Info & Help

Journaling in Eating Disorder Recovery

Write what is on your mind and in your heart. While in eating disorder recovery, you can write poems, stories, lists, letters to others, letters to the eating disorder, prayers, song lyrics or whatever else comes to mind. Copy meaningful quotes or verses into your journal. Record your thoughts, whether positive or troubling, and your emotions, whether uplifting or depressing. There are no rules to journaling, so you don’t have to worry about doing it right.

Maybe you have never written in a journal and feel hesitant to try it. If so, please read further. Let me encourage you to at least give it a try. It may not be for everyone, but how will you know if it is for you or not if you don’t attempt it?

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A.A. – “Stick with the Winners” – Preparing the Newcomer

“Stick with the winners!” That’s one of those often heard, but little understood suggestions a newcomer hears both in his treatment program and in the recovery rooms of Twelve Step Fellowships. The problem is: Who are the winners! How do I find them! What do they do and say that is recognizable and profitable. And if the newcomer is not prepared to spot them, seek them, and follow them, he can’t reap the benefit of “sticking” with them. We believe the winners will subscribe to the following.

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Is God a Choice for You in Your Recovery Today?

In this article about God and Alcoholics Anonymous, we pose the question: Is recovery, healing, spiritual growth, and Divine Aid (as Bill Wilson called it) in A.A. still about “finding God” and “establishing a relationship with God”? A.A.’s basic text still says, “Yes.” And you can find the documentation on pages 29, 58-59 of the Fourth Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 2001. See also Dick B., God and Alcoholism (www.dickb.com/godandalcoholism.shtml)

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Alcoholics Anonymous and the Bible

You would be surprised at how many people in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings today think that you can’t mention the Bible, share from the Bible, discuss the Bible, or even place a Bible on a table in the meetings.

This is a sketch of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Bible–by no means comprehensive, but definitely informative and useful.

    1. The first three Alcoholics Anonymous members–Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob Smith, and attorney Bill Dotson–all had Christian upbringings. All had studied the Bible long before A.A. began. And all believed in God.

    2. When Bill and Bob were formulating the Akron Alcoholics Anonymous Christian recovery program in the Smith Home in Akron in the summer of 1935, Dr. Bob’s wife read the Bible to Bill and Bob every single day.

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The Blessing of Not Getting

There is one class of mercies and blessings, of which we are not sufficiently ready to take note. These are the things that God keeps from us. We recount, with more or less gratitude, the good gifts that we receive from him; but there are many blessings that consist in our not receiving.

In one of Miss Havergal’s bright flashes of spiritual truth, she quotes these words of Moses to the Israelites: “As for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you so to do.” Then she adds, “What a stepping-stone! We give thanks, often with a tearful, doubtful voice, for our positive spiritual mercies; but what an almost infinite field there is for negative mercies! We cannot even imagine all that God has allowed us not to do, not to be.”

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What is Your True Treasure?

[The] test is summed up in this question: Where is our treasure? As Jesus said, the answer to that question reveals where our heart is.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21, NKJV

I once attended a church service where the pastor was teaching on this verse, and early on in his sermon he asked a lady in the front row if he could borrow her purse. She hesitated a moment before agreeing. The pastor then set her purse on the pulpit and proceeded with his teaching. Throughout the remainder of the service, we in the congregation couldn’t help but notice that the woman’s eyes never left the pulpit, even when the pastor walked around the stage as he spoke. It was a powerful illustration of his message.

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Self-defeating Cycles

Is it possible that abundance is a self-created cycle?

The steps in this picture take the marchers perpetually uphill or downhill. Same steps—it’s all about which direction they choose to walk. I have a feeling the same sort of dynamic works for abundance and scarcity.

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Love: Who is #1?

Ask Angie: If I as a person am #1 who can I help? Love is not self-seeking. If I seek to help myself first who matters after me? If I choose to help others first am I not full filled? Love is the greatest commandment. So why can’t we love?

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