Recovering from ADDICTION - 6 Life-Changing Options

Shelley Treacher Undergro: today I'm going to tell you six things that can help you recover from food addiction. Hi, I'm Shelly Treacher from Underground Confidence. I help people to recover from the emotional side of comfort eating. If you're unsure of whether you're an emotional eater, whether there is emotion behind your eating, or you're not sure what the emotion is, I have a fabulous little course for you. You'll find this on the app Passion. io under Underground Confidence And there will also be a link to that in the show notes. I often start my podcasts with a quote from a client or a listener. But today I'm going to weave several of them in to add to the story of these six resources that I'm going to talk about. In the last two podcasts, I talked about how a substance or behavior can become an addiction, and I talked about the contribution of brain chemistry, stress, emotional difficulty, and early childhood experiences. The dopamine reward system plays a massive role in addiction. And this does make the road to recovery difficult, but not impossible. The recovery journey is not really about resisting behaviours or substances. It's more about rediscovering life in its fullness. Today's resources are divided into categories. 1. Self awareness 2. Self reflection and exploring your experience 3. Changing thoughts and beliefs 4. Self regulation 5. Mindfulness and 6. Community So first let's talk about awareness. And here's a client quote:"I don't even know I'm doing it." I can't tell you how many times I've heard this. Addiction isn't a failing. It's something that happens to normal people. I've been producing stuff with the word addiction recently. Even the word addiction is a scary word for us. It's a taboo thing. We don't like to admit that we might have an addiction. It sounds so intense and serious, right? A bit like the word trauma or disorder, but addiction is so everyday, it's so common. Do you even know anyone who doesn't use anything to make them feel better? We're becoming more and more aware since the pandemic may be that our mental health is part of our overall well being. Today I'm breaking all of this down a little bit, hopefully normalising it, because addiction often comes with self hatred. In the case of comfort eating, especially of the body. And there's a lot of societal pressure. So the very first step in recovery from addiction is becoming aware of what you do. And admitting it. It's allowing yourself to wake up from that slumber. And disassociation. It's about observing what you do, when you do it, and how you do it. What state you're in when it happens, what triggers it, what might be behind it, and any of the difficulties or obstacles that you might have personally in breaking it. It is difficult. Recently I had to give up a food that I really like but that isn't good for my system. It took me a really long time to admit that I had to release this thing. I really didn't want to. And then when it finally dawned on me. I felt horrible, but being aware of that and admitting all of that paved the way for me to let it go. And now I genuinely feel relieved that I don't have the ill effects of this toxic substance for me. Because along with awareness of the difficult thing, the thing that might be behind your eating, comes an awareness of what resources and inner resilience you have. You need to know this before you can learn to improve. As Sue Howell says, a colleague of mine from the counselling directory,"Depending on the client's needs around resilience, I might work with them to identify what resources they have in their life, both internal and external, and what may be stopping them from using those resources to overcome or work through challenges or struggles, if it would be better for them to do that." in the case of my everyday little addictions, or compulsions and behaviours that aren't really that good for me in the end, I use all of the following things every day. These are things that you can return and return to. You can't do them all the time. It's not possible to be mindful 24 hours a day. But gradually, bit by bit, they can change your life. No. 2 Self reflection and exploring your experience. One question that people often ask me is,"How long will this take to fix?" The goal here is not really to offer a quick fix. Disappointing, as I know that will be to many of you. Quick fixes don't really seem to help overall anyway. Perhaps seeking one is an addiction in itself. Where your addiction might be to pursue perfection. The idea here is to encourage a deeper understanding of yourself. To promote self compassion and acceptance, and to be introspective. People also often ask me,"How do I sit with this feeling and be okay?" This is actually quite a big sentence. Life is pain. We do have pain in life. Every day. And the more we face it, the more we give ourselves the chance to recover from it. And not to be blindsided by it. Life does involve a little bit of struggle, and so does succeeding sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you to work really hard. That's something else. We'll get into that a little bit later. But, for example, if you have an injury, the best thing for you to do is to do exercises and rehabilitation for that injury. If you skip all of that and lay on the sofa and watch television for months while you're healing, then You won't really heal and this injury will build and be a problem, a really big problem probably later on. It's exactly the same with emotional damage. So here's another way because I know I've done a few ways like this with you before. Here's another step by step process that you can use to resource around difficulty. Number one, which goes along with awareness. Give yourself time to acknowledge what's difficult about this situation. naturally, people want to avoid shame, hurt, anger, fear, difficult emotion. But see if you can give yourself permission to articulate, to be with, and to acknowledge what the pain is that's making you reach for food. As I say in every podcast, give yourself the compassion that it takes to hold this instead of trying to fix it. Number two, shift your focus from control or compulsion to choice. What can you choose in this situation? What do you want