Good News , Vol. 2, August 2005
 ...an eating disorders/addictions outreach & support e-newsletter for friends of Shannon & Key to Life

Welcome from Shannon!
Welcome to the second edition of Good News, a supportive e-newsletter created to strengthen and encourage you in your continued efforts to build a better life, or help someone you care for to build a better life, free from addictive and self-harming behaviors.

It is my privilege and blessing to serve as Editor and Contributor to Good News, but ultimately this e-newsletter exists to support you and those you love and serve, and as such is a work-in-progress that will respond to and evolve based on your needs, questions and ideas.

In this second edition, you will find the following ‘regularly scheduled’ topics, as well as an invitation to become a co-contributor with me in future editions of Good News. In this edition you can expect to find:

-Feature Editorial: Addictions
-Question of the Month (taken from reader emails)
-Contemplation of the Month
-Recommended by Shannon (print, web, music, movies, etc)
-Breaking News/Good News Community Updates

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Feature Editorial: An Addiction is an Addiction is an Addiction

No matter how far along we are in our healing and recovery journey, judging from the amount and seriousness of the emails in my inbox lately, I feel it is safe to say that as recovering addicts we can never expect to be entirely out of the woods.

I have read with increasing interest in recent months about the scientific advances being made into research linking addictive behaviors with DNA/genes. In my own family, for instance, there is strong evidence of a genetic link for bulimia and eating disordered behaviors. And several of my relatives on both sides of my family tree have struggled with depression and alcoholism as well.

Until recently, however, I took our combined genetic family history of addictive behaviors and threw out all evidence of addictive tendencies I didn’t feel directly applied to me – i.e., all but those indicators having to do with eating disorders I disregarded entirely as not worthy of my respectful personal consideration. You see, I always just assumed that, once I’d healed from the one genetic ‘strain’ that did personally affect me, I’d be home free, addictively speaking.

Then, when I woke up one morning and realized I had logged an impressive month-long streak of drinking 1-2 alcoholic beverages every single night, and that I was feeling increasingly emotionally depressed day by day as well, I forced myself to reconsider other possible genetic weaknesses that were now leading me in a new way down an all-too familiar road I didn’t wish to travel.

We now know that there are genetic clues indicating possible predispositions towards various specific addictive behaviors. But I began to wonder – ‘is there a gene for ‘addiction’ as an overall character trait as well?’ We may never know for sure if there is or not, or even if there is, that discovery may yet lurk far out of our reach. However, until such time as we do or even if we never find a definitive scientific answer to this question, we can answer honestly for ourselves – ‘Do I have a tendency towards ‘addiction’ in general? Am I, personally, unusually inclined towards behaviors that consistently bring me down?’

Now, why is this an important question to ask yourself, especially if, like me, you’ve already identified at least one area where addiction is a very real part of your daily life? The answer is important because, even if you are predisposed to one addiction initially, there are others which may fill exactly the same purpose in your life in newly self-destructive ways later on. For instance, if you aren’t aware and vigilant, you may, as I did, battle for years and successfully overcome a serious eating disorder, only to wake up one day and find yourself flirting with alcoholism and depression as well.

An addiction is an addiction is an addiction. In the same way, an addict is an addict is an addict. An addiction in the simplest sense is a particular action or behavior that we turn to repeatedly to manage an area of life that feels overwhelming. And an addict in the simplest sense is who we are when we choose to repeatedly engage in that particular action or behavior to manage an area of life that feels overwhelming.

Do we all have ‘addictive tendencies’? Yes, I believe that we all do. Can there be ‘positive’ addictions (for instance, to affirmations, prayer, health food, moderate daily exercise)? Again, I believe that there are. Is there such a thing as living life ‘addiction-free’? I personally believe that there is such a state, and I also believe that very few of us ever achieve such a lifestyle, although I have personally observed some few people who have achieved it, and it seems to me to be a wonderful lifestyle to lead.

