| Mar 25 Next |
Preface |
- Did you or do you feel like a misfit – like you don’t quite belong?
- Were you made to feel that your perceptions were wrong?
- Were you made to feel that something was wrong with YOU?
- How did you dim your light?
- Does your food addiction operate as a distraction from other problems in your life?
- Did you or do you feel like everything in your life would be perfect if you just lost weight?
- How does being unable to lose weight and/or keep it off shape how you see yourself?
- Can you see that your thoughts about being broken, flawed and less than were given to you by others?
- How have these thoughts/beliefs affected your recovery?
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| Apr 1 |
Ch 1: Woman Spirit: The Root of Hunger |
- What do you think being female has to do with your addiction?
- What kind of relationship do you have with your body?
- What are some of your greatest feminine aspects? How do you shut them down or hide them to fit in or be taken seriously?
- Because she has banished her feminine spirit she lives in a state of perpetual spiritual hunger. Her starving soul yearns for nourishment. Do you resonate with this statement? how?
- “Is it any wonder that she overcompensates for her starvation? Is it any wonder that her body becomes a battleground for the war between food and fat? How does this battle between food and fat show up in your recovery?
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| Apr 8 |
Ch 2: The Buried Moon: Rediscovering the Feminine |
- When you think of the word feminine, what comes to mind?
- We have come to value only the masculine principles of direct action: single-minded focus; clear, logical thinking; goal-oriented, competitive behavior; linear structure; productivity; and achievement. We are uncomfortable with the feminine qualities of stillness, ambiguity, and emotion. We become impatient with cooperative relationship oriented attitudes and see aesthetics, intuition, nurturance, and earthiness as unimportant. Does this make sense to you? What does it mean to you?
- Are you dominated by one side (feminine and masculine) rather than the other. Where are you with balance?
- Women who struggle with disordered eating, more often than not, have an overly dominant inner masculine aspect that continually attempts to control the inner feminine. Their masculine side unlentingly critical, even hostile, toward their feminine side.” What kind of things does this voice say to you?
- Action without meaning – how does this work in your attempts to control your food addiction?
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| Apr 15 |
Ch 3: The Beginning: Revisioning the Struggle |
- What did you have to hide from your parents and other adults?
- What did the perceptions of others tell you about the world and most importantly, about yourself?
- Do you still reject parts of yourself now? How does this impact your disordered eating and relapses?
- Who are you really? Who told you who you are? what did they tell you?
- How do you react when you overeat or binge? What do you say to yourself? What opinions do you hold about yourself?
- What skills do you need to develop to replace the “log” of your disordered eating?
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| Apr 22 |
Ch 4: The Red Herring: Food is Not the Issue |
- When we struggle with disordered eating it is often difficult to believer that food in not the issue that is causing us such grief. Compulsive eaters find themselves thinking about the foods they are not supposed to be eating and scolding themselves for what they did eat and for how fat they look. And ye, food is not the real issue. It is a smoke screen. It is the red herring. Do you agree with this statement, why or why not?
- “Read herrings are distractors. With disordered eating, food becomes the red herring. It can distract those struggling with an eating disorder and we start looking for solutions in all the wrong places. What are you distracting yourself from? What wrong solutions have you tried?
- When you focus on your food addiction, do your other problems seem to disappear? How?
- When you embark on a journey to uncover and resolve underlying conflicts or feelings, and don’t allow yourself to be fooled by any illusions of what is truly troubling you, you may learn something important about the function and purpose of your disordered eating. Are you firightened to look at the conflicts and emotions underneath your disordered eating?
- What has happened to your real problems and issues over the years as you’ve applied the disordered eating band aid over them?
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| Apr 29 |
Ch 5: Addiction: Spiritual and Emotional Hunger |
- “They make a fundamental error in failing to separate what is concrete from what is symbolic and become obsessed with the concrete object, the food itself. They do not see that the addictive object is a representation of something much greater, that it is only a symbol of what they truly desire.” What is your emotional response to this information?
- “So long as they do not identify the true hunger, the real longing, women cannot be free from the addictive process…. All addictive processes represent an effort to keep feelings under control. Even more than that, they represent an effort to keep the flow of life itself under control.” How does your food addiction keep your emotions out of your awareness? Is food a way that you try to control life?
