More on Life-ers. (Those darn perdy dandelions.)
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I had an interesting comment a couple of days ago on the concept of Life-ers.
If you have a weed in your garden, you pull it. If there’s something wrong in your life, you don’t fall in love with it. You get to weeding.
I can see the point of this argument as I’m sure you can. I can also see where I didn’t get my point across well, or else this argument wouldn’t as likely have been voiced this way. The person who said it isn’t stupid and neither am I. But how do we come together on this? There are Life-ers that are both weeds to pull and weeds to just plain garden I reckon.
We here at FriendtoYourself.com, got one of the most practical life examples of a Life-er. It is both one that can be weeded and one that can’t. Please read it if you haven’t yet. Emily said in response to blog-post, One Woman’s Struggle,
I related deeply to Kara’s experiences. …I have been a self-identified compulsive overeater (or binge eater) since I was a child. It has always loomed large (pun intended) in my life. I have successfully dieted and lost 30-40 pounds at a time, and then I’ve gained everything back — with interest. It has been my obsession and my bete noir.
Eight years ago, out of pure desperation, I went to a Overeaters Anonymous meeting. I didn’t necessarily like it at first, but I recognized my problem as an addiction. If you hold my experience up next to an alcoholic’s, there is no difference. I struggled a long time with the program, but today I am living what OA calls an abstinent life. My definition of abstinence is three reasonable meals a day with nothing in between. I am shrinking to a healthy body weight.
I have also developed my spiritual side and my relationship with my higher power (that I get to define) is what makes it possible to eat like a normal person. My obsession has been lifted, one day at a time. Like an alcoholic, this is not something I can do on my own. This is supported by about 25 years of data.
I am experiencing freedom I couldn’t even imagine walking in the doors of my first meeting — freedom from fat, freedom from compulsion, openness to change and growth and a life that is no longer nearly as self-centered.
Sana, you asked if it helps to think of it as an addiction — for me, it’s not an analogy; it IS an addiction. I use the Big Book for the solution. My recovery is just like that in any other program. And it’s the ONLY thing that made a difference — not just for me, but for the dozens of people I share OA with. I hope this is something health professionals will understand one day. OA is an underutilized tool, and I think that could change with better understanding and guidance.
Thank you Emily for your story. I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind.
Addictions is a weed we could more often agree is a Life-er. That isn’t to say there aren’t those of us who think that they can be weeded and be done with, but the general consensus in medicine is that they are Life-ers. However there are other Life-ers besides addictions. Recurrent major depressive disorder, treatment resistant major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, okay – a gazillion other medical illnesses that won’t respond to weed killer or a gloved garden-grip. There are also non-medical Life-ers, such as poverty, natural or unnatural disaster, rooted social stigma and so forth. We could even use the biopsychosocial model to catalogue them if we wanted.
One of the things that intuitively sits poorly about Life-ers in our culture and communities is the helplessness that can soil it. However, we are not implying helplessness at all. Just as this courageous Emily described, when we take care of ourselves, when we befriend ourselves, we take accountability for where we are now. Our yards improve neighborhoods.
For the world out there who is scared to garden with us, I have this to say. Get over yourselves. What we are growing is worth the space we occupy and of high value. You may never know it, but we are and we have bank to show for it.
Questions: What is your response to those who call your Life-ers weeds to pull? What are some examples of Life-ers you’ve fallen in love with and how did you? Please tell us your story.
Self-Care Tip – If there is a weed in your life you can pull, pull it. If you can’t, or if you do and it just keeps growing back, fall in love with it and grow a garden with those perdy dandelions.
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- Life-ers – Our Beloved Flaws (friendtoyourself.com)
- One Woman’s Struggle To Shed Weight, And Shame (friendtoyourself.com)
- I Am An Oxymoron. I Am a Christian Psychiatrist. (friendtoyourself.com)
- In Mass and Individually, We Are Beautiful – Lady Gaga (friendtoyourself.com)
- Impressed by Weeds (nytimes.com)
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Can you be addicted to depression? It would be nice to find a DA (depression anonymous) group. The higher power for me seems to involve the others in the group where I can feel normally flawed.
good question. i suppose so but it wouldn’t b called depression in that aspect, it’d b called something more like character pathology.
i really luv that “normally flawed” comment. was turning aspects of that over today in clinic in fact w another compatriot, talking about how we are bound to fail – normal.
Applying 12-Step programs to many particular problems is positive and productive.
i like that very much carl. think u could really run w that if u wanted to put it out there.
I think there are some weeds that the best you can do is to control their growth. For me it is PTSD anxiety. It is not going away but it is not allowed to take over the garden.
For me my “weed” is a bit like Queen Anne’s Lace. It has it’s beauty but it is a beast and will devour the flowers I work hard to cultivate. So I keep my eye on and keep it under control.
i like that very much. ptsd as queen anne’s lace. good one.
I love this analogy. I guess we all have life-ers that could use some weeding. I’d yank out my lack of patience for sure. I’d spray the heck out of my anger. I’d rip up the tangle of feeling-sorry-for-myself. Those are things I can do something about – and could certainly do without. Then again, I’d give anything to dig up acres of pain and depression but I have to admit that those ARE my life-ers and no amount of weeding is going to get rid of them forever. Those are the ones I have to learn to live with, to pamper some, to accept some, and then grow along with some by learning what works and what doesn’t as I tend to my life-er garden. Recently, while everything here on the East Coast, including weeds, have withered or dried up completely in the heat and lack of rain, my life-er garden has become a jungle and tending it has become an overwhelming, seemingly impossible task (There goes the sorry-for-myself rearing it’s ugly, weedy head!) but I’ve hacked my way out of this jungle before. I just need a bigger – maybe newer or at least maybe different – machete!
machete! whack whack!