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March 21, 2011 Hi {!firstname_fix} Hi everyone. Last week I told you that I had planned to write about the tsunami but I couldn't. This week, I am. In chat, we shared a video of dogs that were rescued. Here is a link to see it : http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/27219133/detail.html Somehow this video touched me so deeply that it allowed a breakthrough to the shock and horror. Somehow that gesture of the Brittany putting its paw on the other dog just opened the flood gates. There is no way for us to make sense of this destruction. It feels like Hiroshima to me. And perhaps our job is to simply sit in solidarity with the wounded holding our paws around the hearts of those who lost everything. I have sent my angels there to help. I hope you will do the same. As I have been meditating on what I might *do* and in some small way help, I decided to teach a special class on *holding the pain.* It seems to me that we all are experiencing an acceleration of what we are being asked to make sense. Like life is speeding up. I know I have some solutions to offer, but they include more than what I can put into a few lines in the newsletter. Come join me if you would like to share some skills. I am happy that we have some new people signed up to come to ranch. I think this year's ranch will be a fabulous combination of learning the core material, and learning some really fun, in-depth material. I am having a blast putting together the powerpoints. What a lovely time. The hotel is excited, I will be talking with the chef next week to clarify the meaning of *brown.* And springtime in NM is reminding me why people LOVE to come for Ranch. Check out the back pages at Ranch signup to see what is happening here. These classes will begin Wednesday, March 23, 2011. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page: Step 3 (2 weeks) is one of our core classes. This is a skill-based class. If you want to learn the baby steps of a successful step 3, come join us. This class is ALWAYS fun. Step 5 (2 weeks) is one of our favorites. Learn the art of whole grains. Get lots of information that you won't find anywhere else. I picked the brains of one of the world's leading *brown* experts for this class. This class will begin Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page:  Learning to Hold Pain (2 weeks) What to do when you feel that too much is pouring into your life and you feel you just cannot hold it any more. This is a class for finding solace and comfort when your life or your responsibilities feel out of control.
The class schedule is online. Click here to see what is planned. Please wait to sign up for classes until a week or two before, and do not sign up for classes that are not yet scheduled. A number of you have asked me how the classes work. Check the class list page for more information on this. And please go read the questions and answers before you write to me. If you have trouble getting through the process, write the tech forum. Be sure to visit our Radiant Recovery website and Community Forum regularly. Warmly, Kathleen **********************************************************************
** Quote From Kathleen ** Some people believe this is just about giving up sugar. That is just one tiny part of the miracle. **********************************************************************
** Testimonial of the Week ** Yay - I've done it!! I really didn't know what to expect from this when I started, but it's kept me connected on rough days when I KNOW I wouldn't have posted otherwise. I think that's the biggest benefit I've gained. It's hard to accept I can't heal on my own, that addiction loves isolation, but experience tells me this is so .... time and time again! Even today, I've felt miserable most of the day, but knowing I was coming to post here has somehow made me feel more content. So, thank you all for being here and for your supportive comments this past month. As I already said, I'm going to start another 30/30 on the step 3 list tomorrow, but I'll keep in touch here. Holly xxx **********************************************************************
** Radiant Ambassadors ** 
Well, I'm back from Maine now. I had a thoroughly restorative time. Good food, fellow radiant people, meditation, drawing, walking on the beach. I'm totally filled up.I took a copy of Potatoes not Prozac with me and plenty of Radiant Recovery business cards. I left the book in the international departures lounge at Boston Logan airport. I wrote inside the cover that whoever found it could keep it. I also added my email address so I'll let you know if I hear anything!! I'd love to know where that book is now. The thought of it potentially being anywhere in the world is pretty mind-boggling! Do you have a spare copy of Potatoes not Prozac you could leave somewhere (perhaps on a bench or in a cafe) for somebody to find? Selena selenas@blueyonder.co.uk Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news. **********************************************************************
