A CYBERGUIDE TO STOP OVEREATING AND RECOVER FROM EATING DISORDERS

Question 1:
How well do you remember your childhood?

• Do you keep remembering the same experiences and gloss over major absences of memory?
• Do you think you remember events because others have described them to you? Are your memories yours or are they images and stories given to you by others?
• Do you remember details from some years and little from others?
• Are even clear memories spotty? An example of this is when a person can remember the yard around their childhood home well, but has trouble remembering specific rooms or parts of rooms in the house.

Question 2:
Do you lose track of conversation?

• Do you often get bored or distracted during conversation?
• Do you go blank for a moment or two?
• Do you find yourself trying to pick up what's going on, as if you had been "gone" for a moment?
• Are these familiar experiences that you consider just part of your nature?

Question 3:
Do you lose track while watching a movie or hearing a lecture?

• Are there simple paragraphs or sentences in books which you have to reread and yet still have difficulty registering in your mind?
• Did that happen while you were reading this cyberguide, Triumphant Journey? If it did, go back and see if you can find those sections and hold them in your mind. If you can find them but still can't hold them, write them down. Sometimes, even writing them down doesn't work. It's as if the words go through your eyes to your hands, fingers and pen, typewriter or keyboard, completely bypassing your mind. That's okay. Just record them and keep them in the notebook you'll find out about in the Secret Discovering Exercises.
• Do you miss small sections of a film's continuity and have to fill in the meaning from your imagination?
• Are you certain that your small misses while watching films are okay because you are skilled in making sense out of the parts you have seen?
• Have you ever watched a video of a film you've seen before and been surprised at whole sections of events and meanings that you didn't know existed from your first viewing?

Question 4:
Are there small, mundane events which can reliably arouse your anger or fear?

• Examples of such events include:
  • You or someone else spills something.
  • Someone moves an object out of its usual place.
  • A simple food is unavailable.
  • You are to go up stairs or through a doorway first, immediately ahead of one or more people.
  • A household item or appliance breaks down and requires repair or replacement.

Question 5:
Do you feel you have to pretend to be someone better than you are?

• Do you feel that if people knew who you really were they would turn away from you?
• Do you feel that if people knew who you really were they would laugh at you, belittle you, or punish you in some way?

Question 6:
Do you feel nervous when you feel someone sees who you really are?

• Can you tell from a moment's glance when someone is seeing your real self?
• Do you keep away from such people?

Question 7:
Do you often feel you have to leave situations because you feel too nervous or confined to stay?

• Examples of such situations include:
  • meetings
  • relationships
  • brief encounters in social gatherings
  • classrooms
  • waiting rooms
• If you remain do you feel resentful and angry or afraid?

Question 8:
Do you have personal private rituals?

• Will you feel anxiety or anger if you cannot do them?
• Examples of such rituals can include:
  • Chewing a certain number of times or in a particular way.
  • Relying on telephone conversations at a particular time of day.
  • Exercising in a certain way at a certain time.
  • Eating special foods in a specific way or at a specific time or both.
  • Using particular eating utensils.
  • Watching particular TV programs while eating particular foods.
  • Cutting, chopping or arranging food to lengthen your time with the food. An example of this might be after peeling and eating an orange, spending time meticulously cutting the orange peel into tiny pieces.

Question 9:
Do you forget your sexual experiences?

• In an actual sexual experience, do you feel you are once again in a physical and emotional experience you forget about completely in your daily life?
• Do you often feel vulnerable and na�ve about sex in daily life despite numerous and varied sexual experiences?
• Do you also feel, more than occasionally, that you have special, secret knowledge about sex?
• Do you often lose feeling during a sexual experience and find yourself observing your partner or your own sensations from an objective point of view?
• Do you often have private sexual fantasies in which you are helpless and the center of dramatic attentions?
• Do you often have fantasies where someone is helpless and either honored and/or afraid to receive your dramatic attentions?

Question 10:
Do you have body sensations you do not understand?

Examples of such inexplicable experiences include:

• shaking
• skin rashes
• cold chills
• nausea
• dizziness

Question 11:
Do you feel you will faint on occasion?

Have you almost proven to yourself that it's not due to physical exercise, illness, PMS or menopause?

Question 12:
Are you often surprised at your own appearance?

