| 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 |
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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 |
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| May 20 |
Ch 7: Feelings: Gifts from the Heart Part 2 |
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| May 27 |
Ch 8: Relationships: Singing the Truth |
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| Jun 3 |
Ch 9: Power: Dominion Vs. Domination |
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| Jun 10 |
Ch 10: Nurturance: Mother as an Archetype |
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| Jun 17 |
Ch 11: Intuition: The Inner Seeing, Hearing, Knowing |
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| Jun 24 |
Ch 12: Dreamtime: The Journey Within |
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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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