Stop Suffering About

Connect to your innate well-being.

Addiction

Recovery from Anorexia with Rebecca Perkins

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“recoveryWhen we struggle with an eating disorder, it can become all-consuming. Not just for the person with the disorder, but for their family and loved ones as well.

Rebecca Perkins struggled for years to help her daughter, Bea, get well from anorexia. In this podcast episode, Rebecca shares how all-consuming the issue was. And then, when Rebecca stumbled across the Three Principles, which point toward our innate health, wellness, and well-being it was a game-changer for her and ultimately also for her daughter.

Bea is now fully recovered from anorexia and together mother and daughter have written a book about their experience and their new understanding that knowing where our thoughts and experience of life are coming from can release us from the self-imposed prisons we sometimes find ourselves in.

In the introduction I mention the exploration I’ve had in the last week about habitual thought storms and their persuasive but predictable nature. You can read more detail in the blog post.

You can listen to the podcast by pressing play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

recovery from within rebecca perkins
  • The simple yet profound  transformation when we understand where our experience is coming from
  • The domino effect of one new thought
  • On the mirage of our thinking
  • Writing a book together as a team
  • Why the answer to eating disorders is not where we think it is
  • And why the past doesn’t matter the way we think it does
  • Seeing health rather than illness in a person with an eating disorder
  • Looking for the innate space of stillness we all have beneath the choppy waves of our thoughts
Coach Rebecca Perkins

Rebecca Perkins has worked as a professional wellbeing and resilience coach for 12 years with both individuals and in groups and across all ages and sectors. More recently she has focused her work with young people who are struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, addictions and eating disorders.

She has seen firsthand profound changes in herself and her family as well as deep transformation for her clients as she has deepened your understanding of how well-being and resilience are innate in all of us.

Rebecca is the published author of highly rated titles including Best Knickers Always: 50 Lessons for Midlife, and Recovery From Within: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Anorexia.

You can find Rebecca at RecoveryFromWithin.life

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Insight As The Healing Force In Addiction Recovery With Harry Derbitsky

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“HarryIt is likely that addiction has touched your life in some capacity, either personally or with someone you know. This is certainly true for me. My darling departed brother was a recovered alcoholic and I remember him mentioning the dismal statistics that Alcoholic Anonymous cited. That number is up for debate, but whichever way you look at it, it’s not great.

Perhaps there’s another way. A path that relies less on will power and more on leaning into our true nature of innate health and well-being. In episode 2 I had a conversation about this with Greg Suchy, and today I talk to his co-host of the Addiction, Alcoholism and the Three Principles webinar series, Harry Derbitsky.
Harry Derbitsky

Harry Derbitsky’s book Evolution of Addiction Recovery is out now and has testimonials from psychiatrist Dr. Bill Pettit and psychologist Dr. Amy Johnson. This unique offering by an early student of Sydney Banks provides a roadmap to the spiritual and psychological nature of the Three Principles for addiction recovery.

It includes indigenous or native American chapters and is available at Amazon and in certain bookstores. Harry and recovery coach Greg Suchy co-host the bi-monthly webinar and YouTube series called Addiction, Alcoholism and the Three Principles.

You can find Harry at ACTTraining.biz

You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

Evolution of Addiction Recovery
  • How Syd Banks defined jumping the boundaries of time
  • Why the 3 Principles appeal to those looking for a spiritual-psychological answer about addiction
  • How the field of addiction recovery is evolving
  • On the involvement of insight in addiction recovery for those like Bill W.
  • The restriction to mental health of labeling oneself as having a disease
  • How the Three Principles work as a health model, rather than a disease model

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What Should We Do With The Drive To Overeat?

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If you’re reading this then I’m sure you’ve felt it.

“DriveThe drive to eat something even when you’re not hungry. Or the drive to eat a larger portion than you need.

(Note: I’m using the example of overeating, because that’s my experience, but you can substitute over drinking or gambling or shopping too much for that word. A habit is a habit is a habit. They all come from the same place: thinking.)

It’s likely that you’ve done various things to deal with this feeling. Used different coping mechanisms or strategies. Maybe you’ve also had lots of feelings about it. I certainly have.

Some of the things that might happen as a result of that drive to overeat are:

  • feelings of shame
  • feelings of helplessness
  • beating ourselves up
  • going on a diet and white-knuckling it
  • giving in and feeling relief
  • and then feeling more shame or regret
  • wondering if anyone else feels this way
  • wondering how it is that your friends who are thin don’t seem to feel that same drive
  • hiding your eating from others

Thought

If you’ve been exploring the Inside-Out Understanding for a while, you may have caught on that one of the foundational principles is this: we live in the feeling of our thinking, not in the feeling of our experiences.