• Do you sometimes feel invisible?
• Do you feel you can make yourself so unobtrusive that you feel you are practically invisible?
• Do you enter an invisible feeling when you are buying binge foods or eating them?

Question 13:
Are you attracted to people who betray you?

Do you feel you are wrong and apologize when someone hurts you?

Question 14:
Do you sometimes think you are special?

Do you get angry when others will not alter plans for you?

Question 15:
Do you sometimes or often think it is your lot in life to suffer?

Question 16:
Do you regularly feel lonely, incompetent and fragile in a harsh world?

• Do you feel that this is the real you and you must guard against anyone knowing it?
• Do you feel extremely moved, surprised and grateful when someone shows you a small consideration or appreciation?

Question 17:
Do you work excessively to achieve cultural prizes like money, degrees, status, adulation, perfect body - all without satisfaction?

If you try to relax do you feel unbearable anxiety and not know what to do with yourself?

Question 18:
Do you lead a double life?

Do you keep information and activities hidden from others?
Examples include:

• sexual liaisons
• roles you play in different areas in your life
• jobs
• future plans
• sexual practices
• hobbies and personal interests

Do you lie regularly?

Do you lie when you don't have a reason, and you don't know why you are lying?

Question 19:
Do you have a regular habit of pushing the same ideas or information out of your mind because you know you don't want to ever think about them?

Do you regularly postpone to the point of not doing an activity at all?

Do you postpone doing activities where you know in your mind that you could probably do well, but you are too nervous to get started?

Examples of this can include:

• sending out a completed job application.
• sending out a completed school application.
• calling someone who might be a mentor for you.
• taking an adult education class in something you think might be fun or interesting.
• Saying yes to an invitation to submit an idea or piece of work which, if accepted, would bring you into contact with new people in a new and challenging setting.

Question 20:
Do these questions make you anxious?

If you answer, "yes," to many of these questions you may have a secret from yourself. If you are angry or frightened that these questions exist, you have a secret from yourself. If you feel anxiety thinking about these questions, you have a secret from yourself.

If you are curious and anxious at the same time, you are on the threshold of discovery. Your curiosity can keep you on the healing path.

If you have read these questions and want some genuine answers to questions you have about yourself, despite any anxiety you may feel, you are already on your Triumphant Journey.

In the Secret Discovering Exercises section of Triumphant Journey and the accompanying Action Plan you will find a way to discover what your secrets are as you simultaneously develop the necessary strength to face them. This is the healing journey that can lead to personal triumph.

Secret Discovering Exercises

In following these exercises you will create a book which will become a map, guide and vital resource for your triumphant journey. As you proceed on this new healing path you will gradually see your secrets unfold and become known by you in many surprising and relieving ways. You will begin to recognize how overeating and other out of control behaviors shield you from self knowledge.

Soon you will be stronger and more free to choose new and more positive actions. You will begin to experience more health and joy in your life. You will not only recognize opportunities, but have more courage to act on them. You will bring more quality to your life than you have ever known.

First:

Establish a trustworthy support system so you have one or more friendly witnesses who are aware of your efforts.

Support could be:

	sympathetic friend on a similar journey
	trusted friend or friends
	members of a psychotherapy group
	12 step companions
	12 step sponsor
	other trustworthy and reliable person who is capable of tolerating your strong feelings without getting pulled into them
	your psychotherapist

(As close and as sympathetic some family members might be, it is usually best to have support for this process be someone who is not a relative.)

There will be times when you feel more than you think you can bear. You will need a trustworthy companion.

At first, one kind friend may be enough. Eventually, if you seriously engage yourself in these exercises, you may need more regular and reliable support than one friend can give. That's normal.

Second:

Remember and list experiences that soothe and inspire you. Your list might include:

reading listening to music playing with a pet drawing model building working cross word puzzles warm baths or showers walking running gardening dancing dance classes

playing sports lifting weights exercise classes board games conversation watching movies writing bicycling painting working with clay swimming

Whenever you find yourself having an enjoyable experience where you are happy or just more comfortable being you, describe that experience on paper and add it to your list. You are building your awareness of genuine support, health and joy resources. You will this specific and written list as you proceed through the Action Steps on your Triumphant Journey.

Third:

Be kind and appreciative of yourself. Acknowledge yourself as part of your support system.

