Finishing up "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" by Anne Katherine

Tonight is the last meeting for my support group, so the assignment was to read Chapters 8 and 9 in the book. Chapter 8 is called "Help!" and has some basic guidelines for choosing a therapist and finding other resources for outside help.

Chapter 9 is called "Dear Beloved". It is addressed to the loved one of a person who struggles with food addiction. It touches on what food addiction is like and also goes through a day of what it's like to be an overweight person, from the struggle to find something to wear in public to the fear of comments from strangers everywhere he or she goes. It really breaks everything down for easy understanding and includes sections on sabotage, recovery, weight loss and support. Though Mr. Salted is very supportive, he has never had a weight problem, so I think this section of the book will be really useful for him.

I have really been impressed by this book. Before joining this group, I had seen it around and never seriously thought about picking it up. It touches on every conceivable issue imaginable other than weight-loss surgery, but I think that contributes to its effectiveness, as weight-loss surgery is a whole other can of worms. When it comes to addiction and hard-wired, lifelong habits, the brain is the thing that has to be worked on before a lifestyle change can truly be embraced. I'm glad I read this book, but it is a little discouraging to have to admit that my food issues will be something I am forced to wrestle with for the rest of my life, fat or thin--just like any other recovering addict. I also fear cross-addiction, because if it feels good, I like it too much. That's just built into the organism.

The rest of the book deals with anorexia and bulimia, hitting bottom, relapse, abstinence, and concludes with a chapter on fullness. (Fullness as Katherine discusses it means full spiritually and emotionally, not just literal fullness with food.) She suggests that if a relapse occurs, it is simply because there is not enough support in place for the addict, and suggests ways to provide that.

I don't know if I want to continue going to groups, and I definitely don't think a twelve-step group is the answer for me. I'm not a good group person. It's hard for me to look everyone in the eye, and if I feel really bad--like I did on the anniversary of my friend's death--I'm not going to show up at a group session. I would have gone to an individual session, though--I guess there is less pressure to perform in a way--you can be down in your own self-absorbed pit of despair and not have to be polite or empathize with others. Sometimes, I'll just say it--it's a relief to not have to think about other people when you're working through hard stuff of your own.

Chapter 6 Exercises from "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" by Anne Katherine, MA

Chapter 6 is called "How Healing Happens". It discusses dealing with both chemical functioning and feelings, and goes into quite some detail. Again, I recommend anyone who thinks this book can help them to pick it up. This is the assignment for tomorrow's group, and it's a doozy:

6.2 Disease Inventory: Part III (p. 102)

Starting from your earliest memory of bingeing and/or starving, dieting, and/or purging, chronicle your relationship with food.

The Progression of Powerless Eating

1. When did you first turn to food?

2. Gradually, over the years, your relationship—your intimacy—with food progressed. Chronicle this progression.

3. Include, if relevant, the progression of addiction to sugar and/or alcohol.

4. What impact has the addiction and compulsion had on all parts of your life in the last five years?

5. Be very specific and honest about your present pattern of bingeing and/or purging and/or starving. How much and how often do you binge? What is your volume of food? How frequently do you purge? How often do you starve yourself?

Control Efforts

1. List attempts to control eating—starving, dieting, purging, laxatives, diet pills, prescription drugs, coffee, smoking.

2. Mark the control efforts that failed.

Unmanageability

1. Unmanageability is a part of this disease. Anyone with an addiction finds that her life gets frayed around the edges. What evidence of unmanageability exists in your life?

2. List evidence of unmanageability in:
(a) Emotional state—mood swings, depression, self-esteem
(b) Relationships, social life, sexual relationships
(c) Work. Have you been late or missed work due to a sugar low or due to drinking? Have you attacked coworkers because of sugar anger? Have you sabotaged your own success by not having a clear head when needed or by eating rather than studying or reading or learning?

Adverse Physical Consequences

1. Have you ever risked your life or the lives of others by eating or not eating?
2. Have you damaged your body as a result of your addiction?
3. Include food blackouts. How many times have you found yourself with an empty bowl or bag in your lap and no clear memory of a decision to eat? How many times have you stood in front of the open refrigerator without knowing you were going to walk there? When did you first start having food blackouts? Have these progressed?

Adverse Social Consequences

1. What harm has been done to your relationships?
2. How has your disease affected others? How have the people around you had to adapt because of your disease? In what ways have you abused others because of the influence of this disease?

