treasure and a group of researchers at Maudsley Hospital in London have watched the brain "in action" while subjects watch images of food.

These are some of their findings (paraphrased):

1) For people with no history of eating disorders, the sight of food (i.e. strawberry cheesecake) excited the lateral region of the brain responsible for apetite.

2) For people with a history of anorexia and bulimia, the "dominant response" to food came from a region in the frontal lobe of the brain associated with making decisions and the regulation of anxiety.

3) The longer a person has been ill, the stronger the response of the frontal lobe.

4) When subjects return to normal eating, multiple areas of the brain respond in order to override the brain's disordered response to food. These multiple responses (patches) are meant to prevent the person's impulse to suppress appetite.

5) The longer the time passed without relapse, the stronger the response of these multiple areas of the brain to prevent the disordered response.

6) The brain cannot produce a completely normal response to food even decades after the subjects last used ED symptoms. Subjects in recovery from ED respond to food with a mixture of "attraction, resistance, guilt, calculation, permission and release".

7) The Good News: The brain seems to continually rebuild/heal itself in order to allow the mind to gain control over even many years of affliction.

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I have been in recovery for close to eight years. Sometimes, when I eat, I experience, as the author says, a mixture of "attraction, resistance, guilt, calculation, permission and release".

Next time I feel that way, I will be thankful because it means that my brain continues to heal and find different ways to override old behaviors that were not healthy for me.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Life

"May you live all the days of your life."
~Jonathan Swift
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May we always remember that life is a precious gift and not take it for granted.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Stand Up 2 Cancer

In honor of Jayne (one of the bravest ladies I know)
and in memory of her husband Tim.

In memory of Guy Tobin (1955 - 2008)





peace, hope and love,

Lily