Taking Care of Ourlseves

From our group discussion this weekend:

Many times we say to ourselves or hear from others that we "need to take care of ourselves"...but what does that mean, exactly? Granted this is not something that is accomplished in a day, it is a life-process, but it is good to know, understand and be clear about what we are working towards. It is ok if we are not there yet. We all can constantly grow and improve in these areas.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

In her book Co-Dependent No More, Melody Beattie explains:

What does it mean to take care of ourselves?

Self-care is an attitude towards ourselves and our lives that says:

1. I am responsible for myself.

2. I am responsible for leading or not living my life.

3. I am responsible for tending to my spiritual, emotional, physical and financial well-being.

4. I am responsible for identifying and meeting my needs.

5. I am responsible for solving my problems or learning to live with those I cannot solve.

6. I am responsible for my choices.

7. I am responsible for what I give and receive.

8. I am responsible for setting and achieving my goals.

9. I am responsible for how much I enjoy life.

10. I am responsible for how much pleasure I find in daily activities.

11. I am responsible for whom I love and whom I choose to express this love.

12. I am responsible for what I do to others and for what I allow others to do to me.

13. I am responsible for my wants and desires.

14. All of me, every aspect of my being, is important.

15. I count for something.

16. I matter.

17. I do not deserve and will not tolerate abuse or constant mistreatment.

18. I value my wants and needs.

19. I have rights, and it is my responsibility to assert these rights.

20. My decisions will take into account my responsibilities to myself.

21. My decisions will also take into account my responsibilities to other people - my spouse, my children, my relatives, my friends.

22. I will also consider the rights of those around me.

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Which one of these do you need to work on in your recovery?

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Thought for Today

I believe taking care of ourselves is an art, and this art involves one fundamental idea that is foreign to many: giving ourselves what we need.

~ Melody Beattie, Co-Dependent No More

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more on this later. check back soon.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Say What You Need to Say

Remember to "say what you need to say". I am in the process of "saying what I need to say" this week and feel much better already.

Here is the video and the lyrics to one of my favorite songs.



Say What You Need to Say

Take all of your wasted honor.
Every little past frustration.
Take all of your so called problems,
Better put 'em in quotations.

Say what you need to say (x8)

Walkin' like a one man army,
Fightin' with the shadows in your head.
Livin' up the same old moment
Knowin' you'd be better off instead

If you could only...Say what you need to say (x8)

Have no fear for givin' in.
Have no fear for giving over.
You better know that in the end
It's better to say too much, than never to say what you need to say again.

Even if your hands are shaking,
And your faith is broken.
Even as the eyes are closin',
Do it with a heart wide open.

Say what you need to say (x7)

Say what you need to, Say what you need to...

Say what you need to say.

Say what you need to say.

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peace, hope and love,

Lily

Time Passes

"Time Passes. Even when it seems impossible."
~ Bella Swan in New Moon by Stephenie Meyer




I really liked that quote....it got me thinking.....

Time passes, whether we want to or not, whether we realize it or not.

Time helps pain fade, but the ultimate choice whether we overcome our difficulties, our past, our suffering, or remain stuck in a place where we do not want to be (physically, emotionally, cognitively) is up to US, not the hands of the clock.

If I am being completely honest with you, I have realized during the last couple of days that all time knows how to do is pass by, but it is my choice to do what I have to do, to take care of me and move on.

In some areas of my life, all I have done it let time pass. I have put feelings away, pretending they are not there and for the most part trust they will go away without doing much about them.

How about you? Are you letting time pass without doing anything about your situation? Don't get me wrong, take the time to grieve, it is ok to be sad for a while, but don't stay there....Ask for help, make a plan, do something about it....Move on.

This post is as much for you, reader, as it is for me.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Thought for Today

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh..........at yourself.

~ Ethel Barrymore

It's Not Just White Girls

I was just reading about a new book that came out on September 9th. It is called Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-Denial and Overcoming Anorexia . The essays in this book are written, by both men and women, young and old of various races.

You can check out the article that appeared in Newsweek regarding this hew book by clicking HERE. It's called: It's Not Just White Girls.

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Thought for Today

The past is over.
This is a new day,
one that I have never lived.

I stay in the now
and enjoy
each and every moment.

~ Power Thought Cards

On Persevance and What Ifs...

Here are two concepts that came to mind while I watched this summer's Olympic Games.

Perseverance








According to Dictionary.com , Perseverance is a "steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement". Michael Phelps finally surpassed Mark Spitz 1972 record of most gold medals in a single Olympic Games. We got to see the opening ceremony, the races, the reactions of the crowd, of Michael and of the swim team.