Every morning read aloud several affirmations [1] and [2] to the walls, the garden, the furniture and the mirror. This will help you build a kind appreciation for yourself. When you discover a thought that is meaningful and helpful to you, add it to the affirmations list. Create your own affirmations making sure they are each in a positive form.

Fourth:

Let yourself know how much of your life has been consumed with protecting your secrets. Often guarding and hiding inner secrets becomes the basic organizing principle which governs all your actions.

Think about what you have been absolutely certain about what you can and cannot do. Examples to get you started thinking about this are:

 

	What kinds of things are okay for you to talk about?
	What kinds of things must you or dare you not talk about?
	What kind of people can you be with?
	Who must you not be with or dare not be with?
	What can ask of yourself or others?
	What must you not dare to ask of yourself or others?
	What kind of treatment or environment or life style must you accept, like it or not?
	What kind of treatment, environment or life style do you barely allow yourself to dream of?
	Are there ways of living that other people can have but never you?
	Is it forbidden, for some reason, for you to try to bring that way of living into your life?

Getting acquainted with the power and influence of your belief system takes time, patience and courage. When you start to question these beliefs you begin to challenge the power of your inner secrets.

Some limits you impose on yourself are free choices. For example, you may choose to take a boring part time job because it gives you time to be with your baby or take a class or work on a project that is important to you yet brings in no income. That's a free choice.

But if you take a boring part time job because you believe that you can't ask for more or expect more then you may well be under the influence of inner secrets you don't know about.

Hidden inner secrets can't let you know about your own strength. If you have knowledge and strength, you might challenge the system which holds you down. And overeating holds you down.

Fifth:

Remember to breathe and allow yourself to be surprised.

Breathe evenly and surely. Watch you breath and allow oxygen to nourish your body and mind.

As you breathe, allow yourself to be surprised. When you are surprised, allow yourself to breathe. Remember to exhale fully.

When you are surprised, you are discovering something. Your surprise is a major signal that you are uncovering inner secrets. In time those nameless secrets will be understood, named and resolved. With every surprise and resolution of secrets comes more understanding and freedom.

Sixth:

Elaborate on these exercises to make them your own.

You can add to your book:

	thoughts
	memories
	conversations of the day
	daydreams
	night dreams

You might include a phrase, comment, affirmation, prayer, or quote that touches your heart or your imagination.

These are personal strands of awareness that touch your genuine self. As you gather these strands, your desire to live healthy and strong will weave them into a healing, teaching, strengthening support system that will help make you whole.

Overeating is such a puny substitute for the strength and beauty you can create within yourself.

You can have self confidence based on true personal strength and wisdom.

Seventh:

At least once every three weeks, read your book aloud. You will be sharing truth and freedom with yourself.

These are seven preparatory steps for your taking specific action. What follows is the Action Plan, the method you will use to be free of overeating.

The Action Plan is the heart of your Triumphant Journey.

OVEREATING AND RECOVER FROM EATING DISORDERS RESOURCE SEARCH RESULTS

THE BASICS OF EATING DISORDER PSYCHOTHERAPY:
HOW IT WORKS

by Joanna Poppink, M.F.C.C

TRIUMPHANT JOURNEY:
A CYBERGUIDE TO STOP OVEREATING AND RECOVER FROM EATING DISORDERS

by Joanna Poppink, M.F.C.C.

*****************
Part Two

Preparation

Are You An Overeater? A Check List.

Your doctor, friends, family, nutritionist and calorie tables may describe your eating as too much, too little or strange. They may describe it as healthy and within reasonable limits. Only you know the details of your eating habits and the influence food has in your life.

Do any of these food related statements describe your experience?

 

	I eat meal portions larger than necessary.
	I eat privately before eating publicly to disguise how much I eat.
	I'm a "grazer," eating throughout the day and evening.
	I eat alone after being with friends or coworkers.
	I crowd my mind with thoughts about food.
	I starve myself for hours or days to create guilt free eating time.
	I binge. (Classically binge eating involves massive eating in a short period of time. But while a quart of ice cream may be a binge to one person a small dish may be a binge to another. If you think or feel you binge, that self defined binge behavior is something to explore.)
	I vomit or use laxatives to ride myself of food I've eaten.
	I exercise regularly and specifically to burn up calories from what I think is too much food.
	I have some private rituals regarding certain foods.