- “Disordered eating is a process addiction. The woman with disordered eating is addicted to her eating behavior and not food itself. They make efforts to encourage things like ‘abstinence’ and food plans. This approach often fails because too much emphasis gets placed on food itself and not on the addictive process – as if food were the problem.” How has an emphasis on abstinence worked for you?
- “For a woman to recover from disordered eating, she must recognize that she is starving. She needs to understand that the food she requires is not material food. She must be able to name her hunger and recognize its symbolic nature in order to nourish herself.” Do you know the name of your hunger?
- “But it is not enough to simply learn the name of one’s hunger. In order to be fed, a woman must remember the name of her hunger. She must keep it in the forefront of her mind…. She must remember what it is she is truly hungry for every time she slips or stumbles into addictive patterns…. She must remind herself, ‘This is not what I really want. What I really want is _____.’” How do you make sure you remember what you are truly hungry for on a daily basis?
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| May 6 |
Ch 6: Symbolism: Hunger as a Metaphor |
- “We all use food to one degree or another for reasons other than physical nutrition. It only becomes a problem when it becomes the only thing we ever do to cope. A woman caught up in this cycle may experience herself as hungry, but she misinterprets this in all cases as a hunger for food. But when we interpret all hunger as hunger for food, those other needs get buried deeper and deeper and never get taken care of.” What is your process of misinterpreting your hunger?
- “In order for a woman to recover from disordered eating, she needs to discover the deeper meanings of her hunger, so that she can recognize that her desire to eat compulsively may be speaking to her about her greatest heart’s desire that remains unfulfilled; her tendency to stuff herself may be an attempt to stuff down ‘unacceptable’ or ‘troublesome’ feelings; her need to eat continually may be a reflection of the constant emptiness she experiences in her life; her obsession with having zero body fat may reveal a desire to hide her curvaceous femininity.” What is the deeper meaning of your hunger?
- “Stories such as this old Japanese folk tale can help us move into the world of metaphor, where we can discover hidden meanings buried beneath the surface, where we can receive the clues that will guide us to freedom from our obsession with food.” What is the food that you chase? What might it symbolize? And what is the hunger you are trying to satisfy?
- “For this woman, chasing her food led her to an encounter with hungry demons that lived hidden underground and had voracious appetites. You may recognize these demons as the ones you wrestle with within your own psyche.” What are some of the demons you wrestle with? What do they want?
- “What would you call your demons that hide deep in the dark crevices of your unconscious? What is it that haunts you, nags at you, holds you captive, wants you to feed it? What does your demon want to eat? What does it want you to feed it? Attention? Love? Money? Self-Acceptance? Rage?” What is the name of your demon(s) and what does it want you to feed it?
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“As long as we interpret our nonphysical hunger literally, we will attempt to use food to satisfy it, and we will remain hungry forever. But when we define our hungers and develop a deeper awareness of what we are hungry for, we can begin to seek the appropriate nourishment.” What would be appropriate nourishment for you? For your soul?
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| May 13 |
Ch 7: Feelings: Gifts from the Heart Part 1 |
- “Women who struggle with disordered eating tend to be more frightened of their feelings than most. They have learned to mistrust their bodies and discount the body’s most intimate way of communicating – the language of the emotions. Sadly, many fail to recognize that our feelings can provide us with some of the most powerful keys to self-knowledge and recovery.” How are you disconnected from your emotions? Do you trust them when they come up?
- “Like Wa, a woman who struggles with disordered eating lives in a world filled with responsibility, duty and deprivation. She is always hungry because there is no room in this world for how she feels and what she wants. Her life is controlled by the words of a ‘head’ man who lives within her, an inner tyrant that drives her to do more, more, more and then refuses to reward her properly for her hard work.” How does your inner tyrant keep you away from how you feel and what you really want?
- “In the story, it was only when Wa went deep into the river waters, deep into the world of emotion, that she could heal and receive the wonderous pearl that would help her nourish herself, obtain abundance, grow in strength and protect herself from those who would hurt her. In that same way, it is only when we allow ourselves to fully experience our feelings that we are able to receive the precious gifts they have to offer.” What can you do to help yourself feel safe enough to wade into the water of your emotions?
