Annie,

I’m sorry for the powerlessness youre experiencing, and feeling like the roots of difficulty have dug deep into your life. Don’t despair, dear sister, there is always a path to joy and freedom. Sometimes when we begin to assess our decicions, we are quick to judge them as bad and so seek to stop them. The problem with this is that the drinking, indulgent eating, laziness arise from somewhere and do something for us. So if we just quit, our willpower gets pitted against our need, and eventually need wins. Much like if we do not eat for a few weeks, hunger becomes overwhelming and we gorge. This is normal, usual. There is nothing wrong with you, you’re just looking in the wrong places for food, and almost all of us do the exact same thing in one way or another. A few things came to heart as I read your words.

Whatever happened in your past that gives you that sense of “I’m icky” is like a hole in a bucket. The drinking and eating and so forth are an attempt to fill that bucket. It might fill it for a few moments, such as being drunk giving you relief from pain, but they carry with them a cost. Consider that quitting drinking isn’t enough, you have to fill the bucket in other, more healthy ways. This is when lasting change can take root, because “quitting” is never as strong as “replacing”. There is no need for you to lack joy, we just have to find a food that is better!

This is where self nurturing comes in. Few of us spend as much time self nurturing as we need, and end up compensating in a lot of ways. Going on walks in nature, taking a bath with candles, listening to soft music, sharing heartfelt intimacy with loved ones… all help to refuel that bucket as well as help to reveal the holes! My favorite form of self nurturing is metta meditation, which is a way of directly cultivating warm feelings of friendship and happiness in our body. Consider searching YouTube for “guided metta meditation”. Even a few sessions should be very noticeable, and if you can give your body 24 hours without being intoxicated before hand, even better.

As for the actual hole in the bucket (or the unhealed knot from your past), it can help to talk it out with loved ones (if it is safe to do so) or here on tinybuddha if you have the courage and desire. They seem dark and twisted from inside the maze, but they really are quite simple to work out. Much like a knotted muscle seems to spread agony all over the body, but once it is kneaded, it actually heals pretty simply. Your mind and heart yearn for balance, and so whatever issue is stuck that pulls you out of balance is naturally painful. Its your body’s way of telling you to pay attention. In the muscle metaphor, the knot hurts so the mind knows the body is torqued… so it knows to change its posture.

The end to the cycle is always looking close at what fuels it, seeing how unhelpful it actually is, where the pain is arising, then walking away. You don’t have to force it… much like you don’t have to force yourself not to put your face into a campfire. You only have to see it, then your heart and mind naturally abandons or erodes the cause.

Namaste sister, you’re a lot closer than you think. It only seems dark and twisted from inside the cycle. From outside it looks like a beautiful woman stumbling along her path of joy, like almost everyone before her.

With warmth,
Matt