The thread which runs through these behaviors is that you are eating for reasons other than food hunger. In addition, if eating ranks among the most satisfying emotional or stress reducing experiences in your life, you may be living with too many unsatisfying relationships with people.

Why you live this way may be a secret even from you. Understanding the link between your undesirable eating habits and neglected aspects of your personal life can help free you from overeating.

Personal Rewards in Freedom From Food Tyranny

Your journey to freedom from overeating is not easy. Looking at the rewards you will reap can help sustain you when the going gets tough. As your emotional dependency on food diminishes you will discover these changes in your life.

 

	You improve relationships.
	You are more sensitive and attentive to yourself and others.
	You enjoy others more and they enjoy you.
	You become physically more attractive.
	For example:
	Swollen glands shrink. Glazed eyes become clear and alert. Hair develops a healthy sheen. Physical movements become more coordinated and graceful.
	You may be safer.
	You reduce or end your late night trips to grocery stores or fast food places which may put you in a vulnerable position. You reduce the chances of being in car accidents, from fender benders to major accidents. Such accidents can result when you, the driver, are distracted by food thoughts or by bingeing in the car.
	You have more time for people and activities when you use the energy you previously put into food and eating toward something else.
	You are more creative and productive.
	You are able to think more clearly.
	You have more energy for projects you may have considered unreachable dreams.
	You save money. You spend less on food.
	Emotionally you have more experiences of self confidence, peace and joy.
	You feel more alive.

The Dilemma in Recovery

The dilemma in your recovery process is that eventually, healing and triumph require that you face secrets in yourself.

Despite the benefits in freedom, overeating is difficult to stop. You are using food to stop or prevent yourself from feeling uncomfortable or painful emotions. Your eating patterns are a solution to difficult emotional experience.

You may be eating for protection from loneliness and self doubt. You may be hiding from your own anger. You may feel eating protects you from danger.

Often you don't even know this. What you do know is that you feel uncomfortable, nervous, irritable and frightened when you try to stop overeating.

These feelings signal that you have secrets from yourself.

Whether you are underweight, normally weighted or overweight, your eating solution can become a problem. You are tired of the roller coaster ride where you get control of your eating only to return to old patterns. You are weary of feeling like a failure when once again you find yourself alone in front of the television eating junk food. You feel even worse when you are trying to binge on broccoli or sprouts in a futile attempt to reach emotional oblivion without harming yourself. You know this is all wrong, but all your efforts to change seem futile.

Your dilemma is that you can change your eating patterns permanently only if you face and resolve your secrets.

If you follow any reasonable diet regime you will lose or gain weight, depending on your goal.

However, since diets address behavior alone they strip you of your protection from your own secrets. No alternative protection is given. As you eat more appropriately your anxiety can grow until it is unbearable.

With feelings of false power and superiority, or shame, guilt and relief, you return to the food solution.

Addressing the unknown in yourself is the heart of any useful method to stop overeating.

If your overeating is a short term and mild problem, you can address it with this guide and patient friends. If it is a long term or life interfering situation you will need to include additional forms of help.

Preparation for the End of Overeating

Like preparing for any journey, you will need some equipment. In your case the equipment, while intangible, is essential in coping with challenges along the way. Similar to other journeys, you will gain expertise with your equipment and discover new and useful applications by continued practice.

Essential Equipment List

1. Honesty.

You will need honesty. Willingness to be honest with yourself clarifies your position, gives you more opportunities of choice and opens your eyes and heart to realistic solutions. The more honest thought you give to your overeating the more opportunity you give yourself to be free.

Being honest you will recognize that your unwanted eating patterns serve to numb your feelings and help you hide from living. The sense of danger which occurs when you do not overeat feels greater than the suffering you experience because you are overeating. By following the workbook exercises you will develop the courage you need to dare to face the fears which accompany a life of not overeating.

2. Fully accepting that you don't know all the answers.

When you know you don't know something, you know something. You become open, curious and more able to learn.

Overeaters usually know what conditions contribute to their overeating. For example they may be familiar with a usual pattern like eating all the leftovers after a party, or overeating when getting home from work or school when they know they are going to be alone. But they don't really know why they are doing this.

Once you know your undesirable food behavior relates to an attempt to help yourself, you can begin to help yourself in new ways. You are at the point of starting your triumphant journey.

