A Tendency to Overshare

Time to recover concept, color word and clock on blackboard

I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it: we spend the first twelve minutes or so of a fifteen-minute qualification telling members how awful things used to be (as if they don’t already know!) and then about two minutes sharing what happened to change us and one minute on what we are like now.

Don’t get me wrong. I need to hear, as much as the next guy, how bad things can get when we’re in the food. I need to be reminded of the lows to which compulsive overeating will take me. But when I spend most of my share time telling you the ins and outs of how horrible my life was, am I not just engaging in terminal uniqueness? Am I not really putting the focus on my own “specially special” story rather than on the program? People need to hear that living without compulsive overeating is possible.

One way I handle this is to out myself right away when I qualify. I’ll start by saying, “I have a tendency to overshare on how awful things were, so I’ll try to keep that part to five minutes.” This helps me bring it out into the open right away.

I remember one woman who impressed me by starting with, “What can I say? I ate too much.” And then she launched into how program had changed her and how she was living now. It was an unorthodox approach, to be sure, but really effective.

Yes, we need to remember what life was like before we found program, but not at the expense of learning about the hows of working the program, and ultimately about the spiritual awakening that allows us to live without compulsive overeating.

— Anonymous