| REFLECTIONS
by Daniel Huerta, L.C.S.W., L.S.S.W.
"Keep your heart with all vigilance,for from it flows the springs of life." Proverbs 4:23.
I recently read a very profound statement in Dallas Willard's book, Renovation of the Heart. He writes that most people simply live within their thoughts and do not take the time to observe their own thoughts. A few years ago, I coached a few different Junior High/Middle School basketball teams. It is interesting what is missed when you are actually playing the game with a whole bunch of noise and a whole lot of movement all at once. I played basketball most of my life. I really thought I knew what needed to be known. As I coached, I came to the realization that I had missed a lot of understanding and details the many years I played basketball. A lot of confidence and understanding regarding the strategy of the game can be gained by simply observing the game from a different perspective.
Sometimes, it takes a crisis to shift our focus, perspective and understanding. The beauty of the crisis or change of view is that it can awaken the senses to self-reflection and the vigilance that Solomon was describing in Proverbs 4:23. We truly need to take some time out of "the game" to reflect on what our thoughts are dwelling on, because it will also reveal what our intentions, will, emotions, and beliefs are "parked on." Have you ever noticed when you need to wait an unplanned amount of time somewhere, your will and intention becomes self-focused, your emotions become like a bad smell in the room, your thoughts become as narrow and self-focused as a two year old in a candy store, and your beliefs become focused on entitlement. This usually happens at varying degrees, but some people have become masters at not revealing any of this underlying foulness and some are just simply unaware of their impact on others. The reality is that all of us have experienced this at one point or another in our lives as a reaction to a circumstance we were most likely not prepared for.
Paul provided some practical advice in Philippians 4:8 as he tells us how to be intentional in our thinking. Today, write out what you perceive to be honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise. It also says in I Peter 3:8 that we are to have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. To have a unified and humble mind, there needs to be submission and submission requires vigilance over intention. Vigilance is a discipline that will go a long way in blessing those around you, but it requires stepping out of "the game" and silently reflecting. It also requires submission and humility to be able to receive necessary feedback from those that know you. You are able to bring life or death wherever you go today. Observe your perceptions, the feedback you receive, and be aware of what aroma you bring into the room-the aroma of Christ or an aroma that is difficult to tolerate? Do you bring lust with you or do you bring genuine love and humility?
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 Daniel Huerta is a bicultural and bilingual Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Licensed School Social Worker who was born in Mexico City. He is a counselor at Focus on the Family and maintains his own private practice, specializing in the treatment of disruptive behavior disorders, and anxiety and depression in adolescents, children and their families. He and his wife, Heather, have two young children.
For more information about Focus on the Family, call 719-531-3400 or visit www.family.org. | |
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In the book, Love Hunger: Recovery from Food Addiction, Ten Pathways to Recovery are discussed. Below are select excerpts from several of the Paths which have good information that most everyone can benefit from: those with an eating addiction, those with other types of addictions, and those who are just looking for truth and inspiration.
Preparing to Succeed (Path 1)
The universal response to being told of a tragedy is, "No! That can't be true!" The human reaction is to think that if we don't admit it, it didn't happen. But denial is only valid as a defense mechanism to get one through the first terrible shock of grief. . .
Step five of the Overeaters Anonymous Twelve Step recovery program is admitting "to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." Confessing to God is an important step in breaking out of denial. When we take our problems to God, we can then see them as He sees them, and this new perspective will help break the denial.
Then, when we have seen the problem from this new perspective, we must articulate it, must say something to God like, "God, this is the reality of where I am with this particular thing. I admit that it is wrong, and I admit that it is something I need to deal with."
The final step is to confess our faults to one another. James 5:16 urges us to confess our faults to one another and pray for one another, "that you may be healed." The ultimate result of this process is freedom and wisdom; God has promised that knowing the truth will make you free, and Psalm 51:6 says that God desires "truth in the inward parts, / And in the hidden part [He] will make [us] to know wisdom."
Eating for Success (Path 2)
It is very difficult to get all of the nutrients your body requires when you are following a restricted diet. Choose a moderate vitamin/mineral supplement. There is no need for megadoses; they will not help you lose weight, and in some cases they can actually be harmful. . .
If people are fatigued from their jobs to the point that they can't consider an aerobic exercise program, then they need to make a life-style change. Some people even need to make the decision to live on less money and free up enough time so that they can be healthy and enjoy life. People must not think of aerobic exercise as an option just because they're busy.
Saying Good-Bye (Path 3)
As we have so often stressed in this book, we are working for total recovery. So at this point, if there are other dependencies in your life, any unhealthy obsession or fixation, even the milder, socially-acceptable compulsions such as keeping your house too clean or serving on ten church committees, this is the time to say good-bye to those behaviors as well.
If, however, you have identified a more serious problem such as alcoholism or drug dependency, this book alone will not solve those, and we advise you to seek medical help.
Grieving Out The Pain (Path 4)
Doing a good job of saying your good-byes will bring you to experience a sense of loss of love in your past so that you can grieve out the pain. This is the hardest of the footpaths, but the most essential because opening yourself to excising pain is like having surgery. True healing can then start.
Exploring New Vistas (Path 5)
You have been through the depths of grieving out your pain. Now it's time to choose a footpath that heads upward to new views and new experiences. Upward and onward to victory. . .
It is not unusual for patients to withhold permission for themselves to heal. If you feel any reluctance inside yourself to accept full healing, make the decisions: I deserve to be healthy. God wants me to be healthy. I can be healthy. . .
