Please do this inventory with a therapeutic friend. If it’s too triggering, it’s too soon.
The Suppers Programs operates with the assumption that the greatest obstacle to change for motivated people is the poor matchmaking of problems and solutions. We are likely to make such poor matches when we diagnose a problem before we make good observations about what is likely to be causing it. At Suppers, we are less concerned with specific diagnoses and more concerned with the biochemical and environmental challenges that led to the problem to begin with. That is why the same general recommendations apply for people dealing with depression, anxiety, learning issues, obesity, diabetes, and problems with alcohol. The diagnoses are obviously very different, but the lifestyle and environment that contributed to them are very similar. In each instance there is usually a relationship with a drug-like food or drink.
The missing link for many people who suffer lifestyle-related health issues, or the effects of having “foolish appetites,” is that they don’t know how their individual biology -- their body -- sets them up for a problematical relationship with food or drink to begin with. That makes the best facilitator of change learning how to make good observations and good matches between problems and solutions that include the physical body.
At Suppers, we use a model borrowed from holistic health care called "stress loading." By this reasoning, you have a “barrel of risks and influences for the manifestation” (BRIM) of illness or relapse. Your BRIM includes all the factors that increase your risk, all the factors that reduce your risk, as well as how these risk factors and protective factors interact with one another.
Before you draw one, just picture yourself as a barrel, a container for all positive and negative influences. Negative influences make the risk level rise toward the BRIM; if you overflow, you become ill or, in the case of addicts, relapse. Positive influences make your risk level go down, making it easier to remain well. The factors include things from all over your life: body, mind, and spirit. Stay with your therapeutic friends on this because it’s the missing information and consequent failure to act on it that makes the earnest person weak in the face of dietary temptation.
Now consider these factors that increase risk:
- Genetic vulnerability (family history of addiction; ADHD; mental health problems like schizophrenia, anxiety, or depression; or diabetes)
- Negative messages from childhood
- Exposure to poor role models
- Diet and lifestyle that promote illness or relapse (junk food, no exercise)
- Exposure to commercial pressures (like junk food advertising)
- Limited access to good food and information
- Family stress
- Financial stress
- Social stress
- Environment of judgment
- Insomnia
- Poor access to health care
- Environmental triggers for drinking, drugging, or eating addictively
- Lack of purpose in life
- Lack of reflection on life
- Friends with unhealthy attitudes and habits
- Lack of human connection
- Poor communication skills
Factors that are protective include:
- Family history of good health
- History of competence and wherewithal
- History of parental mentoring
- Sound nutrition advice
- Access to good health care
- Sound sleep
- Environment of love and acceptance
- Diet and lifestyle that support good mental health and sobriety (whole foods, physical activity)
- Connection to the important people in your life
- Meaningful activity
- Habit of reflecting, like journaling or keeping a diary
- Good communication skills
- Family support
- Friends with healthy attitudes and habits
- A spiritual life
The Nail
Here’s why using your Suppers meeting to match problems and solutions is so important.
When people suffer health and mental health problems related to diet and lifestyle, there are often multiple causes of their problem. It’s like a man with 10 nails in his foot. Remove 9 of the nails and what to you have? A man hobbled by a nail in his foot.
Take the example of someone who manipulates her mood with food and has no idea that her blood sugar often goes too low for normal brain function. For this person with flagging mood chemistry, solutions that help others won’t work unless the person gets the nutrition help she needs to address the underlying biological vulnerability. This includes people whose hungry brains lead them to use food to change how they feel, provide relief from anxiety, depression, and so forth. She may use coffee, chocolate or other sweets, or drinks to feel more comfortable. For this earnest but flummoxed individual to find peace in her own body, the individual biological reason for the anxiety or depression needs to be addressed. Without that piece, poor moods and unhappy eating will always be on her radar screen.
Now picture an earnest but relapsing addict and remember that his body is different from every other. He has family support; he has a good doctor. He works a program, and his boss is supportive. He has removed all but one of the nails in his foot, and it’s one he doesn’t even know is there. Let’s say his coffee and doughnut lifestyle makes him so uncomfortable in his own skin it’s a biochemical set up for relapse. That one nail in his foot leaves his recovery hobbled by one easily remedied factor: his diet.
If making good matches between problems and solutions sounds like a good next step for you, try this inventory with a therapeutic friend.