** How I Found Radiant Recovery ** Hello everyone ... I'm Dorothy, and I live in the Atlanta area. I am a church music director/organist, piano teacher, and church secretary. I read Potatoes not Prozac a few years ago at the recommendation of a nurse friend and recognized myself right away. At the time, though, I had too much else going on health-wise to be able to commit. In August 2008, I weighed 265 pounds (not my highest, either), and at the demand of my doctor, I had a vertical sleeve gastrectomy (a type of weight-loss surgery) and lost 115 pounds. It was wonderful until my spine gave up the ghost after my having been morbidly obese for decades. Since the summer of 2009, I have had one surgery after another trying to put me back together, and it didn't all go very well. I am functional now but have some disability (difficulty walking, mostly). Since I was laid up for several months at the beginning of 2010, I began to look into PnP again. Having been in the hospital and nursing home for six weeks where they couldn't figure out how to feed me, I lost a shocking amount of weight and was skin and bones. When I got home, the doctor told me to gain weight any way I could, and her recommendation was to "eat lots of ice cream." Well, that was the beginning of a total loss of control over my eating again, and naturally sugar was the main problem. I remembered PnP and got the book back out recently. I *must* do it this time, or I will gain all my weight back. Right now, I am about 20 pounds over my goal weight, and I want to get back in control before I go too far. Plus, I am sick of the battle again. I don't know where I fit into the steps, because I have always eaten a good breakfast with protein, have always eaten three meals a day with protein (and now with my stomach being so small I have to eat three snacks a day as well, going for protein first), etc. etc. I began to track my food about a week ago. Not journal, just track, so maybe that is where I need to start. I look forward to getting to know you all and to taking this journey with you. God bless us all! --Dorothy **********************************************************************
** Radiant Recovery® Store ** David manages the Radiant Recovery® Store. He is also Kathleen's oldest son. Here is what Nancy said about shake:
Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Kitchen ** I think your taco seasoned *refried* beans sound good! I am a big fan of bean dip and homemade hummus though, and so...YUM! Groceries can be one of my biggest spending areas too - and there-in lies the dilemma and thinking about my priorities. Easy is indeed sometimes important, frugality is usually important - while maintaining the solid steadiness, healing and holding power of my food is *always* important. When I am looking at/paring my food budget, I tend to look more at, *what foods can I do more economically/most cost effective this week within what I know works for me *..and never, *I will just eat less.* I've tried that. NOT my best experimentation there. LOLOL. I think finding some consistency with menus for a couple of weeks sounds like a great idea. As does keeping receipts, and using them to look at what you are spending and to figure out where the most economical buys are. I did that for myself a while back, and found it very helpful. And then once I was more clear on where the best places to get what I buy regularly, I started looking for coupons that I could use to add to the savings. For example - my reg grocery store recently started carrying Nairns oatcakes in the ginger and berry flavors (which are actually sweetened cookies). I didn't want to buy those, but they did have out $1.00 off coupons to help entice folks to try a product new to the store. I took several coupons, and then used them at a different store when they had my Nairns on sale. Now, I don't always buy oatcakes - though I do find them priceless when traveling. I ended up being able to get them for about 1/2 the reg price - so comparable to the cheaper/less tasty cracker type things I usually get. Something fun we can do here on this list if it is helpful to you, is to help look at what you normally buy/use/make and see if we can brainstorm some ideas towards how they could cost less. You are already off to a terrific start there, with finding that Trader Joe's brown rice pasta is just 1/2 the price of Tinkyada. ( I am especially fond of Trader Joe's protein powder in both how well it works for me, and the super nice price!) Hope you are having a nice weekend! Diane For more great program-friendly recipes, check out our cookbook in the store. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Conversations ** I was so comforted by our chats last week. Thank you. It helped me to speak to you of the connection of serotonin and healing from trauma. I am going to write more about chats and conversations in next week's newsletter. If you are not a YLD member, come and join us. Click here if you want to be a part of the latest and greatest or just have some plain ol' fun! **********************************************************************
** Our Online Groups ** The radiantrecovery list was set up as a support for people who are in recovery for alcohol and/or drugs and would like to add the Radiant Recovery nutritional piece to their healing. And we have added a special intensive process for folks who are not yet in recovery for substance abuse but want to be. Senior people work with folks on a special study list. You come to the recovery list for a while, and then if you wish to join the study list, you let us know. Our approach to recovery encourages the use of 12 step programs and Radiant Recovery. The folks on both lists are warm, compassionate, caring and straightforward. We would love to have you come join us. **********************************************************************