What that means is that everything we think and then feel about the drive to eat comes from within.

But without knowing that we’ve likely been caught for years battling the list of thoughts and feelings I’ve noted above, and others that I haven’t mentioned.

For example, I spent a number of years tackling the shame related to the drive to overeat and to being overweight. I read Brene Brown’s books and learned lots about self-compassion. I read Tara Brach’s book on radical self-acceptance.

But, as ever, trying to wrestle with those feelings of shame was like playing a game of whack-a-mole. I’d bop one feeling on the head, thinking I’d gotten rid of it or healed it, only to have another, or the same one, pop up again.

Set It Down

snow globe

What I’m learning from the 3 Principles is an entirely different approach. And it’s so contrary to my task-oriented fix-it approach that it’s taking a little getting used to.

But what I am experiencing is that when I set down my thoughts and attendant feelings about food, weight and overeating I begin to suffer less. My feelings and thoughts have less weight (sorry) now.

What I’m beginning to see is that we are by nature whole and healthy. I don’t have any irrevocable proof for that, other than a firm belief that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And that the spiritual essence in each of us can never be damaged.

I do notice that when I stop fighting with my thoughts and feelings they settle down and fade away much more quickly that when I wrestle with them.

Dr. Amy Johnson uses the metaphor of a snow globe for this phenomenon. If the flakes in a snow globe are swirling around we don’t have to do anything to make the swirling stop, other than set the globe down. The snow will settle on its own.

I see our thoughts and feelings about overeating like the snow in that snow globe. When we try to make the feelings and thoughts go away, we’re unintentionally and innocently shaking up the globe even more. Then we have a bigger, faster snowstorm to deal with.

Little book of big change

I spent this past weekend with a friend. He’s six feet tall and weighs less than I do at my 5 feet 3 inches. And when we’re sharing a meal together I can see that he feels zero drive to overeat. It just doesn’t occur to him to want more food than his body needs. It’s baffling to me, someone who has a voice in her head when it comes to food screaming, “That’s not enough! More! You need more! This is a matter of life and death!”

I confess that it’s hard not to feel shame in that situation. And in fact, I did feel shame and many other uncomfortable thoughts and feelings this weekend.

But because I know where my thoughts are coming from, I let them be. I didn’t wrestle with them.

I’m still learning, still waiting for insight about how to change my eating habits and lose weight.

And in the meantime, what I do know to do is not worry about my drive to overeat. Like any thought or feeling, it’s temporary. And the more I see that, the more I expect the weight loss / food snowstorm in my particular snow globe will settle down.

Have you experimented with setting your thoughts and feelings about overeating down since you learned about this understanding? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

PS If you haven’t read it yet, I highly, highly recommend Dr. Amy Johnson’s book The Little Book of Big Change, which is all about changing habits like overeating.

Also if you’ve already read it, try reading it again. I read it for the first time two years ago. Now that I’ve learned more about the Principles I’m reading it again and it’s almost a brand-new book to me. I’m getting so much more out of it, because I can see more now about what she’s pointing to.

[Food images courtesy Kelly Jean and Unsplash. Snow globe image courtesy N and Unsplash.]

Why Diets Don’t Work, And Why This Is Good News

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Have you ever tried and failed to lose weight? Me too.

“whyIt wasn’t until very recently, though, that I understood why that was.

I’d long thought I lacked the necessary willpower or stick-to-it-iveness. Maybe I was just lazy or stupid. Turns out, the cause for my failure – and possibly yours – was none of those things.

In Dr. Amy Johnson’s book, The Little Book of Big Change, she has a chapter dedicated to how our habits are actually a sign of our mental health. When I first read that I was confounded. She explains that we are all innately resilient, whole and well.

At our essence is peace and well-being, no matter what is going on outside ourselves. But if we don’t feel that well-being, if it is obscured by clouded thinking and a misunderstanding about where our experience of life comes from, then we’ll do whatever we can to feel better.

“If you don’t see a better option – a better way to feel good – you’re going to do what you can.” 

Dr. Amy Johnson

If it looks like eating a comfort food is going to help us get a small taste (pun intended) of the peace that is our essence, then we’re going to do that. This is the role of every type of addiction – food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, etc.  With our habit or addiction, we are actually trying to remind ourselves of who we truly are.