- “Anger can bring clarity and strength. By embracing our fears, we can discover what we really need to feel safe. With loneliness can come the gift of self-awareness. Sadness offers the gift of healing and cleansing when we allow ourselves to cry. Jealousy can make us aware of what we want for ourselves, what we truly desire.” What gifts do you think your emotions have to offer you?
- “To help us cope with our fear of our feelings we learn to block them out. We build dams to stop the natural flow. We create compulsive behaviors with food to distract ourselves from them, rather than pay attention to feelings, rather than letting ourselves feel, we think about food and eating. It is important to understand that it is not the feelings themselves that cause the obsession with food and fat. It is our attempt NOT to feel the feelings.” In what ways does your food addiction block your emotions?
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| May 20 |
Ch 7: Feelings: Gifts from the Heart Part 2 |
- “Stuffing down feelings takes up a lot of the time and energy that might otherwise be spent having fun, doing interesting things and participating in relationships. Stuffing down feelings and then having to worry about them slipping out of control can lead to a life that has food as its central focus rather than the joy of living.” Have you ever had your feelings leak out or slip out of control? What happened?
- “Feelings are not necessarily rational. Sometimes you can make sense out of how you are feeling, but the understanding usually comes after you have fully experienced the feeling. If you try to ‘make sense’ out of the feelings before you have allowed yourself to completely feel their depth and breadth, you may find yourself confused or frustrated.” Do your feelings make sense to you or does their appearance leave you frustrated and confused?
- “It is important to make a distinction between feelings and behavior. Behavior can be controlled. Feelings cannot. Trying to control feelings is like trying to swim up a mountain. Unlike behavior, feelings cannot harm you or others. They can be uncomfortable and unpleasant…. …But they are not bad or destructive in and of themselves.” Is it harder for you to distinguish between feelings and behavior with particularly powerful and uncomfortable feelings?
- “Feelings can cause trouble, however, if they aren’t recognized or accepted. They are waves of energy that can either flow through us or get blocked. They do not just disappear. If we ignore our feelings or suppress them, they seem to take on a power of their own, and their expression becomes distorted or perverted in some way.” If you were to guess which feeling takes on a life of its own as your compulsion to eat, which feeling would it be?
- “Recovery from disordered eating requires an acknowledgment of how you are feeling and learning to distinguish one feeling from another. It requires an acceptance of ALL feelings without judgment. It requires an acknowledgment of the idea that feelings don’t have to make sense, don’t have to be liked, but, simply, have to be accepted. And finally, it requires some honest expression of how you feel and a willingness to act with honesty and integrity.” How can you be sure to act with honesty and integrity?
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| May 27 |
Ch 8: Relationships: Singing the Truth |
- “Many women who struggle with disordered eating fail to hear the sweetness of their own song because they are too busy listening to the singing of others, whether it be the voices of their parents, lovers or husbands, women friends, colleagues or classmates, or the chorus of the culture they live in.” In what ways has your song been silenced?
- “Unable to hear their inner voices they feel a vague but ever-present sense of alienation that is hard to bear. Longing for a sense of inner connectedness and finding the estrangement from their true selves intolerable, they fill their minds with thoughts of food and they eat the way they live, as if in a trance, not conscious of what they truly want.” in what ways do you feel disconnected from yourself? How does this contribute to your food addiction?
- Cautious of anything that might be disruptive, they are quick to discard their own ideas and values whenever conflict arises. They see their own personal song as threatening to their relationships…. And once again, they turn to food to distract themselves from speaking their truth, from daring to sing out loud.…These women are starving. By failing to respect and respond to their own needs, they become depleted rather than nourished in their relationships.” What would happen if you spoke your truth out loud
- “For a woman to be free of disordered eating, she must bring the masculine principles of separateness and autonomy into her relationships. She must be able to say no. She must assert her individuality within the relationship…. Like the girl in the story, she needs to say no when others treat her poorly for not doing what they want and appear to value her only for what she can do for them.” How do lack of boundaries and assertiveness play into your food addiction?
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| Jun 3 |
Ch 9: Power: Dominion Vs. Domination |
- “I believe a key issue underlying all disordered eating is power. It needs to be understood that it may not be a sense of powerlessness that is at the root of the disordered eating. It may instead be a fear of power. Fear of the power of one’s own feelings, fear of the power of one’s perception, fear of the power of one’s intelligence & talent, fear of the power of one’s sexuality.” What powers within yourself are you afraid of?