Adverse Financial Consequences

1. Include adverse financial consequences. How has the addiction kept you poor? How has it deprived you of having money for other things you want to do? Include crazy thinking about money so you could spend it on food.

Adverse Moral Consequences

1. Has the disease made you violate your values? (stealing, concealing) How is your self-respect doing? Have you lost any as a result of this disease?
2. Have you manipulated others so you could satisfy a craving?
3. Include confused priorities—how is food the center of your life? Has it been the center of any of your relationships? What evidence is there that eating has been more important than relating?

Adverse Spiritual Consequences
1. Include evidence of how eating has been more important than your spiritual development, more important than your relationships, more important than your health, more important than your peace of mind.
2. How has this disease affected your choices, your decisions, the opportunities you’ve missed or aborted?

Chapter 5 exercises from "Anatomy of a Food Addiction"

Chapter 5 in "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" is called "Nature's Telegrams" and deals with messages from the body and brain. It talks a lot about feelings, the origin of feelings, and makes a compelling argument for articulating the experience of feelings (through drawing, writing, sculpting, some kind of visceral expression) vs. just thinking about them, arguing that "the symbols [of a/produced by a feeling] are too fleeting for meaning to emerge" if one talks about them, ie, getting feelings out of the mind and experiencing them more clearly.

(I really hope that anyone reading this blog who thinks this book can help them goes out and picks it up. My synopses here do not fully do it justice, but I include them as part of the process I'm going through prior to surgery and lifestyle change so that I can track my assignments and such. There is a lot of detail and great insight in the actual book that is definitely lost in translation!)

In talking about following a feeling all the way through, the example author Anne Katherine gives is that of grieving the death of her close friend. She not only misses her friend and the unique friendship between the two of them--she misses what her friend taught her about life simply by being who she was. By dealing with the full spectrum of losses involved in her friend's death, she was able to articulate her feelings and grieve more completely, surrendering to the grieving process and healing more completely. (As time goes on, the pain became more manageable, but the only way out is through--that was the message I got from it.)

The author shares her personal process in tracing the origin of her feelings. The assignment for my group was to flesh out our "portfolio of beliefs" that are discussed on page 88--the ones that we have held from a very early age, the ones that are probably not working for us now. These are beliefs about ourselves and the world that we have held so long and seen reinforced so often that we believe they are true.

What might be in a portfolio of beliefs? Well, I can tell you what was in mine:

1) There is no such thing as a safe person or place, so I will have to define safety for myself and take whatever measures I deem necessary to keep myself safe, even if they are only in my mind, because no one is ever going to protect me.

(2) The less I need, the less I will be hurt.

(3)People are never nice unless they want something.

(4)I can take care of myself later. My needs can wait.

(5)Know everything you can so you cannot be caught off guard. Be ready to run or fight physically if you have to.


(6) Feeling too much is a sign of weakness, and besides, my feelings don't really matter.

(7)It doesn’t matter who I really am, because no one is watching or listening.

(8)I am ugly.

(9)I have to hurt myself (put myself down) before anyone else can hurt me.

(10)Anger saved my life.

Some of these things are partially true. Some of them are not true at all. Taken at face value in black and white, not one of them is healthy.

Anne Katherine talks about four things that have to happen for a belief to be changed (p. 89): (a) we have to be conscious that we hold the belief; (b) we must see what the real truth is; (c) we must experience the full range of feelings about the causes and consequences of the belief, allowing ourselves to grieve the losses we've suffered as a result of the belief as well as the loss of the belief itself; and (d) we must receive care for the pain we've suffered.

On page 92, she lists some of the things that promote recovery: taking care of unfinished business as it comes up; expose your basic beliefs and fears about yourself and the rules you developed to survive; stop blaming yourself 100% for those beliefs and fears and take a look at everyone who participated in their implementation; protect yourself from people who continue to reinforce those beliefs; expose yourself to people who believe in you and want the best for you; identify which feelings it wasn't safe for you to have; take care of yourself by not allowing any further experiences of deprivation, abuse, or abandonment; hang around healthy people; learn coping and relationship skills; find safe places to start breaking your old, worn-out survival rules.

She also emphasizes how important it is to build a support system if you do not already have one in place. If it helps, make a list of who's safe and who isn't, and keep it in mind when you choose who to spend valuable time and energy with.

Chapter 4 Exercises

Chapter 4 in Anne Katherine's "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" is titled "The Great Escape". It talks about fight or flight syndrome and how food may become an escape, particularly for female children, who are often taught to be nice and helpful and not openly fight or express anger that male children can usually get out through rougher play, sports, etc.

