Hey there,
I’m stopping by with a small token of appreciation for being a paying subscriber of Sober Soulful (formerly The Alchemist’s Notebook). Thank you! I’m grateful for your presence and support.
I created this short ebook in 2017 as a way to communicate my approach to food-related addictions to patients, clients, and college students.
While it focuses on eating disorders, the model is applicable to addiction generally—whatever your “drug of choice.” It’s also applicable to patterns that we maybe don’t consider addictions, but which feel like unhelpful habits or cycles on repeat.
In my personal experience and in working with others, where we fall in the “three-circles model” it presents tends to show up in multiple (or all) areas of our lives. In other words, it’s about far more than food (or online shopping or social media scrolling or alcohol and other drugs, etc.).
As the saying goes: “How we do one thing is how we do everything.” This holds for addiction and habitual defaults too.
If we switch up our drug of choice (sometimes called “transference” or “substitution”), we tend to stick to the same underlying pattern (or circle, in the ebook model).
Knowing this is helpful. Knowing this—and ourselves—expands our sphere of awareness and our sphere of choice. Addiction gains power by staying secret and hidden. Shedding light on and taking accountability for “what we get up to” is healing.
The very act of being honest—most of all, to ourselves—sets magical change in motion.
The stakes are high. Addiction refuses compartmentalization—even when we think we’ve managed to “pull it off.” Addiction affects every aspect of us and every relationship in our lives. Full stop.
Also, having places where we’re still stuck or still figuring it out or still returning to the same unhelpful patterns doesn’t make us broken. It makes us human.
Some part of us is trying to keep us safe and get our needs met. That part completes the whole. That part means we’re still living and breathing and along for this wild, miraculous ride.
I hope this ebook supports you in looking at your patterns through a new lens or even just asking new questions.
Doing so—especially at first—takes courage. Doing so—especially with compassion—changes everything.