3. Increased self awareness.

Self awareness is also part of your equipment. As you become more aware of your emotional states during the times you are vulnerable to overeating, you can discover clues about your inner secrets.

4. A willingness to learn to recognize limits.

Part of honesty and self awareness is the ability to recognize limits. When you recognize the limits of what you know or can do for yourself, you may feel anxious. Learning to tolerate this and be willing to learn something new helps you discover new opportunities.

5. A willingness to learn to allow other people to help.

You can overeat, starve or purge alone. You may not be able to stop these behaviors alone. Part of your journey involves a discriminating acceptance of other people's ideas and efforts.

Over time, with practice and growing strength, you can develop this discriminating acceptance of others. But for beginning your journey, all you need is the willingness to try.

6. Appreciation of realistic time.

Overeating numbs you quickly but temporarily. Permanent change takes substantial time to develop. Going from the fast numbing relief of overeating to the gradual development of genuine strength and feeling requires a sense of patience and acceptance of real time.

7. Kindness.

Perhaps the most difficult to use and most essential to carry in your equipment bag is kindness. Sometimes your journey will be arduous and you will be tempted to be severe with yourself. More powerful than any harsh criticism, kindness and gentle encouragement will sustain you. Daily reading out loud of the affirmations in Appendix B can be reinforcing and help you develop this most needed piece of equipment - kindness to yourself.

Part Three
Part One: Exercises to Stop Overeating

Exercises 1 - 4

General Situation - anxiety: Any time you overeat you are trying to soothe yourself. Often overeating works, numbing your emotions. You may even think you feel safe or calm as you approach emotional oblivion.

Exercise: Ask yourself:

	Where do I need to feel safe or calm in my life?
	Where do I need to accept my powerlessness?
	Where do I need to develop and exercise my power?

For example, are you trying to change people or events which are beyond your control? This may be where you need to accept your powerlessness.

Are you neglecting yourself and activities which you can effect? This may be where you need to develop and exercise your power. Make a list of three areas you would like to be different in your life. Think of what you can and cannot influence on this list. Let go of what you cannot change. Add to this list at any time.

By reading and thinking about these Exercises to Stop Overeating you have already begun to exercise your personal power.

2. Situation - unfinished tasks: Unfinished tasks confront you. You feel depressed and overwhelmed. You eat rather than begin your work.

Exercise: Pause. List your tasks. Complete a small task before you eat. Completing the task will let you experience power more satisfying than that which comes from overeating.

The tasks may be too many and too complex for you. Break these large tasks into several small activities. Write them down.

Give yourself freedom to choose. Decide if you will put your effort into one task, working on all the activities until the task is completed. Or decide if you will put effort into several tasks, performing a few activities for each. As you complete an activity, check it off your list.

You are giving yourself freedom and power. You are giving yourself a reasonable structure. You are giving yourself a way to mobilize your power for your own benefit. You will appreciate your efforts when you see they lead you to fulfillment of your goals.

3. Situation - verge of a binge: You are on the verge of a binge. You are deciding what and how much you will eat. You promise yourself you will stop at reasonable limits (although you rarely succeed in keeping this promise.)

Exercise: Pause. Write a description of your last hour, the immediate hour you lived just before now. Include: What happened. What you did. What you said. What you thought. What you felt.

You may have experienced something hurtful or frightening to you. You may have been reminded of something hurtful or frightening. This can be true even if what happened in the hour seems, on the surface, to be simple and ordinary.

Remember, you now know that there is something you don't know. So something innocuous, like hanging up the phone, or misplacing your shoes, or looking at a coffee cup on a shelf might actually trigger a painful feeling in you that you would prefer not to feel.

Think of how you might soothe or comfort yourself. You may need understanding you can't give yourself. You might find that understanding and holding in a book, painting or piece of music. You might listen to an educational or inspirational tape. You might call a friend.

You might continue to journal. Write what you are thinking and feeling now. Read it out loud. Read it out loud a second time in front of a mirror.

Let yourself learn to listen. When you hear your true hunger's voice you can give yourself the nourishment you really need.

4. Situation -- in process of overeating: You are eating more than you need during a meal.

Exercise: Pause. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Breathe normally and pay attention to your breath. Feel the oxygen enter your lungs and nourish your body. Tell yourself there is plenty of food in the world. You can have more at your next meal.
 