to bring to this situation? Who do you want to be here? These things will get you thinking about your values and what's meaningful for you. And having choice helps you to see your situation more compassionately. You can also ask yourself what triggers you to shut down. And what inspires you to open up? Answering these questions can provide valuable insights into your own behaviors and coping mechanisms. It's through understanding and confronting our fears and our traumas that we can begin to break free from addiction. If we face our emotions head on, accept our vulnerabilities, and extend compassion and understanding to ourselves and to others, This can change everything. As my colleague Catherine Cooper said from the Counseling Directory,"I don't work with clients to change their external world. I work with them to change their internal world. The external will follow after that. Like. Attract like. My clients will come up with their own resources once the triggers and the blocks are cleared." Catherine also went on to talk about how, as therapists, we need to be in the frame of our clients as much as possible to understand what's going on for them and to help them understand. We know that this moves mountains. There is nothing quite like really being acknowledged exactly where you are and then having all the information that you have to clear those defences when you're ready. So this is what I'm encouraging you to do in the absence of having a therapist. Or even if you do have one. I have to say here that I've done a lot of podcasts on staying with experience, staying with your body, and staying with feelings. These will be referenced in the show notes. If you need more than this. Number three, changing thoughts and beliefs. And here one of my listeners has asked, Why do I self sabotage when I'm doing so well?" I talked about habits a couple of weeks ago. Pragmatically, breaking a habit involves changing the cue or the response or the reward. So, your belief that your a habit of stress eating when you get home from work with eating enough in the day so that you're not hungry. And doing something differently at the moment when you usually start stress eating. Changing your habit loop also involves associating your new habit with a rewarding experience. This might look like doing something else that helps you unwind or makes you happy after work. The aim is to replace old habits with new ones that contribute positively to your well being. Or in the case of this client who is asking why she sabotages, exploring and uncovering what and how leads to you falling off the wagon. Changing the belief you have that it's inevitable that you will. What may lie underneath this sabotage is not to be underestimated. I've seen some very deep things come out from underneath this one. From fear of intimacy and abuse, to pleasing parents, and living up to an expectation, or an assumption that if they were happy, it would make one of their parents unhappy in some way. And therefore they wouldn't be loved. Changing your habits isn't just about changing what you do. It's about understanding why you do it. It's a journey of self discovery and personal growth that leads to a healthier, happier choice. Bit by bit. And it takes time. Once again, if you need further help with this, I have done podcasts on changing limiting beliefs. The links will be in the show notes. Number four, self regulation. Perhaps the most popular request that I get from clients... And listeners Is, as somebody requested on the intake of my Facebook group,"how to curb yourself when you're in the drive thru, before it's too late." One of my clients calls our therapy sessions polyvagal rehab. This speaks to the fact that we spend the large majority of our sessions calming down his nervous system. in these podcasts about addiction, I talked about cravings. The process of overcoming comfort eating cravings and unhealthy habits is not just about making dietary changes. It's also about emotional healing as I've been saying and regulating your nervous system. Steven Porges has a lot of neural exercises to offer based around calming the vagus nerve, which is the nerve that's believed to be triggered when you're in fight or flight or some threat feeling or situation. These exercises are often the exercises that can make the difference in a craving. Because often, our system IS in a protective state when we comfort eat. Whether that's eating mindlessly and in a dissociative or collapsed state, or whether that's in a really fast paced, hyper vigilant, perhaps even angry or punishing state. If this is a new idea for you, just pause for a moment and check your system right now. How's your heart rate and your breathing? As you think about the state that you get in when you comfort eat, How you feel just before you reach for that food, can you see that your body might be under stress? These exercises that help you to calm your state are not complicated. Perhaps the most powerful is learning to breathe a little bit more slowly and paying attention to your breath. But you can also use mental images to create a positive shift you can move your body into a less triggering place. You can have a time out, take space. Generally it's a good idea to move away from activity, noise, smells or too much stimulation. Because these are the parts that get activated when you're in fight or flight. So here I'm suggesting create a daily practice of self regulation exercises. i. e. good things that calm your nervous system down. Develop an awareness of what's going on in your body so that you know when you're hitting your limits. And can avoid your body shutting down or becoming too stimulated. Once again, I will reference a lot of self regulation exercises that I've given you in the past podcasts. I actually produce one every single Friday on social media too. This week's exercise hasn't even come out yet, haven't even recorded it, but it's going to be about patting your boundaries in. Literally, you just pat your body all over. This really only needs to take 30 seconds. So if you're in a situation where you need to separate from someone or something, this simple physical exercise can really make a difference to how you feel. Pause and give it a go right now. And then notice if you feel any different. And