- “Women who struggle with disordered eating are, more often than not, women with exceptional abilities. They have a highly developed sixth sense; they have the ability to see the invisible, to read between the lines. They become afraid of these abilities because they have received the message that these abilities are dangerous.” How were your exceptional abilities dangerous to you?
- “In order to recover from disordered eating, a woman needs to move into a new understanding of power, one which will enable her to be comfortable with her intrinsic power, one which will allow her to be in her power and participate in relationships with others at the same time.” How has power worked in your relationships?
- “There are two different kinds of power. The one with which most of us are familiar is the power of domination, or power-over-others. The other power is called dominion or power-from-within. Unlike the power of domination, the power of dominion has no hierarchical structure. It is based on equality. This results in cooperation rather than competition. The power of domination comes out of the patriarchal system of control & conquest…. The power of dominion is more feminine.” How has the power of domination worked in your life?
- “When a woman can step out of the perceptual framework of domination and into dominion, she can have a whole new way of working with power, a whole new way of being in the world. When she no longer sees power as ‘bad’ or dangerous, she will no longer feel compelled to keep her power in check by doing what she is doing with food: starving, eating compulsively or bingeing and purging.” How can you see your personal power through the lens of dominion rather than domination?
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“When a woman becomes assertive, like Elsa, she taps into a vast reservoir of power that lies within her, a sense of power that does not have to affect others adversely. She can then shift out of interpersonal relationship dynamics that are based on the power of domination into those that honor the personal power within each individual. She can let go of the fat that served to hide her power from others; she can stop the dieting and food obsessions that have kept her from recognizing & experiencing the full force of her personal power.” What stands in you way from experiencing the full force of your personal power?
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| Jun 10 |
Ch 10: Nurturance: Mother as an Archetype |
- “She lives in a world that does not perceive, honor or celebrate whatever cannot be validated by the 5 senses. Emotions are regarded as troublesome or frightening. She quickly learns that in order to please others around her, she must present a pleasant, happy face and hide any other feelings. Her denial of her feelings is quite costly. She enters a self-imposed exile from the world of spirit and nature.” What were you taught about emotions while growing up?
- For the woman who struggles with disordered eating, only by embracing the power of her emotions will she gain access to the guidance, support and nourishment from her feminine spirit. It is the way she will come to know the Wise Woman who lives within her.” Who is that Wise Woman inside of you? Do you trust her?
- “The woman who struggles with disordered eating might not have been orphaned from her mother like the young princess, but she has, for one reason or another, become disconnected from her internal mother, that aspect of herself that provides nourishment and compassionate guidance. By blocking and judging her feelings, she is unable to access the guidance and support she desperately longs for. She feels undernourished and attempts to fill up herself with food.” What nourishment do you long for from your internal mother?
- “Because of these experiences, these women were not able to develop adequate ‘inner mothers.’ Their inner mothers were very young and, like most young mothers, very unsure of themselves. Their response to requests for nourishment can be very confusing. One minute they are overindulging, the next, withholding and judgmental. This gets played out in the woman’s relationship with food, which acts as a metaphor for all nourishment.” How does food act as a metaphor for all nourishment for you?
- “It is essential to recognize that you have within yourself the capacity to develop a strong inner mother, one that can provide you with the nourishment and guidance you need…. How do you do this? This means not scolding yourself whenever you make a mistake, but instead reframing your error so that it becomes a learning experience. This means not judging your feelings or criticizing yourself for having them. This means following your intuition rather than blindly accepting others’ perceptions or automatically doing what others want you to do in order to please them.” Do you believe you can develop your inner mother or Wise Woman? How would you go about it?
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| Jun 17 |
Ch 11: Intuition: The Inner Seeing, Hearing, Knowing |
- “Intuition is an invaluable gift from the feminine. It is the wise voice that tells us what to do, which way to turn and if something is wrong. Unfortunately, most of us have been encouraged to disregard our intuition. We have been taught that the only knowledge that is valid is that which comes to us from the outside world through our 5 senses. We are taught to think, not feel, and to value only what is logical, what can be processed through the rational mind.” Were your intuitive feelings ridiculed or punished while growing up? Are they still ridiculed or punished now?