You need to decide that you are a lovable person: loved by God, loved by your family, loved by your friends, loved by yourself.
The first step to seeing yourself as a lovable person and accepting the love of others is accepting God's love. If you have trouble truly believing that God loves you unconditionally, give Him a chance to tell you so. Get out your Bible and read of God's love. . .
And remember, God's love is offered freely to all; we don't have to do anything to earn it in the sense of being good enough. But we do have to receive it. We must open ourselves to receive the flow of love and forgiveness God offers as a gift.
You need to decide that you are a useful person: useful to God with a special place in His scheme of the universe, useful to your family and friends with a unique ability to meet their needs, useful to yourself with the ability to meet your own needs. . .
Because we are children of God, created in the image of our Creator, it is necessary to have a valid concept of God in order to have a valid concept of ourselves. Unfortunately many people, like our patient Bill who had been raised by a perfectionistic, rageaholic father and therefore saw God as an angry, punishing father, have a distorted image of God. They need to decide: God is my Heavenly Father, waiting to embrace me. God loves me. God accepts me. God understands all my problems and is waiting to help me with them. . .
To help you get started, read again the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15: 11-32. Focus on the father as he welcomes, forgives, embraces, and accepts the wayward son. And read the parable of the lost sheep, Luke 15:3-7. Notice the good shepherd, caring, seeking, risking all to find the lost lamb and bring it back to the fold.
Trusting New Directions (Path 6)
This important step of launching out and trusting people can be taken with any support group or person: a trusted friend or family member, an Overeaters Anonymous group, a pastor. But whomever you choose, we can't overemphasize how essential it is that you take this overt action. You could instruct someone for twenty years on how to swim--teach the hydrodynamics of it, show movies on how the muscles coordinate--but until the student actually gets in the water and has firsthand experience of the act of swimming, he'll never learn to swim. Until you jump in the water and take the risk of trusting someone, you'll never learn to trust. . .
There are three major components to achieving change in your life: decision, action, and feeling. Often our patients will chase those three around mentally, trying to decide which should come first in a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma: When I feel like it, then I'll take the action; I'll try the action, then I'll decide if I want to stay with it; I can't make a decision until I feel like it.
Affecting change in your life has to be a mind-over-matter affair. You must make a decision and take the action on faith; the feeling will follow sometime later. . .
The slogan that goes, "You can't think your way into better acting, but you can act your way into better feeling," is true because with feelings, there is a delayed reaction. . .
Be certain that you are taking healthy risks in all the areas in which you made new decisions in pathway #5: yourself, food, relationships, God. Concerning those scary feelings that say don't take a chance, keep telling yourself, as those who attend self-help groups are taught: "Feelings are not facts." Some of our patients put that on a card to carry in their pocket.
Choosing New Guides (Path 7)
God, who made us, knows us better than we know ourselves and can therefore do a better job of nurturing us than anyone else if we open ourselves to Him. Walking the road to recovery can be very frightening at times, especially when we realize that we have truly left home and that we must become our own parents. But we never need to walk any of these pathways alone.
Joining a Footpath Society (Path 8)
Even a person who is in a very loving family relationship will need the fellowship of walkers who have been over the same paths they have been. Too often a spouse who means to be helpful, but doesn't understand, will offer either denial or condemnation to [someone] who tries to share a problem. . .
Unconditional love is the quality we tell our patients to look for first when choosing a sponsor. Unconditional love loves even when the beloved needs to be disciplined, needs to be challenged, needs to be told, "No."
Maintaining Your Victory (Path 9)
When we tell some patients that they need a daily maintenance program, they say, "Wait a minute. If I'm having to do all this on a daily basis, that means I'm not healed. Christ hasn't spontaneously lifted this from me." One must realize that God heals in different ways. There are some rare cases of miraculous intervention when a person is touched by God and an addiction like food or drugs just seems to evaporate. Far more often, however, God heals by a slow educational process. He allows us to go through steps of healing. . .
When patients. . .yo-yo back and forth and get discouraged because they haven't had a spontaneous healing, we often tell them, "Well, maybe you've had the better healing. God has allowed you to work your way through the stages of healing. Now you understand your healing and yourself, and you can use these understandings to help others."
Dealing with Relapse(Path 10)
The real danger is of throwing the baby out with the bath water. This is a special danger for perfectionists or for black-and-white thinkers who will tell themselves, Well, I've done it now. If I can't do it right, I might as well quit trying. . ."
When such shame and guilt come back into play, one is back into the addiction cycle. Instead of shame helping one get back on the program, it drives self-esteem down and brings back the love hunger, propelling the person downward. . .
We challenge all our patients to be committed. . .and to make a lifetime commitment. . .But we also warn them not to be overly perfectionistic. This is really learning to walk a balanced rope. . .Learn to balance between the dangers of relapse and the dangers of perfectionism. . .
"Getting your life together, reaching recovery - it's tough, but it's worth it. If you really believe you deserve to be healthy and happy, then with personal effort, God's power, and the encouragement of others, you'll make it - one day at a time."
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Love Hunger: Recovery from Food Addiction is written by Dr. Frank Minirth, Dr. Paul Meier, Dr. Robert Hemfelt, and Dr. Sharon Sneed. Published by Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville. |
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and dance therapies; cognitive-behavioral therapy; motivational interviewing; family systems therapy; 12-step systems; sports; and gardening. Timberline Knolls is located in a southwest suburb of Chicago on a heavily wooded, historic 43 acres of land nestled between reflecting ponds, tall pines, and beautiful limestone formations.