Step Four

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Ah, Step Four – the first freak-out step (Nine is the next one). I have watched many people sit in the misery of dreading Step Four. I had a sponsee who finally did this Step after 2 years of hearing “you might want to Fourth Step that” from me almost every time we talked. It took me 18 months to complete my own first Fourth Step, and, even then, I was not searching and fearless (not until I had done this Step six times did I truly get searching and fearless).

Four IS scary since our egos really fight the personal responsibility thing. I was terrified I would find out just how awful I was. Instead, I found out that I am human – and so are those around me. Part of my taking responsibility includes understanding what I am not responsible for. I am not responsible for what others think of me. I am not responsible for disappointing others (especially in not getting skinny). I am, however, responsible for my own actions and motivations.

One way to do the Fourth step includes looking at our resentments, fears and sex conduct. The AABB way of looking at resentments suggests using four columns: who the resentment is toward, what happened, what it effects (such as sex relations, personal relations, pocket book, etc.), and my part. For fears, we simply list our fears. For sex conduct, we do the four columns again.

I run Step workgroups a couple of times a year. Each time, I do the Steps over some subject or another. This time, I did my Steps over fat, without really meaning to. So, I want to share the majority of my 4th with you (some is too personal for public consumption). I’ll post that later this week.

Step Four is scary, but so worth it. I have found freedom from the things I was willing to bring to light. They no longer haunt me like they used to. I don’t tend to regret or live in my past like I used to. Step Four is a necessary step on the path to freedom.

Feelings and Cravings

In her excellent book, Health At Every Size, Linda Bacon says we can’t trust cravings. I would say that, like feelings, we can’t trust cravings to tell us what is going on, but we can trust cravings to tell us something is going on.

There is a saying in the program: “feelings are not facts.” I did not understand this for the longest time. Finally, I realized that it meant just because I feel it, doesn’t mean it is real. Just because I feel like a situation in the end of the world, doesn’t mean it is. Just because I feel like I’ll never forgive that person, doesn’t mean I won’t with time. Just because I want to give up forever, doesn’t mean I will feel that way tomorrow.

Yet, feelings do tell me something is going on. If I’m angry at someone, that may tell me they did something wrong or that I did something wrong (sometimes, we get mad at others when we are the ones in the wrong) or that I am scared. If I don’t trust someone, it may be my insides warning me, or they just might remind me of someone I learned not to trust.

I think cravings work the same way. They tell me something is going on, but not always what. A great example: I kept craving Sweet Tarts. I could eat as many as I wanted and the craving was still there. If I ate a kiwi or an orange, however, the craving went away. I finally figured out that I was craving Vitamin C since I used to take a Vit C pill that tasted like Sweet Tarts. So, my body wasn’t craving what I thought it was, but it did need something.

Another example, If I don’t get enough sleep, I crave powdered-sugar donuts because I need energy. I have actually found that sleep, or at least rest, is the best way to get rid of that craving. Barring that, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich meets that craving better than the donuts do.

Sometimes, I’m craving a particular comfort food. I started explaining all about that, but I think it deserves its own blog post on another day.

I need to honor my body. If I am craving, that tells me SOMETHING is going on. Figuring out what exactly can be a mystery-solving process.

The Steps

So far, I’ve been covering a Step a month (see One, Two, and Three here). I plan on continuing to do that. However, I’ve realized that I never actually talked about the Steps in general. Because I lead Step workgroups, I have worked through this process many times. Each time I do, I find myself freer, happier and more open to life; I also find myself with less fear and resentment. Working the Steps can be an uncomfortable process, but one that is well worth moving through.

This last time I worked the Steps, I worked them from an FA perspective. Awesome, awesome stuff, I tell you. That process definitely helped me work through some old resentments while increasing my love for my body and myself.

So, how do you work the Steps from an FA point of view? Each month, I’m making suggestions for how I tend to work them, but there are actually many, many ways to work the Steps. The most common way comes out of the Big Book of AA. Al-Anon has a great guide called Paths to Recovery. I’ve never worked a bad Step, though I have gotten more growth out of some ways than others. I think intention is the key: the intention to “uncover, discover, and discard” all that nasty old stuff that has held us back.

