O.A.

[Sweetest1]

I think it's totally possible to be encouraged and discouraged at the same time.
I hope you'll give yourself permission to reach out for help to the others in your group.
Sometimes just having someone you can call is the best thing in the world.

Good luck.

[uni]

Thank you Rebecca. Those are words I needed to hear

[uni]

Guess what? I phoned two OA people yesterday! Unfortunately neither was home, but I left messages. The important thing is that I picked up the phone and dialed!

[paul m]

Good for you. Even if nobody was home, it's still a start. Take Care. paul m

[Kaight]

Way to go Uni! I have an acute case of phone-a-phobia... you phoning two people on the same day is, to me, extraordinary! And you were phoning people that you (I'm assuming) don't know well to ask for support!
Two gold stars for you!

Keep it up!
Kaight

[uni]

Right now I feel a bit lost with my OA program.

I find the daily readings very helpful and will continue doing them. I feel comfortable at the meetings and am getting to know some of the people. But the two I phoned last week never called back. One of them was a bit of a shot in the dark, so I'm not that surprised, but I really thought I'd hear from the other one. Part of me wants to try her again, but part of me is feeling rejected. Good grief, it takes so little to feel rejected sometimes; it makes me wish I had a thicker skin. But efforts to get one just don't work, so thin-skinned I remain....

..... So. After reading the above paragraph I see what I must do. Gather my courage and call the most likely person again. Oh brother.

[Kaight]

Sounds like a good plan. Maybe the just lost your number.

[paul m]

Hello Uni. I don't think that it's the fear of being rejected that makes us thin skinned at times. For many years I had the hide of an aligator at times and then I got really ill. Since that time I have had a problem with being too sensitive to rejection at times.

So I think that it is the illness that causes it or at least part of it. Of course knowing what exactly causes it and being able to do something about it are two widely different things.

So make that phone call, if she doesn't call you back again it still doesn't mean that you have been rejected, it just means that the person doesn't return phone calls. Take Care. paul m

[uni]

Paul, I have to agree that the illness makes things worse with the whole rejection thing. I was sensitive as a child, but I'm not sure how much was the way I'm hard-wired and how much was learned through circumstance. In any case, I still tend to be thin-skinned, but don't take rejection *quite* as badly as I used to. Most of the time.

Thanks to reading your posts today, Kaight and Paul, I decided maybe I was making too much of this, and phoned the woman again. Still no answer, so I left a garbled message and maybe she will phone back. Glad I called, even though I had no idea what to say other than "I'm trying to get better at reaching out". Ack!

[astronaut]

Hey Uni,

Maybe the other OA member is also really nervous about calling you. Phone-o-phobia, as I think Kaight called it, is not altogether
uncommon....

astronaut

[uni]

Well, I finally got a chance to go to another OA meeting last weekend. The woman I'd called twice, said she tried to reach me at my cellphone number, which I rarely use. So I checked it and there had been one call from a blocked number. In any case, I feel a bit better about making calls again.

It was a very small meeting but one of the best I've been to. A couple of the people there also have depression. It becomes clearer to me all the time how intertwined we are with mind and body. People eat for emotional reasons *a lot* - more than I realized.

I'm carrying on with the idea that if I feel ok inside, I do less emotional eating. Which of course means I have to deal with what's behind my unpleasant emotions. Ick.

.

[Sweetest1]

I'm definitely an emotional eater too. So bad for the waist line.