emotions and saying bye bye miss american pie

It seems like I have been ignoring the topic of emotions in my first blogs so far. Not because I am one of those stoics who ignore their emotions and stomp on them like scurrying ants. No. I was raised to ignore my emotions, and when I first got some help to be a healthier person - 27 years ago - the first thing I had to learn was how to feel. And I did. Boy did I. Frozen emotions come through with the force of a swollen river after the snow melts. So for many many years, I treated my forceful emotions as a sign of my health and healing, and let them have full rein.

Now, after twenty some odd years of this, I can say that it was imperative and healthy that I learn to feel my feelings, and I do believe this is a sign of health. But, I have also come to believe that the intensity of some of my feelings - the ravaging downs, the depth of pain when not so deeply provoked, the "meltdowns" that have just exhausted me in my life - these are connected to my sugar addiction, and for many many years I just thought they were connected to emotional issues. But the truth is, my emotions are forcefully affected by what I eat!! When I have been eating well and not indulging in sugar, I am a much happier person. My moods are much more even. Though I still feel my feelings, they do not overtake me and send me roaring to places that I am tired of visiting emotionally. I am prone to depressive thinking and a looming sense of anxiety when I am eating sugar.

It is hard to describe, but my nervous system is directly and immediately wired to my sugar intake or lack thereof. When I am eating sugar, my handwriting changes noticeably - it becomes large unintelligible scrawls, very impulsive and loud and sloppy. When I am low on the sugar end of eating, my handwriting is neat, legible, clean, and I am calmer, more even in my reactions to everything. I see things in a gently positive way, I have a pervalent sense of well-being.

So, I will talk about my feelings as I go through this effort to free myself of sugar. But I will not indulge my feelings. I will not make them Queen of The Universe and give them total power over every other aspect of my life. I will feel them, speak them, honor and acknowledge them, and then let them go. When lived in balance, feelings have a time and a place and my hope is, as I get off this white addictive substance known as sugar, an intensity that is appropriate to what is being felt at the moment.

One of the things that is amazing to me in the book "A Sugar Addicts Total Recovery Program" is that she describes characteristics of sugar addicts that are spot-on when it comes to me. We reach for sugar because afterwards we feel creative, competent, confident and hopeful. There is a bio-chemical reason for this, why sugar stimulates these exact feelings in sugar sensitive people!!! This is amazing.

So, to be truthful, I have had moments of panic and fear at the thought of giving up sugar. A sense of doom or "Oh no, how am I going to enjoy life now?" Also real fear at the withdrawal process - I have strong-armed my way through a total sugar withdrawal before, and it was extremely hard, and it only lasted six lovely weeks before I caved. But I finally finally believe I have found the program that is going to allow me to withdraw more gently, and it is in this book.
So, while I acknowledge my fear and sometimes panic, sometimes slight depression at the thought of saying bye bye baby sugar, I don't need to thrash around in those emotions. I can let them swell in me, see them, and watch them leave on a gentle downswell. If they are not so gentle, I will be honest about that here.

For now, I am still saying, bye bye miss american pie. Bye sugar blues! I am going for it.: My life. The way I want to live it, not as a hard-wired sugar mama to the sugar and health industries - how much money have I spent on this sugar addiction?!?!?!? But as a woman with balanced brain chemistry and a humming sense of well-being. Yeah.