The author uses psychologist Abraham Maslow's famous "Hierarchy of Needs" to illustrate why some folks make the choices they do in their lives. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is as follows, starting with the most important needs at the top of the list:

1. Body needs--air, food, water, temperature
2. Safety and protection from harm
3. Status, approval, love, acceptance, belonging
4. Competence, adequacy, security, self-esteem
5. Curiosity, to know and understand
6. Order, structure, system
7. Self-actualization, exploration, newness, values, artistic expression, self-fulfillment, meaning

Katherine goes on to say that when we see our most basic needs ranked in this way, we can see the courage and support that are necessary to swap a visceral need for a more abstract one, concluding that generally, we have to substitute something that feels similarly fulfilling in order to affect change.

At the end of the chapter, she writes: "even though experimental results aren't yet clear enough to explain exactly what happens in our bodies step by step, enough is known to conclude the following:

--We overeaters have bodies that are chemically delicate.
--Our bodies respond to subtle deficits in minerals, vitamins, light, energy, and needs.
--We are probably eating to correct deficits, but what we eat is not making the correction.
--Eating is an effort to self-medicate. Eating is caused by biological pressure."

****

Assignment 4.1

Here is the second part of the disease inventory that began in Chapter 2 on page 46. This part is designed to help you become more conscious of the direct and indirect messages you received as a child about food, eating, and weight. Your awarenesses will become more clear by first writing them down then sharing them with another person or group of people.

Identifying the Message

As a small child, you were taught about food and eating with words (what your parents told you), actions (what your parents showed you), and consequences (how your parents rewarded or punished you). Write down what you were taught as a small child:

THROUGH WORDS
--What did your parents say about food, sugar, eating, and weight (yours and theirs)?

THROUGH ACTIONS
--What were meals like—warm times of sharing, love, and laughter? Were you tense, pressured, fearful? Were you captive while being disciplined?
--Were meals regular, predictable, and healthy, nutritionally balanced, haphazard, sporadic, at no fixed time, late and unappetizing because you had to “wait for father”, of questionable nutritional value?
--How was food a part of family celebrations, both daily traditions and holidays, celebrations, and weekends?
--Where and when did you learn about nutritional balance, nutritional content, cooking?
--What mixed messages did you receive as a child? For example, “Eat! It will make you healthy!” “That girl, I keep letting out her clothes!”
--What was the family’s attitude toward appearances? Were appearances important no matter what was happening? Was it more important for the house to be neat for the neighbors than for you to be attended to?

THROUGH CONSEQUENCES
--What were the rewards or punishments for eating the way your family did, or for not eating the way they did?
--How were you rewarded or punished for the way you looked, the way you ate, the way you were the same, the way you were different from the rest of the family?
--Think about your childhood. In what ways did you suffer from the addictiveness or compulsiveness of others? Take plenty of time for this part of your inventory. Be as detailed as you like. Write about the experiences you went through as a result of the disease in others.

Deprivation

So Chapter 3 of "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" by Anne Katherine is about deprivation. Hoo boy!

"Assignment 3.2

For the next twenty-four hours, notice yourself. Notice your needs, reactions to others, and messages to yourself. The goal here is for you to become more conscious of your patterns by keeping a log of your feelings and reactions.

Do you have a tendency to take care of others, listen rather than talk about yourself, talk rather than listen, rescue, protect others, or protect yourself? Do you find yourself feeling put upon, used, taken advantage of? Do you feel overwhelmed, small, not enough? Do you feel urges to run and hide, to crawl into a corner away from people? Do you feel confused and torn in two? All of these patterns, deep-rooted though they are, can be altered. Very likely, they will stand between you and what you really want from life. But first you must become more conscious of what they are. To achieve such consciousness, record your responses to people."

This was my response:

8:00 AM, 4/20/09. Begin drinking Crystal Light to avoid eating sugar.

Mr. Salted is home since he is on vacation. I clean the floors and he helps. He makes dinner and I have gone all day without sugar without a problem.

2:45 AM, 4/21/09. I wake up in a panic, CRAVING sugar. My brain is screaming. Eat a granola bar and a Fiber One bar, which unfortunately do have sugar. Dreading completing the genogram assignment.

5:45 AM, 4/21/09. First Jello snack of the day. I blog for awhile about Chapter 2 and the genogram assignment. Even blogging about it exhausts me. I watch some TV under a blanket for a couple of hours and worry about it. John gives me a hug and a kiss.