What we didn't get to see was one of the qualities that got him there: Perseverance. We saw the result of his perseverance: Victory. However, we often forget that reaching a goal doesn't just happen, it takes planning, sacrifice, discipline, patience, stick-to-it-iveness...day after day, year after year. It takes falling down and getting back up. It takes Perseverance. The same is true for recovery.


What ifs









This is a picture of Michael Phelps (left) and Milorad Cavic (right) finishing the 100 meters Butterfly final.

One of my favorite bloggers (you can check out his blog by clicking HERE) made the following point during the Olympics: After battling it out in the last 50 meters, Michael Phelps beat Cavic by 0.01 seconds. Have you ever been in a situation like Cavic's? When things just don't go your way and you may find yourself asking...What if? What if? What if?

We can't change the past, we can only learn from what happened and move on.

....

Most of us will not win an Olympic gold medal, but we can definitely learn a lesson or two from Phelps and Cavic on perseverance and letting go of "what ifs".

May you persevere in your journey towards recovery and learn to let go of "what ifs" that keep you stuck along the way...

peace, hope and love,

Lily

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

On Fear, Being Stuck and Possibility

Hi All,

My sister in law Flora (Thanks Flora!!!) sent me a very interesting article on Fear today, and I wanted to share a couple of quotes from it with you:

"When we stop going for it—when we step back, play it safe, or say we can’t do something—we might avoid the experience of fear for the moment, but at the same time we are reinforcing where we’re stuck. We’re limiting our freedom, and cutting off possibility. Being alive includes risks, threats, and danger—the possibility of “bad” things happening is always there. But in planning our life to avoid those things, we’re essentially avoiding life—obviously not the wisest way to be alive.

(...)

There’s a big difference between being realistic about what happened once, and being resigned or stuck that things have to continue to be some way now or that they just are some way or they’ll be that way again. Instead of wishing we could change our past experience—a futile exercise—we have the freedom to choose our relationship to whatever it was, and that’s the beginning of building power. That’s the beginning of creating possibility."

~ Nancy Zapolski / Fear, Survival and the Courage to Be

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Is fear of "what was", "what is" or "what might be" keeping you stuck and unable to move forward?

Remember, we cannot change our past, what happened to us will always be what happened to us but we have the power to change what it mean to us. Learn from your past, forgive yourself and others and move on....Your future does not have to be an extension of your past.

Today is a brand new day. The past is no more...

peace, hope and love,

Lily

We Are All Practicing Something...

Hi All,
I was just flipping through Joel Osteen's Become a Better You Calendar and found an amazing quote.

I often say in group, on this blog, and to those that ask me...there is no mystery or magic bullet in recovery...it is a process.

The following concept, amazingly powerful, yet amazingly simple has been a very big part of my recovery and growth...

In Joel's words:

"Truth is,we are all practicing something...and the way to develop good habits is by practicing the right things. You might be good at loosing your temper because you practice it a couple of times a week. Some people are good at being impatient because they practice it every morning on the way to work. I know people who are good at negative thinking because they constantly practice negative thinking. Remember, repetition is what forms a habit. That's what puts us on autopilot. So we have to make sure we are practicing the right things."

~ Joel Osteen, Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving You Life Every Day

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

So what are you practicing? What new habits do you need to practice in order to begin, continue or get back on your road to recovery?

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Through Their Eyes

In times when we doubt ourselves, may we always remember to see ourselves through the eyes of those that care about us and can remind us of our potential...



peace, hope and love,

Lily

The Train Station and The Windmill Stairs

Hi All,
I spent 10 days in Europe recently and had the opportunity to visit Spain and The Netherlands. Here are two pictures that got me thinking...

This first one is inside the Memorial to the 3/1/04 terrorist attack at the Atocha train station in Madrid, Spain. It is an empty room, completely sound proof, with blue walls and a clear white cylinder that goes up to the street, filled with messages left by visitors in the days after the tragedy. It is very touching.



It made me think...despite the suffering, the emptiness and the silence that might surround us, there is always a way out...



This second picture is of a set of stairs inside a windmill in the village of Kinderdijk in The Netherlands.

Have you ever felt like you are on the edge? Like just one more step will take you back to a place where you should not be? If you find your recovery challenged and are on the edge, please remember to reach out to your support system and what you know works before you fall...

peace, hope and love,

Lily

Quote for Today

Life is not the way it's supposed to be, it's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.
~ Virginia Satir