Tools for Our Recovery Toolbox

As a famous Psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, “When your only tool is a hammer, all problems start to look like nails.”

Imagine a carpenter who only had one tool – a hammer.  If you hired this carpenter to hang pictures, the carpenter would pull out the hammer and do a fine job.  But what if you asked the carpenter to shorten the legs of a table.  When the carpenter pulled out the hammer, you would wonder why?  And if you allowed the carpenter to use the hammer to shorten the table legs, the table would probably be ruined.   

The same is true with our Eating Disorder.  When our only tool is eating (or starving, purging, overexercising, counting calories etc etc etc ), we have to rely on this tool for everything that happens in our life.  We get a promotion – Eat!  Have a fight with your sister – Eat!   Your cat dies – Eat!   Nothing to do on a Friday night – Eat!  I know you get the picture! 

So what happened?  Why do we only have 1 tool in our toolbox?    There are four reasons why Eating (or starving etc) became our only tool. 

1)      If we continually use a tool, the tool stays at the top of the toolbox.  After a while, we forget how to use the other tools we have.  For example, you don’t have to risk asserting yourself if you continually numb out angry feelings by eating.

2)      There may have been basic tools that we never learned – our families couldn’t teach us what they didn’t know.  For example, if no one in your family ever spoke up and asserted themselves, you may not have learned how to do this.

3)      On the other hand, our family may have taught us some pretty dysfunctional tools that don’t work very well at all.  For example, if you learned that if people loved you they would just “know” what is bothering you , you would try to make people read your mind rather than telling them what you need or want.

4)      This reason is going to contradict what I just said above.  Even though I say Eating (starving, etc.) is our only tool – we actually have lots of tools.  We are already good at problem solving, compassion, reassurance, kindness, and many, many others.  It’s just that we use these tools for other people, and don’t use them for ourselves.   We may say we don’t deserve to treat ourselves in a positive way.

It is possible to learn new tools and un-learn old dysfunctional tools.  With practice the new tools will become familiar and become our “go to” coping tool.   And if we stop using Eating (starving, etc) as a tool to deal with everything that happens in life, this tool with sift to the bottom of the toolbox.   And if you don’t use this tool, eventually using Eating (starving, etc) will be foreign to us as well.  

If you would like to learn 10 Recovery Tools to put in your Recovery Toolbox, please join Nutritionist Michel Harris and I on Saturday 9/20/14 from 12:300-4:30pm. 

For more information, please click link below.

Namaste,

Amy Grabowski

Amy is the Director of The Awakening Center – which she Founded 20 years ago!  She has over 30 years of personal recovery experience!

For more information:  http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=db1fc7da-7bdd-441e-bf4c-0a3a1319424c&c=8f179bf0-1f0a-11e3-85e8-d4ae527b8053&ch=4133a600-2994-11e4-9282-d4ae529cde13