Imagine your next meal. Commit to what time you will eat a nourishing meal again. Tell yourself you will be kind to yourself during the time between meals, and you will give yourself a good next meal.

Part One: Exercises to Stop Overeating

Exercise 5 - 10

Situation - reaching for a snack: You are reaching for a snack. You want to say "no" to the snack, and you can't.

Exercise: Pause. Pay attention to your breathing.

1. Think. Where else do you say "yes" because you can't say "no"? Do you smile or silently accept behavior or requests from people despite your discomfort?

2. Write down an incident that occurs to you where you wish you could have said "no" or "stop."

3. Write down the snack situation.

4. Answer these questions regarding the snack:

What do you think would happen if you said "no"?

What would you feel?

What benefits might you get if you said "no"?

What benefits might you get for saying "yes"?

What hardships might you get for saying "yes"?

5. Answer these questions regarding the incident. What do you think would happen if you said "no"? What would you feel? What benefits might you get if you said "no"? What benefits might you get for saying "yes"? What hardships might you get for saying "yes"?

Compare your answers. Do they have anything in common?

You may be saying "yes" to the snack and "yes" to a person or organization to protect yourself from some kind of discomfort. Your unwilling "yes" may be a way of sacrificing joyful opportunities.

Keep what you've written about these situations, questions and answers. Include them in your journal. Compare them to other situations where you say "yes" with words or with body acceptance but would prefer to say "no."

6. Situation - postponing: You are postponing beginning an activity. What are you postponing? Is it true that you can postpone everything except eating?

Exercise: Reverse the order. Before you reach for food, pick one activity you have been postponing and take concrete action. It may be a note or a phone call. It may be gathering materials you need. A small action mobilizes your personal power.

7. Situation - loneliness: Alone at night you want to eat. You want the comfort of food and perhaps television.

Exercise: Pause. Think of the people you have known throughout your life. There is one, perhaps more, who made a positive impact on you. Perhaps you like, love, or admire them. Perhaps you didn't know these people well, yet are grateful they touched your life.

Think of a thought they would appreciate. Share it with them. For example, send them an expression of appreciation or a picture, article or cartoon that might delight them.

Rather than sink into the oblivion of food and television, you can connect yourself with people in a meaningful way.

8. Situation - lying: Have you told a lie lately? Lying is related to overeating. Don't you lie to yourself about how much you eat and why?

Exercise: Think about lies you told or are still telling. Write down to whom you lied and why. Include yourself.

What made that lie necessary? How can you begin to correct that lie or prevent that lie from being necessary in the future? By facing the secrets you know you are keeping you become closer to facing deep, personal secrets you don't know about. These are the secrets that hold tremendous power over your overeating habits.

9. Situation - broken promises: Have you broken a promise to anyone lately? Include yourself. You break a promise to yourself every time you overeat.

Exercise: Make a list of your broken promises. Make good on the promises you can still honor. You may discover that some promises are impossible to keep and should not have been made. Acknowledge this. Knowing and accepting what you can and cannot accomplish increases your ability to establish reasonable limits for yourself. You become trustworthy to yourself and others.

10. Situation - good bye: You have said good bye to your friends and are home alone. You feel nervous. You are ready to eat whatever you can find for comfort.
Exercise: Pause. Consider moments that delight you. Give yourself a simple delight now while you are feeling the overeating urge. Perhaps it's listening to music or taking a warm bath. Read a poem out loud to your cat or dog. Sing in the shower or do some physical exercise to let out some energy.

Exercise in Kindness:

Be kind to yourself when you feel the urge to overeat. You want to overeat because you are threatened by something and are seeking safety, soothing and peace. Criticizing and punishing someone for being frightened accomplishes nothing positive. It only makes the frightened person more afraid. On this journey to freedom, the frightened person is you. Be kind.

Remember, every urge to overeat is a moment of opportunity to discover and satisfy your true hidden hunger.

When you want to overeat and don't, you will feel something you don't want to feel. These feelings are your clues to inner mysteries which compel you to overeat.

Knowing and resolving your secrets can free you to explore what you really do want. Maybe you can have it, maybe not. When you know what you really want, if it is realistic you can strive for it. If it is unrealistic you can let it go, mourn and be free.

Either way, the overeating solution is gone.