What would it take to achieve a behaviorally addiction-free daily life? There are certain characteristics which, in my long and very personal study of how addiction affects our lives, I believe to be non-negotiable in achieving an addiction-free daily life:

  • Balance . Addiction can be characterized as an extreme – as an addict, we either have too much or not enough (or both too much and too little) of something in our life. Seeking balance forces us to perceive our imbalance and makes us aware of the very real need for correction. Without awareness of imbalance and a corresponding search for modification, we live with a surplus or poverty in our life, which leaves little room for us to develop life-saving
  • Flexibility . An addict is ‘stuck’ in a behavioral rut – in repetitive actions, thoughts and feelings. The addict’s life is sparse or empty of life-management ideas and skills, leaving the addiction as practically the only tool in their toolbox. Therefore, every experience or decision leads somehow back to the addiction. Before we can live a better life, free of self-harming addictive behaviors, we must fill up our toolkit with alternate and more appropriate life-management skills, the first of which is a careful cultivation of
  • Imagination . Everyone who has ever found themselves in a circumstance they didn’t like and found a way out first had to brainstorm and visualize their way out. An addict sees all of life through the eyes and perspective of their addiction. Before we can live differently or better than how we are living now, we must be able to imagine what life would look and feel like if it was different or better, which requires
  • Faith . Whether taken in a religious/spiritual or simply an optimistic/positive sense, having ‘faith’ boils down to believing in and striving for something that is much-desired but has not yet come to pass in our lives. An addict has invested all of the energy they have into the addiction, which then proceeds to never disappoint as it manifests over and over and over again, as if on demand. So the addict has developed ‘faith’ of sorts, but only in the addiction. To cultivate a broader, life-restoring faith, the addict will need
  • Discipline and Perseverance. There was a time even in my own life when my eating disorder was not yet present in my life. Because I could recall a time when I lived free from the eating disorder, it became conceivable to me that there could be a time again when I could live free from my addictive behaviors. But, just as I became a ‘better’ anorexic & bulimic by exercising discipline and perseverance, so I realized I would only learn a new eating disorder-free way of life by once again employing those same qualities of discipline and perseverance.

An addict will always be an addict at heart. But I have discovered that there are two types of addicts – those who choose to practice their addiction, and those who choose not to practice their addiction. It is easy (and again, I only know this through long personal experience) to forget this and lose all hope of ever breaking free from our addictive behaviors, but the fact is, addiction even for the addict-at-heart is still a choice. And, just like for everything else worth having in life, there are no shortcuts to choosing differently and learning to live life in a different and healthier, happier and more hope-full way. Balance, flexibility, imagination, faith, discipline and perseverance are not just recommended or desirable but essential facets of a successful, enduring recovery effort. If the addict develops and invests these six qualities into their healing journey, healing on some and probably many levels will take place.

It is your choice, just as it was and continues to be my choice, whether or not to pursue healing and recovery. We can fool ourselves into thinking we don’t have a choice, that it’s too late for us, that we don’t have what it takes or don’t have access to what it will take to successfully recover, but even that thought process, in our thinking of it, is a choice we are making not to choose a certain way of life. No one will ever be able to force us to give up our addiction, and no one will ever be able to take it by force away from us – at least not for any extended period of time. It ultimately comes down to you and me making a choice about the quality of life we wish to lead, what we want to see when we look back at our life, what we are willing to accept for ourselves in our experience of our own life, and how hard we are willing to work at creating a successful, fulfilling life for ourselves. For instance, even out of those who are considered fully recovered from eating disordered behaviors, only 40% will ever get married. So choosing not to choose recovery in fact is also very likely to be a choice, statistically speaking, to never marry. Each choice we make leads to another, and another, and another….like a domino effect, we continuously direct our destination through our moment-to-moment choices.

And the bottom line is that the responsibility for living your life rests squarely on your own shoulders, just as the responsibility for living my own life rests squarely on mine. Somewhere along the way, I chose to choose to live life free from my eating disorder, and chose in that choosing all of the other good things I dreamed of for my life as well. Because of that choice I made, today I am well on my way to living that life. And, if I could do it, so can you!

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Question of the Month
 I receive many wonderful questions each month from women I mentor, and I will share one question, and a summary of my answer, each month in Good News. (If you have a question you would like to submit to be answered in a future edition of Good News, please follow the link below to submit your question for consideration)

This month’s question is:
Q: Why do you think we choose the eating disorder? Why did you choose it, Shannon?

A: I love your question about why do we choose an eating disorder! There are so many potential answers to that question, aren’t there!?! One of my favorite authors, Iyanla Vanzant, says that whatever shows up in our life is the answer and we have to figure out what the question is (NOTE: see last months' Good News for more on Iyanla Vanzant - https://key-to-life.com/goodnews/GN7_13_05%20take%202.htm).

