If you’re reading this, you are obviously in a 12 Step organization for food; there are numerous such organizations. Thus, you are steeped in many of the ways of the program that you have followed since you first came in. However, other than getting abstinent, all other aspects of the program are open to interpretation. The rest of the specifics should be what will work for you and help you achieve and maintain abstinence.

Let’s pull out for a “wide shot” about programs, groups, and organizations. Whenever we join a group – 12 Step or otherwise – there is a certain pattern we, and all new members, follow. We take in the overall situation. What subjects are people talking about? How are they talking about those subjects – what is the “vernacular” they use? Slowly, we begin to build a mental picture of the organization, what the norms are, and what is expected of members. Unless we possess a severely oppositional personality, we “fall in line” with the ethos of the group and move forward.

What if, instead, we took a few steps back and asked ourselves why exactly did we come to program in the first place? What did we want to achieve? If you were like me, you wanted to find a way to stop eating compulsively, probably with the losing of weight being the main motivator. However, when I came in, I did so because I knew I needed help. I was doing it for me, not because someone or some situation was pushing me into doing it. Remembering this key thought is critical, because it’s very easy to start shifting views of the disease based on outside input.

We walk into our first meeting as a newcomer and begin to take in the situation. What are these people talking about? Their vernacular seems to be using words and phrases and sayings not regularly used outside the rooms. If we’ve decided the program might be the answer to our problem, we begin to absorb what is being said. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as we have the ability to discriminate between what the program is saying versus peoples’ opinions of what the program is saying.