The next phase of Triumphant Journey will show you how to discover secrets you have from yourself and how to move beyond their power into a life of more health and freedom.

Part Four
Time of Decision

Once episodes of overeating diminish and hidden feelings become apparent, the second phase of your journey begins.

You feel proud and excited as you establish a healthy and reasonable eating pattern. Your good feelings, based on controlling what you eat, reinforce hope that you can create a better life for yourself. In time this more balanced way of eating and living will become familiar.

In this phase of your journey, as newly formed eating habits begin to become routine, you will begin to feel vulnerable and unsure.

This is a critical time. The emotionally flooding thrill of early success will pale as you feel previously hidden emotions. You may feel tempted to return to overeating to soothe yourself.

The temptation to return to overeating signals your next opportunity. Your feeling of exposure and vulnerability springs from being near secrets you have from yourself. Your anxieties suggest that you run away by eating. Your journey to health points forward into the challenge of meeting your fears. This is a time of decision.

Let's take a closer look at inner secrets, those secrets inside that even you don't know.

Necessity of Inner Secrets

If you overeat or binge, you may in your past have experienced something you could not bear to feel or know. Overeating puts a great, numbing shield between you and your awareness of yourself. It is part of an effective system many people develop in order to not fully know their history.

That history may involve events that happened to you, events you witnessed, events you heard about. That history may involve powerful and bewildering emotional experiences you had in the past but did not have the strength or maturity to understand or tolerate. Overeating protects you from knowledge about yourself.

No one can end an effective protective system unless they know they do not need that protection any longer. If the threatening sense of danger you have is a secret from yourself, you have no way to evaluate your safety. Without knowledge of your inner life you can't know when you are out of danger so you will continue to use your protective system, overeating.

Once you know your secrets you begin to learn that you are able to live with the knowledge. You can strengthen yourself through practice and understanding to live your life with more appreciation for the experiences you have survived. Then you will have no need for the methods which keep you numb and oblivious. There lies triumph and freedom.

Are you curious about your secrets?

Curiosity

Are you curious about your secrets? Curiosity is the beginning of freedom. Curiosity can mobilize your strength and courage. It can propel you on your triumphant journey.

Responsible diet books or physical exercise programs provide tools and guidance to help you achieve more physical health, strength, flexibility and stamina. They do not address the powerful issues that challenge or block your entry to a more healthful psychological and emotional path.

To reach the more healthful path that can lead to triumph and freedom you need your curiosity.

Curiosity asks, "Why must I live this way?" Then, as you become more alert and aware, you will seek your answer in a new and deeper way.

This is the search, find and understand section of your journey. Your secrets are treasures which, when discovered, understood and emotionally processed, will help free you from your overeating life style.

How Secrets Relate to Overeating and Binge Behavior

For our discussion there are two kinds of secrets: the ones you know about and the ones you don't know about.

Secrets overeaters know about and try to keep hidden from others cover a wide range of eating behaviors. Some secrets include:

• Gorging on bread, pasta, pastry, ice cream, frozen yogurt, especially alone at night.
• Getting caught in the sweet/salt trap eating peanuts and chips with cookies and candy.
• Sitting in front of the TV, eating and 'checking out' for hours.
• Eating for comfort while driving the car.

Overeaters often calm social jitters by eating privately before they eat a meal with other people. This also helps overeaters to hide their true eating habits. It's easy to say no publicly to second helpings and chocolate cake when you have eaten sweets before the meal. Plus, you know you can gorge yourself when you get home.

Overeaters often try to convince others to join them in "innocent treats," pretending their eating splurge is an occasional lark and not part of a regular pattern.

Keeping secrets from others often involves lying. Lying strips you of your self esteem and fills you with permanent guilt. The guilt feels permanent because the lies seem so necessary. Without the lies your secrets would become known. Public disclosure of your secrets seems to you like it would be a personal catastrophe.

The Darker Side of Secrets
-- Moving to the Unknown

Secrets go beyond food behavior. Overeaters often try to give themselves a sense of power, thrills or feelings of superiority. They may buy things beyond their resources. They may have secret sexual relationships. They may flee a relationship if they suspect the person sees through their eating pretenses or is aware of their buying or sexual binges.

If any of these secrets apply to you then you know about the darker side of secret keeping. You get scared. You cry or shake in the dark. You occasionally isolate yourself until you feel there is not a soul who cares about you. You feel helpless and angry regularly.

