Trine L.

This speaker was recorded at an Addictive Eaters Anonymous event held in Dublin, Ireland in January 2023. For more information, visit www.ae info.org
My name is Trine and I'm an addictive eater. And I'm starting to think about Star Wars and it has nothing to do with the microphone. So it's very good to be here. And what a relief. What a relief to be here. And when I, I mean, when I think of my obsessions, what obsession with food and all my addictions and what it really came down to was just to be right. I just wanted to be right. If I could just be like that, then I was right. And then I would get everything I wanted and life would be beautiful. The actor is described in the book, but I just always worked so hard to be right, to say the right thing to look right. What are we wearing? It's such hard work, and then what to weigh, oh, what to weigh?! I wanted to weigh the right thing. And there was a right thing to weigh in. If I weighed less, I was in paradise if she weigh more... Life was not worth living. Not a day! And I can remember I was just talking to someone about that I can remember years on what I weighed. Oh, that was a good year! Trine was thin!! And oh argh...! Terrible year!! And that my weight affected everything I did. Manifested in everything. And oh, yeah.
And I really tried, I tried to, to get help and but first when I came to AEA, and I heard that simple suggestion that addiction swap from one thing to another, and you might be an addict, and you might NOT BENEFIT of substances that can mind change you. Oh!  Then if something really occurred to me that everything, I might not be eating that, but then I deserve to do something else. So my plan as well as looking right and being all perfect, it was that I deserved, I always deserved to to have something to make me feel a certain way. And uh... And yes, that that. That's addiction. And I had to let go of all mind altering substances. And I had to yeah, just surrender. as I've heard about today. And I didn't feel desperate. I heard here in these rooms, there's a gift of desperation. I didn't feel desperate, but I was scared. I was scared of being on my own. And when I surrendered, I remember exactly where I sat when I surrendered. Because I was I was going on I heard about AEA and I thought, that's good for you. Not for me - too much for me, thank you! Not for me. Because I think I can handle it. I might use some of it but not all of it. And then all of a sudden it occurred to me you are completely insane. You cannot trust those thoughts. What you're sitting here and thinking is not to be trusted. It was in the same moment just sitting there and realizing you can actually not help yourself. I tried all my life to help myself and was self help book and a little bit here and there and everywhere. But I've never tried to just say ‘Okay, tell me what to do. And I do it,‘ and I I think that was pretty much what happened. But before that happened, I mean, my husband and my old sponsor, and a lot of people had to say to me, we cannot help you. You're insane with food, we cannot help you. So I was helped to being desperate. And then just as I heard today, the relief of just getting up just doing as I was told, getting up taking a shower, getting a routine, because I've always thought there was no tomorrow. I never thought it through. I just wanted to, what will feel fun to do? What will feel fun to do? And what do I feel like and someone talked about just leaving work, because I got a thought someone would look me in the hall and say, ‘Oh, you look pale, Trina‘, ‘I look pale, I'm sick. I will go home, see you tomorrow.‘ And it has, nothing has, I didn't even feel but I would be I would leave! So it was so exhausting for people to to work with me. And, and, and just to follow these simple suggestions today, it's just the privilege to, to work with my colleagues, I really enjoy them. And I heard someone sharing about getting help from others. And because I could do everything myself, I didn't need them. I didn't need them. And a lot of colleagues and friends have said ‘It's really hard that, that you can do everything. I mean, it's and that you won't, if you have a task, you won't share it with us.‘ You have something at work you want, I want to sit with it all alone. And I can be quite dominating and because of the insecurity and the anger. Remember my old Uncle, that was when I was really young. And I was there with a boyfriend and he said, ‘I cannot understand how you can how you can be with her. She's really dominating, isn't she?‘ And I thought ‘I'm not. I'm not.‘ But things need to go my way. And it's not like that today. It's not like that today. And sometimes it is but I can sort of hear it coming and oh, not going there! And then pausing and doing something else. And a lot of my life is pausing and doing something else (laughter). Because it the disease is there and but it's not really interesting what it has to tell me. It's not really it doesn't really interest me today. And that's I must say in this fellowship, what the way I've looked at the way of life I've learned and how to get help and not to trust this insanity going up going on in the mind and just pausing and saying ‘Ah run it to someone else. I will just see. I will just see what what to do.‘ Yeah, it's just a blessing. And yeah, now I just these last years, I mean, I've been I've become more and more happy and I never thought of that. I mean in our in our preamble it says you will become active and you will have a good life. I don't know, but I really feel happy. And I also with my family and I've used to ‘Oh I can‘t can‘t be with them.‘ I can be with them! ‘I might take five minutes with my cousin!!‘ But it was really it's such a hard work instead of just showing up suiting up and being being of use and that was first in AEA. I NEVER heard about that. I heard about talking about yourself, but I never heard how can you be of use? What can YOU do? What can you BRING to this situation? So that gives me something to do instead of being all caught up in what I started out sharing about me me me me me. Then making it a bit about others and um and their day and
yeah
so it's good being here. Thank you, for arranging this. Thank you from me.