12:30 PM—2:55 PM, 4/21/09. Since I started working on the genogram, I have had three 100-calorie packs, a Jello pudding snack, and a Jello snack. I spend a couple more hours under a blanket watching TV; I feel totally overwhelmed even after I get done with the genogram. Especially after, really, because looking at it makes me feel ooky. I don’t want to leave the house, much less go to group tonight. Mr. Salted goes to the post office and also to the store to get me more Jello snacks and the 100-calorie packs that have Splenda instead of sugar, at my request. I am panicked that a sugar detox has been discussed by the group already and I wasn’t there (it was mentioned in an email from the facilitator)--panicked at the thought of it, period. I know I have to do it because of the gastric bypass surgery, but am freaking out. Mr. Salted gives me a hug and a kiss on the forehead where the cat scratched me. He is a mensch.

4:20 PM, 4/21/09. Feeling a bit calmer after having some downtime in a nice quiet room. Glad Mr. Salted is so supportive. REALLY want chocolate. Dreading group. Feeling bad for dreading group. Very, very tempted to skip group, but I paid cash on the barrelhead for it, so I know damn well that I will drag my carcass there. Mr. Salted says he understands and will still love me if I don’t go, which is nice. I still don’t want to go.

Edit, 9:49 PM, 4/21/09--Went to group. Unloaded. Got support. Am glad I went to group. Full of amazing, kind women. Made me remember I am one as well.

Genogram

Anne Katherine's "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" theorizes that food addicts may have been born with problems if their parents had alcohol or sugar sensitivity, depression, perfectionism, or other compulsive behavior. If a food addict was born with insufficient serotonin levels, when they hurt, they hurt badly, and sugar and carbohydrates may have brought some relief. Since people repeat whatever behavior they think is working to relieve pain, whether it is eating, drinking alcohol, or drugs, the problem goes from self-medication to physical addiction. Katherine points out, "The physical addiction is one giant part of the problem, but the problem has other parts too. Recovery comes about when we pay attention to all of the parts together."

The next assignment is to do a genogram, which is sort of a combined flow chart/family tree. It is under assignment 2.1 on page 47 of the book.

"What evidence is there that you inherited the susceptibility to this addiction? Trace the origin of your disease in your ancestors and role models. Make a genealogy chart of as many ancestors as you or other family members can remember. Next to each name, use the symbols listed below to indicate their involvement in addictive or compulsive behavior. Be alert to clues that point to skeletons in the closet, such as "He had a small drinking problem," "He died of liver disease," "She had lung cancer," or "He was pretty heavy."

Circle: Female
Square: Male
Dotted line: Death
Slashed line: Divorce
FA: Food addict
A: Alcoholic
D: Drugs
S: Compulsive sex
$: Compulsive spending/shopping
CW: Compulsive work behavior
G: Compulsive gambler
N: Nicotine
CO: Codependent or caretaker
R: Rigid
VR: Very religious
I: Chronically ill
Dp: Depressed
Db: Diabetic
ED: Eating disorder

The image above illustrates some standard genogram symbols.

Brain chemistry and food addiction

Chapter 2 of "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" by Anne Katherine deals with the brain chemistry involved in food addiction--neurotransmitters, synapses, serotonin, etc.

Some key points:

"Addiction results when the use of a substance alters the body in such a way that the absence of the substance causes pain...Evidence is mounting that folks who get addicted to certain substances do so because of a chemical function that the substance mimics or, if malfunctioning, seems to temporarily improve, but with negative/addictive side effects."

"(The brain chemical) serotonin promotes relaxation, peacefulness, relief from pain, and a decrease in anxiety. (The brain chemical) endorphin gives relief from pain and a sensation of pleasure. Both serotonin- and endorphin-releasing nerves are highly concentrated in the part of the brain that regulates eating, sleeping, drinking, and sex." Katherine goes on to say that insufficient serotonin levels are a likely cause of more acute feelings of stress and pain, and that when refined carbohydrates are ingested (sugar, pasta, alcohol, white bread), serotonin is released, relieving stress and pain. She also points out that it is suspected that those with insufficient serotonin levels may have a malfunction in the feedback loop that tells them when to stop eating these serotonin level-raising foods.