Our nature, as spiritual beings having a human experience, is whole, complete, and peaceful. We’ll do anything to connect with that essence, including overeating or drinking too much.

This is why diets don’t work

Little book of big change

When we diet without being aware of this, we’re simply cutting ourselves off from the source that we believe comforts and nurtures us, connecting us to the closest feeling we can manufacture that reminds us of our pure essence. This is why so many people stop one habit only to pick up another. For example, we might stop smoking but then start eating to excess. 

If an electronic device, for example your cell phone, is running out of battery power, you naturally plug it in to charge it. That’s what we’re doing when we overeat, except instead of connecting to electricity, we’re connecting to a false source of energy. (Sorry, this metaphor is a little messy.) 

Diets try to convince us that we shouldn’t need to connect to that source of energy. But instinctively we know this isn’t true so we cheat on the diet or we stick to it for a while, but then go back to overeating. 

The fact that diets don’t work shows us that they’re the wrong tool for the job. If dieting was the answer, it would work, 100% of the time, across the board for everyone. The diet industry would disappear because it wouldn’t be needed any longer. But the fact that so many of us struggle with diets points us to the truth that they’re not the right answer to the question that is being asked. 

Overeating, or any habit / addiction, is not a failure on the part of the person doing that habit. It’s actually a neon sign pointing to the fact that each of knows that peace and wholeness are who we are.

Searching for answers

I long knew that diets weren’t the answer, and I had various explanations for why that was the case, though none of them rang completely true until I came across the 3 Principles. I knew from my own personal experience that I was comforting myself with food, so I tried to find other ways to do that, or ways to not need to be comforted so much. 

waterfall

Nothing I tried worked and looking back I can see it was because I didn’t understand the nature of thought and how our experience comes from the inside-out, not the other way around. When we see this, and our minds naturally start to quiet down, we are more often able to connect to the peace that is our true nature. When that happens the need to do our habit effortlessly drops away.

It is possible, of course, to succeed at dieting and some people are able to make it last. Sadly those people are the exception, not the rule, and the rest of us end up feeling like it must be ourselves that are the problem.

I was reminded of the truth of this talking to Greg Suchy in episode 2 of the Stop Suffering About podcast. Greg’s habit was alcohol. He’d gotten sober and was going to AA meetings, but mentioned during our conversation that he was miserable between meetings. It was only when he discovered the 3 Principles and began to see the inside-out nature of thought, that he was able to connect to joy and peace once again.

This is a huge topic and one a simple blog post won’t be able to address completely. But here’s why I wanted to bring it up.

I’ve recently drawn a line in the sand with myself. I’ve tried every outside-in way to lose weight and failed at all of them. Some more than once. I refuse to do that any longer.

Thankfully, I recently had the experience of a 30-year habit falling away effortlessly and totally unexpectedly, simply because I’ve begun to explore the nature of thought and where the human experience comes from. That experience seems to have shown me that I’m on the right track. I’ve been searching for answers about overeating for 30 years and finally, I think I’m getting close.

I’ll keep sharing here and on the podcast. 

Let’s see what’s really possible when we stop applying the wrong tool (dieting) to the job of connecting to our true, peaceful nature.

Has your understanding of your habits changed since you started to explore the 3 Principles? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

[Donuts image courtesy Sharon McCutcheon and Unsplash. Waterfall photo courtesy Daniel Hjalmarsson and Unsplash.]

Why You’re Not Broken with Christian McNeill

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“doingWhen I first began exploring the Three Principles, one of the most difficult ideas to get my head around was that we are all whole, always, no matter what has happened to us in our lives. In this interview with Christian McNeill, we touch on this as it relates to ‘healing’ from our past and also as it relates to grief we may experience in the present.
Stop suffering about being broken

In the introduction, I mention this blog post, where I discuss my diminishing need to comfort myself as I explore this understanding. And I also mention the post about my daily soda habit that dropped away recently. You can read that here. (Or listen to it. I also recorded it as an audio file.)

And I also mention the new ebook and audiobook that’s available that ties in so beautifully with the topic of this interview. You can get your free copy of Stop Suffering About Being Broken (Because You’re Not) here.