I am not sure if any of you do actually want to work the Steps, but I encourage you to do so if you have the desire. One warning, it’s best to work the Steps with someone. Each Step has the potential to bring up uncomfortable feelings, bad memories and other issues.(There is an old saying, "the only way out is through," that I've found to be true.) Ideally, find someone who has worked the Steps before and is willing to share their experience, strength and hope. Finding someone who can handle the FA perspective might be tricky, but here are some options:

• They don’t actually have to be fat accepting, just open minded. I talk about FA stuff with my AA/Al-Anon sponsor. Even though she still buys into societal beliefs about weight loss, she is capable of putting those beliefs aside when she works with me.
• Sometimes, priests or ministers (especially Unity ministers) are versed in the Steps. However, as we well know, many spiritual people buy into the weight loss culture.
• I’ve also wondered if there might be some of you who have been in OA and become disillusioned with it. If you worked the Steps in OA, you might be able to guide someone else through the Steps from the FA perspective without having worked through them yourself. Ideally, though, we want to do it ourselves before we guide others.
• If you cannot find someone to work with you locally, you can always work with me by email (spirit_of_fa at gmx dot com). Feel free to write me about any of this stuff, in fact.

Anyway, the Steps have been a powerful healing tool for me. If you HP leads you in that direction, I encourage you to try them out.

Letting Go

I love the slogan, “Let go and Let God.” This is a slogan that has saved my butt a number of times. I so often believed that I needed to handle something when really I needed to surrender it instead. I have a friend that says, “instead of trying harder, let go harder.”

But what does letting go look like in terms of FA? For me, it has meant letting go of old ways of thinking while embracing a completely new paradigm. For instance, I have had to let go of:

• Food rules. Today, I try to trust my body rather than a predetermined set of rules, including how much I should eat, when I should eat, and ideas of good food and bad food.
• Trying to change my outsides so my insides feel better. This includes the desire to be smaller. I have finally learned that changing my body will not truly change my feelings, though I might fake it for awhile. I still fight that desire to be smaller some days, but today I know it hides an illusion, not reality.
• What people think of me. Some people will hate me on sight, for whatever reason. That has nothing to do with me, but rather with their own issues and prejudices. Some people may judge me as lacking or sick because of my body size. Again, their issue and not my own.

These are just a few of things I’ve learned to let go of and hand over to my Higher Power. I still have to do my part; I still have to take what actions I can. However, I can leave the results up to a Power that knows better than me.

Eating in Public

I tend to talk about food and to eat in public. I do this as an act of rebellion and fat activism. A woman eating in public and relishing her food is almost unheard of in our society. A fat woman eating in public and relishing her food is an act of rebellion. Fat men may have much the same experience in these days of the obesity epidemic.

Food is such a laden topic and experience for the fat person. Almost everyone I eat with notices what I eat. Few will say anything, but I get “the look”: the look of disapproval if I eat anything even slightly “fattening” or “unhealthy” or the look of approval if I eat lightly. Complete strangers judge my eating. I have a pretty strong don’t-mess-with-me air, so few actually say anything. However, I know lots of fat people who do get comments.

People can be very uncomfortable when I enjoy eating, especially fat people. One day, I was standing around with a group of acquaintances talking about local restaurants. Suddenly, my fat office mate said to me in an anguished voice, “will you please stop talking about food!” I realized that he was embarrassed for me, being ashamed of a fat person talking about food. I can’t remember what I responded at the time, but I made a conscious choice to continue talking about food in front of him. And he squirmed every time.

Part of the reason I talk about food is to reclaim pleasure. In our Puritan society, no one is supposed to actually enjoy anything – especially not women, and fat women even less. We have so much fear of our appetites; we have so much fear of allowing ourselves to enjoy life (I’ve written about this before when I wrote on Practicing Joy).