there will also be a link to that in the show notes. But bear in mind it's Friday that it comes out. So I won't be here until then. Number five. Mindfulness. I don't have a quote from any of my intake forms or my listeners about this one because it's a really unpopular subject however, it does become something that people wish they had tried earlier. I am thinking of a particular client who just couldn't believe how effective breathing more slowly on her out breath was. And she literally uses this several times a day now for her anxiety. Disassociation and switching off to comfort eat are so compelling. They're also a habit.. Mindfulness is a self regulation technique, but it gets a whole section of its own, because it's so powerful. For me, mindfulness ranges from observing what you're doing to deep meditation. So it brings all of the things I've said together so far. There's been a lot of research into mindfulness based addiction recovery. One for binge eating disorder. The evidence supports that this approach does decrease binge episodes. It also seems to improve self control. And reduces depression. Another research group on smoking shows that 32% of the mindfulness based group didn't smoke in the week before their follow up appointment, where only 6% of the others. Had not smoked. And there is evidence gathering of how meditation, mindfulness, somatic awareness, physical activity, and enriched environment can change our brain's architecture and synaptic firing. I have got a whole podcast on mindfulness, so I will put that in the show notes too. And now we come to number six, the last one, community. One of my listeners wrote,"I've never met anyone the same as me." Community interaction gets our systems moving. Rachel Evans, my colleague in South West Wales, encourages you to be in touch with your local voluntary sector. She says that"they have community connectors in West Wales who find support, services and activities for people anything from benefit checks for people struggling financially, right through to friendship groups for people who have moved to a new area and feel unconnected." She says that connection, community and belonging are key principles for her. in building resilience. And she also recommends a book by Johan Hari called'Chasing the Scream'. This one is about addiction and the absence of connection. Supportive communities in particular can provide a really liberating and understanding environment where you can confront your fears and your struggles with addiction. It is a good idea as well to stay connected with professionals who know this subject. Through therapy, life coaching, online group coaching, particularly in times of stress, or in times of relapse, or when the behaviours start to surface again. Of course, asking for help is often not the easiest thing for a comfort. eater. Sue Howell describes the balance that's needing to be struck. She says,"not self-reliance not being able to ask for help if you need it, not being alone with your difficulties. Nor being totally dependent, helpless, or lacking in agency." Support is a major issue for the comfort eater and something that's really needed. I've done a lot of podcasts on relationship, but now I'm realizing I haven't actually done one on support. So that's going on my podcast ideas list. Perhaps if you'd like me to do a podcast on support... And the emotional barriers to getting support, you could let me know. Today, I've talked about six things that can help you recover from food addiction. The first one was self awareness. The second, self reflection and exploring emotion and your experience. Number three, changing thoughts and beliefs. Number four, Self regulation. Number five, mindfulness and mindful eating. And number six, community and support. For almost every section, I gave you a client quote or a quote from a listener. Things that you can identify with and I also gave you my colleagues input to show that none of us are alone in this process The point of this podcast really is to say that sobriety or being away from your addiction or compulsion is a way of being it's not just the absence of that substance and giving it up. It's not being able to resist food It's living in fullness this is something that you have to discover for yourself. I can't actually teach this to you. I can tell you everything I know about it, but I can't make you do it. As Judson Brewer points out in his book, though, knowing this, just knowing this, won't make you stop." He says"I continue to choose patterns that darken my spirit. Alienate those close to me and drain my vitality." And I can relate to this too. I don't always choose the best thing either. But as he says, he's made significant changes. And so have I. And I have seen a lot of my clients do this too. Bit by bit. We've come back to life. And we're still on that journey. In AA they talk about surrender. Surrender sounds like the most terrifying thing for an addict to do. We resist emotional work and we want results immediately. I can't tell you how many times people have come to me wanting me to fix them really, really quickly. I wish I could. But it happens slowly. Every small change counts. And there are rewards along the way. And you, most definitely, are not alone. I agree with Gabor Maté when he says this so well. "Emotions make life worthwhile. They make it challenging, exciting, beautiful, and meaningful." You have to give up something and embrace something. To be able to experience that, are you willing to do that? How could you just start that journey today? As I mentioned last week, I'm taking a break next week and then I'll be creating small podcasts addressing all the things that you ask me about all the time, the next podcast will be about comfort eating in response to worry, anxiety, or a panic attack. Thank you so much for listening to the end. I help people to recover from the emotional side of comfort eating. If you're unsure of whether you're an emotional eater, whether there is emotion behind your eating, or you're not sure what the emotion is, I have a fabulous little course for you. You'll find this on the app Passion. io under Underground Confidence And there will also be a link to that in the show notes. Treacher. I'll see you in two weeks. Have a lovely break.