- “In our culture, there has not been much support for intuitive knowing and those who are closely connected to their instinctual selves through their intuition are often rejected by others. In my work with women struggling with disordered eating, it has become clear to me that this is exactly the kind of experience these women have had repeatedly in their lives.” Have you ever been rejected for your intuition? Do you reject your own intuition?”
- They started to feel that something was terribly wrong with them but they weren’t sure what. All they felt was this terrible pressure to keep their perceptions hidden from others, to hide their true selves, lest they be accused of being irrational (read: crazy). And they found one of the best ways to ignore or quiet that inner voice was by distracting themselves with food, fat and dieting.” Do you use food to silence your inner knowing? How well does it work?
- “Recovery from disordered eating involves reclaiming your intuition, that inner authority that provides knowledge and guidance. It involves learning to use your intellect to support rather than discredit information obtained through intuitive channels. It requires that you develop an appreciation of the wise, compassionate guidance that is always available to you and that you choose to incorporate it consciously into your life rather than ignore it.” What are you afraid to hear from your intuition? What inner knowledge would you rather not know?
- “The woman who seeks to free herself from the prison of disordered eating must become receptive to the inner promptings of her intuition. She must listen within, reclaim her intuitive perspective and appreciate its wisdom. This means paying attention to her body signals (gut feelings) and instincts every day. It means respecting her impulses and hunches. It means honoring her feelings and insights by using this information for guidance.” Has your disordered eating disconnected you from your body? How has this affected your ability to be receptive to your intuition?
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| Jun 24 |
Ch 12: Dreamtime: The Journey Within |
- “Dreams often show us what we have overlooked or avoided in our daily lives; they often reveal feelings, thoughts or attitudes that may be most helpful to us in our quest to become more conscious of who we are and what we want – to become more whole and complete.” Have any of you done any dreamwork? Would you be willing to share your experience?
- “In order to receive the messages sent to you from your unconscious via the dream, it is important to recognize that the objects, characters, events and locations in your dream are multidimensional SYMBOLS not simply concrete representations of things, people and places that may or may not be familiar to you. Dreams are much more dramatic in their presentation of images and ideas than our daily thoughts are. They tend to shock us and to exaggerate things in their attempts to get our attention.” What you do you typically dream about? Any recurring dreams?
- “When a woman is trying to understand the deeper nature of her struggle with food, her dreams can provide her with valuable clues to what she is really hungry for, what her unfulfilled desires are, what inner conflicts she is trying to resolve through her body size, what feelings she is trying to stuff down with food, what her fears are. They can show her what aspects of herself she wants to disown and how she uses food or dieting to keep them hidden.” What are you starving for?
- “When we begin to pay attention to our dreams and learn to interpret them, we become familiar with the language of metaphor. We begin to see, for example, that food is a metaphor for emotional nourishment and that we tend to eat when we are hungry for attention, affection or appreciation. We begin to see more clearly how stuffing ourselves rapidly with food is a frantic attempt to stuff down those feelings that are threatening to surface.” What is your disordered eating and fat protecting you from?
- “While the content of a woman’s dreams can be very valuable, the real treasure, as shown in the story of the peddler, is found in the process of following the dream. When a woman starts listening to her dreams, to her inner voice, she discovers that her truest source of knowledge comes from within. …Not by adhering to the opinions and standards of outer authorities? What are you doing that isn’t working for you – just because you’ve been told it’s the only way to recover?
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| Jul 1 |
Ch 13: Moontime: Reclaiming the Body’s Wisdom |
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| Jul 8 |
Ch 14: Sexuality: Embracing the Feminine |
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| Jul 15 |
Ch 15: The Descent: Meeting the Shadow |
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| Jul 22 |
Ch 16: Assertiveness: Speaking the Truth |
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| Jul 29 |
Ch 17: Nourishment: Physical Vs. Emotional |
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| Aug 5 |
Ch 18: The Journal: Recording the Truth |
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| Aug 12 |
Ch 19: Recovery: Out of the Labyrinth |
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| Aug 19 |
Ch 20: Storytime: The Tales of the Three Women ✨ Final Session |
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