For me personally, that question has several answers – including but not limited to a genetic factor (we have eating disorders in my family on my dad’s side), being molested as a child and being afraid of my developing female body, a reaction to peers teasing me about being fat and not wanting to get hurt by them again, and feeling overwhelmed by my life and desiring control which I found through muting my emotions and ‘numbing’ myself through malnutrition and self-starvation. And there are even more reasons where those came from. Sometimes you will ask yourself that question one day and get one answer, and then the next day you will have even a different answer – there are so many reasons. An eating disorder can serve so many purposes in our lives – the challenge is to find other ways to cope with stress, pain, fear, neglect, loss, loneliness, and our need for love and acceptance. Sometimes we turn to an eating disorder because we just don’t have good coping skills. It is easy to think an eating disorder can answer all our needs because we live in a society that prizes extreme thinness.

So that is why it is so important to have a mission statement (NOTE: stay tuned next month for more on mission statements!) for life – to prioritize our life so we don’t end up thinking thinness is the most important thing for us too. It isn’t for me – it isn’t for you. So if we are living each day as though it is, we have to ask ourselves why, and make adjustments until we are living life according to what we say really matters most to us. Sometimes life really IS ‘either/or’. Either extreme thinness OR marriage (did you know out of the only 30-40% of anorexics who ever really ‘recover’, 40% NEVER get married in their lifetime??). Either extreme thinness OR children. Either extreme thinness OR helping others heal. Either extreme thinness OR life. Sometimes life really is that simple – sometimes our choices really are that simple. It’s a gift when our choices are that clear, even though having simple choices doesn’t make it easier to make them. Seeing the cost of an eating disorder – like no longer being able to concentrate long enough to engage in an activity or relationship that is important to you – shows you what in life matters to you, and the sacrifice the eating disorder is causing you to confront.

It’s not easy, I know. I had to do it too, and I had to struggle a LOT especially in the beginning to listen to ‘healthy’ Shannon instead of ‘eating disordered Shannon’. In fact, it is a lifelong effort you will make, just as I did and continue to do. So just make a commitment to yourself that no matter what, you will never give up trying to listen to your ‘healthy’ mind that wants to get better and partner with you to build a life full of all your dreams. And just like lifting weights or strength training, the more time and effort you invest into listening to your healthy mind rather than your sick mind, the stronger you will become in that area. I had to invest an incredible amount of time into my healthy mind before it became strong enough to overpower my sick mind, but after a time I built up my new healthy ‘muscles’ and it became much easier to tune in to the good thoughts and support myself in my healing process in this way. You will find, as you pursue healing, that it will feel much the same for you.

In fact, one excellent way to strengthen yourself in this area is to keep a list of your dreams, and a description of what your ‘dream life’ will look like, handy. Whenever you start to doubt that you can change your thought processes, your behaviors, and your life, and whenever your thoughts start to seem dark and self-defeating, re-read the description of your dream life. Take a look at the thought and behavior choices you are making and ask yourself whether they will be able to deliver your dreams to you. For instance, when I used to want to have a bulimic episode and throw up right before a recording session, I would have to refer to my dream list and ask myself if I could have both bulimia and a recording career. Then I would ask myself which I wanted more – bulimia or a recording career. My own answers would strengthen me to be able to say no to the behaviors my ‘sick’ mind was telling me to engage in. My healthy mind would become so enraged at my sick mind’s attempt to sabotage my dreams, and it would refuse to let the sick thoughts gain the upper hand. In this way I would be able to successfully suppress my urge to have a bulimic episode by remembering my dreams and refusing to let anything get in the way of the healthy me building the life I dreamed of for myself.

And you can use this same technique to empower yourself to choose health and life every time you are tempted to go back to old damaging behaviors.

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Contemplation of the month
There are many different definitions of ‘recovery’ – as many as there are people who pursue it. What does ‘recovery’ mean to you? How will you know you are ‘recovered’? Are there days when you feel more recovered than other days – why and how? Do you believe there are certain people who can recover from their problems and certain other people who can’t? Which category do you believe you fall into – why? When you dream of life free from addiction and disordered behaviors, whatever they may be for you, what does your dream life look like? Is that dream life you imagine worth the hard work and effort recovery requires of you? Why or why not?

This contemplation is for your private reflection; however, you are warmly welcome to email me c/o Good News using this link: https://key-to-life.com/ask.html to share your thoughts, insights and any additional questions this contemplation may bring up for you. Just as it was critical for me, it is critical that you be able to answer these questions for yourself, because your answers will support you in the times when recovery gets hard – even seemingly impossibly hard – and you will need to lean solely on your beliefs and dreams about recovery and its worth to you in order to keep on keeping on. So, if you are willing, choose to wisely invest time now to be clear about WHY you are in recovery, what recovery means to you, who you will be and what kind of life you will live when you have the freedom to invest your energy into something other than the addictive behaviors you are in recovery to overcome. And encourage yourself through this contemplation to dream BIG – big enough to carry you through the tough times and into the fulfillment of the life you dream of living!

