Lawgirl Book Review

This is a very special book review (just like those very special episodes of shows where they make big announcements or something like that.)  This is not a big announcement, just a very large book review, because this book deserves it.  I am hoping that some of you will see yourself in this book and learn from it.  I’m going through this review chapter by chapter.  So, there will be more, but here are the first three chapters.

When Food Is Love by Geneen Roth

Wow.  That’s all I can say about this book.  Wow.  Okay, no, I’m going to say more.

Wow.  In so many places, I felt as though I was reading my own story.  Abandonment issues.  Commitment issues.  Sexual abuse.  It’s all there.  Geneen writes from the heart, that is clear.   I wish that I could afford to send a copy to all I know who are struggling with these issues.  Instead, I will share what I can on here.

Compulsion is despair on an emotional level.  The substances, people, or activities that we become compulsive about are those that we believe capable of taking our despair away.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?  Especially if you were, like me, abused as a child.  You were not in control of your life then – you had no choice but to stay in the abusive situation unless someone outside of the situation noticed what was going on and tried to rescue you.  And even then, because you only know what you have experienced, you don’t want to be removed from a known terror to the unknown.  And so as an adult – we still react to everything as a child.

Food was love; eating was our way of being loved.  Food was available when our parents weren’t.  Food didn’t get up and leave us.  Food didn’t hurt us.  Food never said no.  But it is only a substitute for love.  Food will not ever be love.

And I think we all KNOW that intellectually, but emotionally, it’s tough.  Once you’ve made food into anything other than what it is – nutrition that your body needs to function – then it’s so hard to see it for what it really is. It’s kind of like when you fall in love; you only see what you want to see, blinded by love.

Love and compulsion cannot coexist.  Love is the willingness and ability to be affected by another human being and to allow that effect to make a difference in what you do, say, become.  Compulsion is the act of wrapping ourselves around an activity, a substance, or a person to survive, to tolerate and numb our experience of the moment.

As a compulsive eater, I have also allowed that compulsive behavior to bleed into other areas of my life. In the past, I have been compulsive about relationships (becoming obsessed with one friend, giving up my friendships to spend all of my time with my then-boyfriend), about expressing myself (beating a dead horse), about how I’m perceived (obsessing about an answer I gave in class for hours), etc.

It’s so exhausting to be a compulsive person.  You read into everything that happens to you, around you, or things that never happen.

When we become intimate with someone else, we lose control.  We lose control of how long they stay or if they leave, how they feel about us, how we feel about things they do or say.  We lose control of the effect that loving them has on our lives.  We become vulnerable to loss, pain, death.  Rather than experience the loss of control that loving brings, many of us choose to feel out of control about something that is within our control:  the food we eat or don’t eat.

How often have we talked to that cake at the party? “Oh no, you are NOT coming home with me.” We give the cake all of our power, all of our control. How often have you beat yourself up over what you ate that day?  Or what you didn’t eat (something good for you)?

What about when you bring certain foods home from the grocery store?  I test myself all of the time.  I bring in chocolate and play a game to see if I can make it last.  The old me would have eaten it all in one sitting.

Also, the old me actually lied to cashiers about who all of the food was for – like they cared!! But when you are overweight, you feel as though every food purchase is being judged.  It’s the shame that goes along with compulsive eating.

At an early age, I learned to be out of control around food and in control around people.  Everything that we believe we are not allowed to do in our lives with people or in our work, we do with food.  We eat the biggest one, we take the best for ourselves, we take more than we need, we spend money, we don’t think about others.

Because food doesn’t leave, is never unavailable, and never says no.  People do and from our teachings as children, we are not supposed to show our emotions about that.  We are supposed to keep a stiff upper lip and keep our emotions hidden.  This is why we eat our feelings.

If I give up what I want to do, then you will give up what you want to do.  Taking care of myself is wrong.  Having needs is bad.  Providing for them is worse.  A loving person thinks of others first.  A loving person takes the smallest cookie.  This means that if we are ever to be loved, we must rely on someone else for that love.

This is probably one of the toughest lessons I’ve had to learn.  I actually wrote about this  “How to Love Yourself.”

I invent drama where there is none.  I feel most at home with chaos.  I thrive on intensity.  I get frantic, never concerned.   I get ecstatic, never glad.  I get miserable, never unhappy.

Wow, how true in my life before.  The last two out of three relationships I had before The Vet, I chose such bad, bad men.  I gave and gave and they took and took…I pushed for them to stay when they wanted to go – which would have been SO much better for me!  But I begged, plead, sobbed, manipulated, you name it.

I had a conversation with a friend who was in a similar situation and we both said, almost with pride, that we would have no idea what to do with an easy man, an easy relationship.  It makes me sick now to know that I was so proud of that.

That’s how I’d always been, though, because that’s what it took for me to get noticed in my house.  You had to be dramatic.  By the time I was in first grade, I was reading at sixth grade level.  No one cares if you can read well; they only care if you’re struggling.  In a bid to get attention both at school and at home, I faked reading problems.  It worked…for about a week.  Unfortunately, it’s  a lot harder to act out reading problems than you would think.

There is nothing boring about being a compulsive eater.  You are either hating yourself because you are too fat, giddy with the prospect of being thinner, or ready to rip yourself apart when you binge.  Chaos, intensity, and drama are normal in the day to day life of a compulsive eater.  Suffering is a way of being in the world.

So true. Because I was sexually abused, I often felt numb – from myself, my feelings, my body. In order to feel, I ate, I physically abused myself, and I created drama in my relationships.

The significance of giving up the obsession with food is not a thinner body, not a smaller pants size, but giving up your protection from pain, for when you protect yourself from pain, you protect yourself from intimacy.    When you allow your pain to be visible, you give it a voice.  And when you give it a voice, you can release yourself from it.

It’s so scary to take that step, because what we’ve been doing has been SO safe for us.  No matter that it wasn’t healthy – it was safe and we were protected from pain.

Peace and contentment are feeling that take practice to achieve.  For those of us who as children felt as if standing still meant being smashed, being content is perceived as a threat to our survival.

I used to be the consummate friend:  I was the person who you could call at 2 am, no matter what.  I would drop everything I was doing any time, any day to listen, to help.  I actually became physically ill over my friends’ problems.  I never wanted you to listen to me – I only wanted to hear about you.

Why?  Because if I’m so focused on things outside of me, then I never have to deal with anything inside of me.  And that is how I hid myself from me for years.