"For some people, eating sweets, starches, and/or fats cause the release of endorphins; thus, for these people, eating certain foods relieves discomfort and feels good." She goes on to say that certain endorphins also stimulate eating; if eating sugar makes you feel good, you will want to eat more sugar. She also discusses other brain chemicals that come into play and explains how various processes work in the brain to relay messages.

Katherine continues that food addiction and alcohol addiction are thought to be chemically related because there has been a proven genetic component. Food addicts are often at higher risk to become alcoholic. Addiction results from tampering with brain chemistry, whether the substance is drugs, alcohol, food, or something else. I highlighted this passage: "If you have a disorder in your serotonin functioning, you will experience metabolically caused cravings. You aren't morally weak or undisciplined; your body is screaming to you, "Eat! Eat!" I'm paraphrasing here, but she goes on to say that chemically caused eating is a physical abnormality like diabetes, and measures can be taken by the food addict to treat it.

Chapter 1 exercises

"Anatomy of a Food Addiction" by Anne Katherine, MA

"Assignment 1.1, Self-Acceptance, p. 13

(1)List the ways you have abused yourself, physically with extreme weight control measures, and emotionally with negative self-messages, because of your problem with food."

My abridged response:

Bulimia—starving, bingeing, purging, laxative and diuretic abuse
Putting myself down, making myself the butt of a joke before anyone else can
Refusal to try to look good--what’s the point?
Feeling like I have to outdress everyone or be overdressed to make up for my weight (mostly at work or social events)
Self-induced isolation almost to the point of agoraphobia at times
Refusal to exercise or try certain things because I fear I will be ridiculed
Told myself/felt like I was/am: ugly, fat, worthless, damaged goods, ruined, poisonous, monstrous, don’t deserve to live, smelly, disgusting, repulsive, weak, awkward, clumsy, untouchable, undesirable, unfeminine, dirty, a bad person
(A friend told me once she thought I had body dysmorphic disorder because my inner default setting always goes straight to “ugly” during any time of vulnerability, particularly when I am ill and/or down.)

****

"Assignment 1.4, The Truth About Consequences p. 20

(I'm paraphrasing) List "incentives" used by others or yourself to get you to lose weight.

My abridged response:

(Note: my God, they are such bullshit!)

(a) Acceptance from boys/men: “I would go out with you/you could get any guy you wanted if you lost weight”, I heard from about the age of 12 until about age 25. Which is not only untrue, but wrong on about 5,036 levels.

(b) Acceptance and love from my family of origin, who made it clear I was never good enough because of my weight. (After a lot of distance from them and a considerable amount of therapy, I figured out *nothing* would have ever garnered their approval, which was ultimately a relief.)

(c) In my own mind, on some level, I have felt I could never be fully happy or successful without losing weight. There may be some truth to this when it comes to a career, as I know there are jobs I have not been hired for as a result of my looks. (Now that I’m older and wiser, I think: would I really want that kind of job anyway? And I'm 40, so my age is now going to be a factor as well.)

(d) Doctors would get off my back. The stories I can tell about things doctors have said to me would curl anyone’s hair.

Did any of these "incentives" work? NO!
****

The group facilitator posed a couple of questions for us to journal on and consider for further discussion. These are my abridged responses:

How much of your self-worth depends on the outward appearance of your body?

I think when I was younger and still struggling actively with bulimia that this was much worse for me than it is now. Ageism is certainly alive and well in our culture, but getting older takes a lot of the pressure off, too. I didn’t expect to look like society’s ideal of a gorgeous 19-year-old at 39, but at 19, I felt extremely less than because I didn't come anywhere near meeting those ideals—-I think on some level, in my warped mind, I thought that because I was young, I was also supposed to be beautiful (by society’s standards). I knew from a very young age that I was never going to be able to trade on my looks anyway, so I spent more energy on my brain and my personality--a better investment, IMHO--but in an ideal world, girls and women would be able to enjoy all aspects of their being.

The older I get, the less I care about how I look on the outside. Some of that has to do with acceptance by my spouse, and some self-acceptance comes with age and (I hope) wisdom. I have never liked my body, but I learned to grudgingly accept it and at least not continue to punish it for its many perceived failures, because I am grateful that I have mobility, sight, vision, etc. I also became much more concerned with health than appearance as I got older because I had several very immediate health problems that were much more of a concern. They have rendered any worries about my appearance extremely trivial!