Christian McNeill

Christian McNeill is a 50-something coach and trainer, living in Glasgow, Scotland. She’s the mother to two grown children and was a lawyer for over 30 years. In her 20s, she got over a drinking problem and, for many years, she had a secret side career of trying to be happy. In early 2011, she stumbled across the Three Principles Paradigm and discovered how to be happy without trying. She now works with individuals and organizations, helping them to flourish. She also teaches and mentors others wishing to learn about the Three Principles Paradigm. And today, her side career is as a yoga teacher.

You can find Christian at ElementsOfWellBeing.net

You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or watch the video here. Highlights, notes, resources and full transcript below.

Show Notes

  • On the varying ways people react to their busy minds
  • Christian’s observation that using old healing paradigms no-one gets past their childhood trauma
  • The essence of everyone that is whole and unbreakable
  • A different outlook on the past once we understand the nature of Thought
  • On the nature of grief and exploring that from the inside-out
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The Diminishing Need to Comfort Myself

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As we begin to understand what Thought really is, our need to protect ourselves from our personal thinking and our feelings naturally drops away.

“doingI’ve been someone who pretty consistently felt a deep need to comfort myself throughout my adult life. It was the way I figured out how to cope with life and with the thoughts and sometimes uncomfortable feelings I was having. I used food, television, routine, and wine to a certain extent, to soothe and comfort myself about life.

For example, each evening just before supper time, I would try to think of a comforting TV show that I could watch with my dinner. Something I loved, usually something lighthearted with kind characters and a few laughs. I’m more a Parks and Recreation and Grace and Frankie person than Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad.

vintage tv

At times, of course, there were things to watch that I enjoyed, especially during the regular North American TV season between October and May. But at other times, I had watched everything I could find that comforted me. So I’d go back and rewatch old episodes, though that was less satisfying and I felt less comforted. Or I’d go on a desperate search to find a movie or new TV show that would fill my need for comfort.

I could see what I was doing. I knew I was seeking comfort or soothing. Some people call this ‘numbing’ but that description didn’t seem to accurately describe my experience. And it seemed judgmental or blaming. I was already feeling bad enough about myself, I didn’t need to heap another judgment on top of that.

This pattern went on for years; eating for comfort, trying to find TV shows that felt comforting, drinking one glass of wine too many at night. I hated it.

Outside-In Strategies

I knew something was wrong and I tried desperately to ‘fix’ myself so that I wouldn’t need comforting. I thought if I meditated more or worked really hard to ‘rewire my brain’ so that I spent more time in positive thinking I wouldn’t need to be soothed. I did more yoga and tried to learn to speak to myself in a more loving and compassionate way. None of it worked.

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these techniques, but I can now see they were all outside-in approaches. When we try to fix or soothe ourselves from the outside-in, it’s like playing whack-a-mole, as Amanda Jones and I recently discussed. 

The reason outside-in approaches don’t work is that it is the nature of our thoughts to change and fluctuate all the time. By trying to fix or change our thinking and the moment-to-moment energy of thought that is flowing through us, we’re attempting to harness the wind. It’s just not possible.

elevator

But when we are introduced to the idea that the flowing nature of thought is completely natural, and the rise and fall of consciousness that we all go through all day, every day, is also completely normal, then we begin to understand that there’s no need to change or ‘fix’ our thinking.

[For more on the ‘elevator of consciousness’ listen to this episode of the Little Peace of Mind podcast with Shannon Cooper.]

And with that awareness, I noticed my need to comfort myself dropping away all by itself. I’m not using will-power to stop bad habits. I’m learning about the nature of thought and how our minds really work, and my habit of trying to comfort myself is dropping away all by itself.

Suddenly in the evenings I don’t feel the desperate need for comfort TV any longer. I feel peaceful enough to read or to take online courses.

Here’s something really unexpected: my kitchen is cleaner than it’s ever been. I used to let the dishes pile up for 2 or 3 days because I needed to spend my time in the evening comforting myself with TV, not doing a chore like the dishes that didn’t comfort me at all.

Now, because I have less need for comfort, I simply get up after supper and do the dishes right away. And it happened naturally. I didn’t need to bargain with myself or promise myself a treat. It just happened.

I had been dealing with the desperate need to comfort myself for 30 years. To see it drop away on its own is nothing short of miraculous. 

All thanks to the simple awareness of the misunderstanding about how humans work.

Have you noticed any unexpected shifts in your behavior, subtle or otherwise, since learning about this understanding? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

[Teddy image courtesy Marina Shatskih and Unsplash. Vintage TV image courtesy Sven Scheuermeier and Unsplash. Elevator image courtesy Sara Kurfeb and Unsplash.]