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Recommended by Shannon

Print: “Life Without Ed: How One Woman Recovered From Her Eating Disorder and You Can Too!” – Jenni Schaefer is an inspiring young woman, a gifted singer/songwriter and now author/speaker who kicked her addictive behavior through a creative technique of imagining her eating disorder to be an abusive boyfriend named ‘Ed’. Read about how she and her therapist, Thom Rutledge, created a recovery program that helped Jenni re-connect with herself as separate and different from Ed, who was relegated to an identity as a very unwelcome but temporary visitor in her otherwise full and inspiring life.

Web: www.OpheliasPlace.org - Mary Ellen Clausen emerged from her own intensely personal battle to save the lives of her two eating-disordered daughters to found an outreach facility for those with eating disorders and their families in the New York area. With links to several valuable web outreach resources and timely information on genetic research studies, political activism, and upcoming conferences, Ophelia’s Place truly is as nurturing a place online as it is in its physical home base of Liverpool, NY.

Music: Rob Thomas – “Something To Be”. As a performing songwriter myself, I am always on the lookout for music that expresses the entire spectrum of human emotion and experience without white-washing or watering down the effort and commitment it takes to choose life. I truly connect with every song on this CD, although track #6, ‘Something To Be’, hits most closely to home in how our search for significance can go dangerously wrong if we attach our worth to the wrong things. And the closing tracks reveal Rob Thomas’ own heart for humanity and the hope we have of feeling less alone in learning to better appreciate how alike we really are where it matters most – in the heart and spirit. Pick up your copy today!

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Breaking News/Good News Community Updates

Recent Media Coverage - New Interview Video Just Posted: In my most recent TV appearance, I talk with Yolanda Green of 'Outlook Houston' about the warning signs, triggers and reasons why youth develop eating disordered behaviors. The video is newly available via the Key to Life website – follow this link and scroll down to ‘Video Samples’ until you see ‘Outlook Houston’ to watch the video in three different formats and read a transcript of the interview: https://key-to-life.com/media.html

Beautiful Update: Even as I write this, I am continuing my work on Beautiful: unmasking the lie of addiction and reclaiming the real YOU, my first book. Beautiful highlights my own story of healing and the inspiring stories of others who have recovered from life-threatening addictive behaviors. Click here for more information about Beautiful, including how you can contribute stories and ideas for possible inclusion, and to read an excerpt from the introduction of Beautiful: https://key-to-life.com/Beautiful.htm

Questions, Stories & Ideas!: Do you have question, story or idea you would like to see featured in a future edition of Good News? We welcome your questions, stories and ideas for possible future publication. Follow this link to submit: https://key-to-life.com/ask.html (all correspondence will be kept in strict confidence and will be read by Shannon personally)

Hosting a Key to Life event in your area – A Special Message from RGC Entertainment: From time to time we receive inquiries about how to bring Key to Life, and Shannon, to your area. RGC Entertainment exclusively handles all scheduling arrangements for Shannon & Key to Life, and is an expert at turning a request for Shannon to visit into a successful and inspiring event. Learn how to host Shannon’s visit to your area. Learn how to get the word out about Shannon’s music & life-saving message and draw a good crowd of those who need to meet her and hear what she has to say about choosing life. Make a difference in your community today by volunteering to host Shannon & Key to Life in your area!

Contact RGC Entertainment at for more details, or click this link to fill out a simple one-page REQUEST FORM: https://key-to-life.com/booking.html

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Until We Meet Again….

Remember, Good News and key-to-life.com are created with you in mind and heart, and I do the work that I do for only one reason - because I know first-hand what it feels like to have a life-threatening addiction and I never want one other person to feel as alone as I did during those dark years. It is my honor, privilege and blessing to stand with you and your loved ones as you wake up each day and choose LIFE, light, healing, hope, love and the promise of future joy in exchange for a temporary sacrifice of time and effort in overcoming your life-limiting behaviors. You can do it. If I could, anyone can. I believe in you! Let me know how I can help, pray for and support you –

With love and heartfelt respect for your courage in choosing to walk this path of life with me,

Shannon

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