I was alone by choice for four years between my divorce and remarriage and during that time hit my heaviest weight, which was 296 pounds. I did binge occasionally during that time period, but also swam laps regularly and used a treadmill at home. I was well aware that my weight made me less “valuable” in the dating market. When I chose to dip my foot in again, my approach was to look online very selectively and just lay it all out on the table--so that if a prospective mate had an issue, I wouldn't waste my time or energy. My husband now is the only man that was worth the trouble, and I am happy to say he is a fantastic individual and we celebrate our second anniversary tomorrow. :)

I like myself better as a human being than I ever have in my life. I still (grudgingly) accept my body, but feel very uncomfortable physically. I do think I would feel better about myself if I was thinner, simply because I would feel better in my body.

In what ways have you or others treated you as an object, rather than the deep and complex being that you are?

I don’t remember not feeling like an object. I was always aware that I did not measure up to who my mother had been in any way, shape, or form, and I felt that I was a pale facsimile of her. My father was not consistently involved in my life, but was enough of a presence that I knew I was legally his property until I was 18 years old; he was obsessed with how I looked. He was also abusive and inappropriate. I was a high academic achiever and an all-around good person, but I felt that “thin and pretty” was always the carrot being dangled and the ultimate condition of the family's extremely conditional love, particularly his.

I have had men and boys treat me like an object (as most women do) my entire life. Getting older, again, this is less of an issue, but the world is not nice to fat people of any age, and I think that has been well-documented by myself and many others. People have yelled at me out of cars, mooed, looked pointedly in my grocery cart, and made rude comments. Even children have felt this was acceptable to do at times. People have made rude comments toward my husband. I have had a really hard time with medical professionals because they look at the number on the scale--or the body shape—and just stop listening. I once had a doctor castigate me about my weight when I was seeing him for a broken ankle that had not even been set yet. I have had doctors bitch at me about my weight when I was in for strep throat.

The ways I have treated myself as an object were included in the first exercise...

Group

I am *really* glad I joined the support group. I liked the therapist, I liked the other women (no men joined), I liked the vibe, and I feel that I can learn a lot from everyone and do some valuable, necessary therapeutic work. I felt like I didn't stop talking the whole time; I was just so glad to be with people that spoke my language, so to speak, that I couldn't shut up. The dread I was feeling was totally unfounded, but that is something I do--worry too much ahead of time, and let's face it, anything that has to do with a group of people is a total crapshoot. We actually touched on previous group experiences, and many of them were negative in nature. It seemed to really correspond on the specific mix of personalities, size of the group, etc.

One thing that is going to be interesting for me is that this group includes people who have already had bariatric surgery as well as those who have not--about a 50/50 split, actually. I am especially looking forward to the insights of those who have already had a procedure, but continued to struggle with their weight. I am so afraid of "blowing it" myself due to not having my mind right. I think the importance of getting the mind healthy during before, during, and after this process absolutely cannot be overstated--and in my opinion, it is far too often overlooked, not only by medical professionals, but by people who gauge a woman's worth by her dress size.

The book the group is using is called "Anatomy of a Food Addiction: The Brain Chemistry of Overeating, An Effective Program to Overcome Compulsive Eating" by Anne Katherine, M. A. It is in its third edition and originally came out in 1991. It is a very interactive book that has many writing exercises, self-assessments, etc. I already like it because I feel it has a real-world, comprehensive approach. It classifies food as an addiction and serves to help find the roots of the addiction so that the behavior can then be modified.

The therapist talked a bit about food serving as a painkiller or sedative, how it is thought to be linked to the opioid receptors in the brain, boosting serotonin levels, and having a calming, soothing effect on those who use food in an addictive way. The genesis cannot be known for certain, but there is speculation that some people are just genetically more sensitive, having predisposition to addiction, depression, etc. In many cases, a food addiction begins as an attempt at self-care, usually quite early in life. The therapist posed the question: "If food is the bandage, what is the wound underneath?" The goal is essentially to determine what our individual wound or wounds are, also touching on what will take the place of food, so that we do not replace it with another self-destructive, addictive behavior.

I know this is going to be difficult, but I feel more hopeful than I have in a long time. I already know I am my own worst enemy (as are most people). I also know how hard I am willing to work and how far I have already come working through and against incredible obstacles. I am so lucky to have support and love in my life--leagues more than I have ever had. I know that without it, I would not even be attempting this journey.

Next week is my second wedding anniversary, and we are going away for a couple of days. When we come back, we plan to submit applications for private student loan funding, in the event we can qualify for some as a couple and I can pursue further education in the fall. I'm crossing my fingers!