Part of the reason I talk about food is to give others the right and opportunity to do so as well. Often, fat bloggers will talk about food with relish. I believe that is because we are denied this simple pleasure in our society. Whenever I talk about food with people outside of FA, our conversation is fraught with tension. I love being able to talk about food here without all of the undercurrents.

So, if you want to be a fat activist today, try eating in public. Believe you have the right to eat: the right to eat the food your body wants, the right to enjoy that food, the right to eat as little or as much as you so desire. I encourage you to practice this act of rebellion. I have found it to a freeing experience.

Validation

I’ve been on the Fatosphere for a long time – back before it was the Fatosphere, in fact. We have some common conversations that come around every once in awhile – should diet talk be allowed, what is a fat activist, to HAES or not to HAEs, etc. -- and the death fat vs. in-betweenie vs. non-fat is a common one.

I understand this argument perhaps better than others. I spent most of my life as an in-betweenie. Then, I got sick and gained 100 pounds. Now, I am death fat. I also sponsor a number of women with eating disorders – they seem to like the way I approach body stuff, so I have a pretty good idea of the issues even a traditionally beautiful woman can face regarding body acceptance. Every size has its own worries and fears, its own horrors and horribleness. Yes, we are all in this together. But, yet, our experiences are as different as we are individual.

So, how can we get beyond this conversation? I’ve heard that “every problem comes bearing its own solution.” This problem is no exception. In fact, usually when we embrace a solution, we are stronger and not weaker in the end.

I think it may boil down to validation. We want our pain acknowledged. We want another to understand, “I hurt!” We want another to see inside and tell us we are ok anyway. What if we all just validated each other’s experiences? Could we maybe move beyond this?

As a death fat, part of me cringes at the thought. I KNOW that being death fat is a whole different experience that being an in-betweenie or a non-fat. And I’m scared my own experiences will be invalidated by this, that we will lose our focus as a community, and that a space that is precious to me will become yet another location for women to talk about how much they hate their thighs. The idea scares me a great deal. But most acts of Love the Power usually do at first. Then I see the incredible outcomes and get reminded that Love is always the solution.

I have been told to “let it begin with me.” Every time I chose to love, whatever the other person does, I will feel better about myself. Often, I see great changes as well. I am reminded of lines from what is often called The Eleventh Step Prayer (the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi):

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.

It just may be that when I choose to validate another, they may be more open to hearing my experience. I'm thinking that, by trying to understand their pain, they may be more willing to hear my pain. And, together, we may be better able to work towards acceptance for all.

So, for awhile, I’m going to try something. When someone shares with me their body angst, no matter what their size, I am going to validate it – without trying to share my own. I’m going to try and understand what THEY feel, what they have gone through, rather than trying to explain the experiences of a death fat individual. Am I sure this will work? No, I’m not. But I believe in experimenting. And, since an experiment always works better with a bigger data pool, care to join me?

Having a Human Experience

I am the sayings queen, and one I love particularly goes like this:

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

I remember the day I thought, “Why would I ever want to have a human experience?”

I do believe that I am primarily a spiritual being. I also believe that I have chosen this human experience. As to why, I have been able to look at everything in my life -- the horrors, the sadness, the griefs, the joys, the hopes, the dreams -- and been able to find a spiritual reason for all of them. So, I sat here asking myself “why would I ever choose to be fat? What spiritual purpose could I get out of such an experience?”

What spiritual purpose? Beau coups of them! I am learning to love myself when others say I am unlovable. I am learning not to base my belief in my own worthiness on another’s opinions. I am learning to listen to my body, my mind and my soul and tell the difference between all three. I am learning to listen with my heart – to hear pain in a person’s words instead of hate. I am learning to have compassion for those who treat me poorly. I am learning to show others how to love themselves, no matter what. I am learning forgiveness on a grand scale. Such lessons, lessons that I could only learn as one who is in some form outcast.

If I will look at my life from spiritual perspective, then this human experience makes sense. If I will look at my life that way, even being fat makes sense.