I Swirling confusion spirals around me. I’m caught in a whirlpool of behavior, emotion, belief, and memory that I can’t reconcile. I fight against the current, swim away from the vortex. I’m so tired, so sad. I long to surrender to the tide, but I choke back the tears, and insomnia protects me from my […]
Yearly Archives: 2021
Hurting? Reach for your Higher Power, NOT Food!
Saturday (9/11/21) was the 20th Anniversary of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the militant Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States of America on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I spent much of that particular weekend reading about that day’s infamous events and watching a very detailed (and amazingly thorough) documentary that […]
Attraction Not Promotion – We Maintain Anonymity
Tradition Eleven: Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television and other public media of communication. “When we maintain our Tradition of anonymity, we ensure that Overeaters Anonymous remains a spiritual Fellowship, supporting all of us in our […]
Tool of Sponsorship
“We ask a sponsor to help us through all three levels of our program of recovery: physical, emotional, and spiritual.” – Tools of Recovery Pamphlet The first time I heard about OA, I said, “Is that a group thing? Groups don’t work for me.” I thought I had all the answers and believed that self-reliance […]
Improving My Relationship with My HP
Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. “Our Higher Power is the only source of help that is always available to us, always strong enough to lift us […]
OA has Changed My Life for the Better
My name is Fernando C and I’m a compulsive overeater. I am 42 years of age and have had problems with compulsive overeating my entire life. Growing up, I faced two distinct challenges: 1) I was born into a family where food was scarce and 2) my father was an active alcoholic. Throughout my childhood, […]
Humbly Asking and turning it over
Step Seven: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. ”Each of my character defects is replaced by its opposite, and I am equipped with a new set of survival skills.” — Voices of Recovery, October 7. If I’ve done a good job at becoming willing to let go of my character defects, turning them over […]
Growth is Taking Responsibility and Being Self-supporting
Tradition Seven: Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. “Taking responsibility is a meaningful sign of spiritual and emotional growth.” — Voices of Recovery, September 8. When a basket gets passed at a meeting or the meeting treasurer posts a donation link in the chat window, it reminds me that this […]
The Deadly Disease No One wants to Discuss – Compulsive Eating
To sustain life, every living thing must eat – and, typically, human beings must eat several times a day from a wide variety of food groups. And yet, each of us will come to develop a relationship with food that can either lead to a happy and balanced way of being, or it can result […]
A Desire to Stop Eating Compulsively
Tradition Three – The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively. The doors of Overeaters Anonymous are open to everyone who wants to seek this way of life. There are no bars to entry, no boxes to check to make us worthy of membership. There is just one requirement: a […]
Sharing the worst of myself led to the best things
Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. “We find we can cope with both good times and bad, learning and growing spiritually from each experience, as our Higher Power intended us to do all along.” — OA Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions page 49 […]
Understanding Autonomy Through Tradition Four
Tradition Four: Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA as a whole. “All of us need the balance implicit in the Principle of autonomy to be the unique OA groups and individuals we are meant to be.” — OA Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions page 118 I was raised […]