**Learned Helplessness ** Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.
When we are exposed to shock and pain, the body releases beta-endorphin to protect us. The beta-endorphin "numbs out" our physical and emotional feelings, soothes us and keeps us safe. Beta-endorphin is a powerful brain chemical. Morphine and heroin evoke a beta-endorphin response, so you can well imagine why we get attached to the feeling even if it comes in response to "bad" things happening. I believe that sugar-sensitive people have lower levels of beta-endorphin. The brain compensates for this by opening up more beta-endorphin receptor sites so we get a bigger response to its effects. Sugar Sensitive Comfort Because of this heightened response, we are drawn to things that evoke beta-endorphin - alcohol, opiate drugs such as morphine, heroin, percodan, codeine, sugars, fats and white things. The things we call "comfort foods" are usually the ones that are evoking a beta-endorphin response in us. Sugar-sensitive people are more attached to these foods than other people are. We find more emotional comfort in these foods because we are getting a bigger beta-endorphin "hit" from them. We not only feel good at the moment, but our body "remembers" that beta-endorphin means "safe." The feelings of comfort and emotional safety become linked. As many of you have been reading Potatoes Not Prozac, you have really come to understand how powerful an effect beta-endorphin has on our behavior and our eating. But the story is bigger than you may have realized. More to the Story than Food The comfort and numbing effects of beta-endorphin can become cumulative over time. When emotional trauma or "numbing" occurs repeatedly, the soothing quality of the beta-endorphin that is evoked shifts into something really problematic. The numbing from trauma (or from long-term, heavy use of sugars) becomes generalized into what is called learned helplessness. Those of you who suffered childhood abuse, molestation or incest, or who have experienced any kind of adult trauma get a triple whammy. Bad things happened and your brain literally kept you alive by cushioning you from the mind-blowing reality of your pain. You were flooded with the soothing protection of beta-endorphin. The flood of brain chemicals numbed you in the face of things that you had no control over. You learned to be helpless in two ways. One, you literally were helpless in the face of the bad things that kept happening and two, the biochemical reaction which was saving your life did also generalize into the biochemical pattern of learned helplessness. You survived the bad things that happened over and over, but the learned helplessness remains encoded in your body. The pattern will be both unconscious and deeply affected by what you are eating and what you are doing. Learned Helplessness in Action Our many discussions about foods and sugars have taught you the impact of eating sweet foods. If you have comfort foods, you get triggered and you want more. If you try to stop, you experience withdrawal. And if you are using a lot of them, you feel overwhelmed and hopeless. This is learned helplessness in action. It may be a feeling that is very familiar to you. However, you may not realize that there are other things besides foods that can trigger these feelings and activate a global sense of learned helplessness. Recreating Safety As an adult you may have intuitively found ways to recreate this feeling of beta-endorphin "safety" not just with substances, but with activities. The bad news is that the activities you may be drawn to are harmful. That is, you may unconsciously recreate the early trauma in order to get the beta-endorphin release that will make you "safe" from your pain and reinforce your feelings of helplessness. You can unconsciously be drawn to abusive situations because the abuse evokes the comfort of beta-endorphin. You may even create bad situations like having your utilities turned off or your credit taken away because inside the "bad" experience is coded with the biochemical memory of of beta-endorphin comfort. The more these bad things happen, the more helpless and inadequate you feel. You simply feel "done to" and have no idea that you are unconsciously participating in creating these situations as a way to stay in a familiar and safe pattern. And the more helpless and inadequate you feel, the more you want to eat ice cream and chocolate. So the spiral goes down and down. As you start taking care of the food, you assume that things will get better. You cannot understand why you keep slipping into old and perhaps abusive situations at the very time you are committed to being so intentional about your healing. The Drive For Beta-Endorphin Beta-endorphin withdrawal will drive you to get beta-endorphin - even at the price of abuse. Learned helplessness will wind its sticky little arms around you. And you will feel terrible shame because now you think you "should" know better. You may not understand this at all. You may assume it's a personal problem. You may either feel victimized or totally inadequate. You may not have a clue about the biochemistry of it, and may feel that the only way out is years of therapy. Even then, therapy can take care of the "feelings" but not the biochemistry. The joy of the biochemistry is that you can change it fairly quickly. You can start to see that learned helplessness is one of those sugar feelings. It may be deeply encoded, it may be sticky, but the reality is that you are in charge. That Which Causes The Problem Can Heal It Learn about beta-endorphin and you can set yourself free with a sense of purpose and power that you could never have imagined. You have started to learn that there are many things that raise beta-endorphins (BE's) other than abuse. Exercise, prayer, meditation, sexual intimacy, playing with your pets, healthy food and laughter, enjoying your grandchildren, holding babies, and music. Lot's of options! But you gotta choose them to take them. Learned helplessness usually means that your first line of action is to retreat and isolate_the worst things you can do. Healing requires one choice at a time, BE's the good ways. BE intentional (be beta-endorphin-intentional) when you feel overwhelmed. Hold the ice cream and CHOOSE from the list above of healthy beta-endorphin-evoking activities. Here are the folks who are helping put the newsletter together:
Gretel, our webmaster, puts it all together. David runs the Radiant Recovery® Store. Selena provides the weekly Ambassadors column. ©2010 Kathleen DesMaisons. All rights reserved. You are free to use or transmit this article to your ezine or website as long as you leave the content unaltered, use this attribution: "By Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D. of Radiant Recovery®", and notify kathleen@radiantrecovery.com of the location. Please visit the Radiant Recovery® website at http://www.radiantrecovery.com for additional resources on sugar sensitivity and healing addiction. You are getting the weekly newsletter from Radiant Recovery® in response to your signup. A copy of this newsletter may also be found posted on the web at http://www. radiantrecovery.com/ |
