Holding On…

leora — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:25:54 +0000

Sometimes, a binge can be a way to hold tightly onto very uncomfortable emotions; like fear, like depression, like pain, like sadness, like anxiety… Sometimes, when a feeling begins to show through, the instinct would be to push it down tightly by eating and making the feeling go away. Unfortunately, this is temporary. Very temporary. It ends up making you feel even worse about yourself. Feeling horribly uncomfortable in your body, feeling angry at yourself for the binge and feeling all the uncomfortable effects of overeating especially sugar, flour, alcohol and other foods that can make you feel tired, foggy and depressed.

So, when you feel a binge coming on, experiment with letting go.

Write about it. What are you feeling? What hurts? What are you afraid of?

Tell someone. Talk about your fear and your anxiety. Confront it. Don’t let it be bigger than you. Don’t try to push it down. It will come back at you with a vengeance.

How? Carry a journal around with you, start an anonymous blog, talk to supportive people, sit alone and meditate, take a slow meditative walk, try to relax before you take that first step toward a binge…

Anxiety

leora — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:32:24 +0000

I can’t tell you that I fully understand anxiety. I’m not sure why some people are controlled by their anxiety and some people are fully able integrate life into their day-to-day without being ruled by anxiety.

Anxiety is fear on caffeine pills.

Often times, binges come out of anxiety. The flood of seratonin that you get from the binge will help calm you down. Hellish bliss. Because then, comes all the anxiety from the binge. Did I just make myself fat? Am I fat? Should I purge? What should I do? I just ruined it!

Anxiety is not simple. And it’s sneaky. Even if you try to interupt your thoughts, it will come back in other ways.

Delving into the anxiety is one way that I believe it will begin to dissipate.

Sometimes a thought pops up. And then, before you know it, your head is in the refrigerator. Possibly going back to the thought again and again and being with the anxiety a bit until the shock of it dulls a bit.

And then following the anxiety to the source of it.

for example: “I look fat… If I look fat, people won’t like me. If people don’t like me, no one will want to be around me. My boyfriend/girlfriend will leave me, I’ll never find someone to love me, I’ll be completely alone and then I’ll die alone and rats will eat my decaying body…”

Most anxiety, in it’s truest form is existential angst, the fear of death or being alone and dying alone. Anything that we can do to lessen that fear, (which puts us in a place of uncomfortable, heightened state of vigilance) we will do. Bingeing is certainly one way to lessen anxiety. But clearly not the healthiest. And it becomes a vicious cycle.

Other ways to work with anxiety.

1. Acceptance– when you accept that you have no control over life, an amazing sense of peace drapes over you. Also known as surrender.

2. Meditation– lessens anxiety. Allows you to be in the present moment.

3. Exercise– being in your body and in the moment gets you out of your head and helps you stop “future tripping.”

4. Sleep– getting enough sleep balances brain chemistry to help lessen anxiety as well.

Recover » binge eating

Holding On…

Anxiety