You make private, wild promises about changing, but can't. You binge on food or other activities until you feel drugged. You may be hung over for days.

You won't tell anyone about this secret personal hell you're living. You make complaints of being ill. You may accept or expect caretaking and feel profoundly sad when it is not enough.

Now we are entering the vast areas of secrets you do not know about yourself. Here are major signals that you are entering a secret territory within yourself. You yell, cry, plead or become stone silent with someone while feeling self righteous.

This may be a familiar and recurring scene, yet you may not wish to know how you contribute to create it. You may not wish to know how your troubled- eating practices and binge behaviors cause many problems in your life.

You can succeed in not knowing. You have for a long time.

To explore how you create some of your troubles would bring you uncomfortably close to your unknown inner secrets.

What are these secrets? What is the darkness from which they arise? Letting your curiosity come forth will help you tolerate your feelings as you explore the possible roots of your inner secrets.

Roots of Inner Secrets

Secrets from yourself are usually based on inescapable stress situations in childhood. They often involve blatant physical, sexual and emotional abuse. However, roots of secrets can be found elsewhere as well.

Some examples are:

• To change homes, schools, friends and neighborhoods regularly or in a traumatic way.
• To face death or serious illness of crucial people in your life.
• War
• Riots
• Earthquakes
• Fire
• Refugee flight and resettlement

Too much unpredictable behavior and schedule changes can cause intolerable stress to a child. Sometimes the child discovers that food stops or at least dims the pain of that stress.

More Subtle Causes of Inner Secrets

When a child's identity, worth in body, mind, soul and imagination, are disregarded or trampled, the bewildering emotional pain is too much for most children to bear. Because they are children, they have no criteria for behavior, no comparison, no frame of reference. They believe that this is the way the world is. And, of course, this is the way their world is. They will accept as true and valid the destructive messages pouring into them and struggle to find a way to survive their pain.

Some methods of destroying a child's worth are:

• To belittle a child's thinking.
• To disparage a child's natural desires and behaviors.
• To neglect or isolate a child.
• To break promises.
• To tell fantasies as if they were true.
• To tease unrelentingly.
• To not believe a child who says friends, teachers, neighbors or strangers are harassing her or him.
• To punish a child for telling his or her experience and/or telling the child his or her experience did not happen.

Today sensational, exaggerated language is often used in advertising, news and conversation to make an emotional point.

In the context of an assaulted child's experience, the roots of inner secrets are genuinely intolerable. Intolerable means truly unendurable. The child cannot stay alive and sane and experience what is intolerable.

When stress, pain, horror, confusion, bewilderment and fear are both intolerable and inescapable there are usually two choices. The situation must end or the child must die or go insane.

The creative child finds a third choice. The child who will survive blocks awareness. Intolerable information becomes a well-guarded secret.

The secret is guarded until the child is strong enough, mature enough, has enough support and information, to retrieve his lost experience and live a more full life.

If you are an overeater, the darkness and compulsive behaviors around your inner secrets are the devices that have saved your life. It takes a lot of trust and courage to know that you can survive without them. When you rally your trust and courage to begin to explore your own darkness you embark on the next phase of your triumphant journey.

Part Five
The Creation of an Overeater - Mary's Story

What follows is a synthesis of many overeaters' stories to convey the nature of the secret-keeping strategy commonly used by people who overeat and/or binge. This one is selected to show the complexity of what goes into creating and maintaining an inner secret.

Four year old Mary sits cross legged on the gold-braided living room rug looking up at the TV. Behind her on the big, brown couch sits her father reading the newspaper. He grunts and shakes the paper.

She hears the sharp rustle and cringes, but stays seated on the floor. He slams the paper down on the wooden coffee table. Her hands tremble, and her heart pounds. She breathes short, fast gasps. She sits very still, trying to become invisible.

He growls softly, deep in his throat. Her body stiffens as she stares at the TV, focusing her eyes, ears, heart and soul on the screen. She hears a thud as he jumps awkwardly to his feet. She keeps watching TV, trying to get inside the set, the story, the figures on the screen.

He kicks the couch. She hears the wooden legs scrape against the floor. Her body tight and unmoving, she tries to be as hard and still as the floor. The colors on the TV screen seem to become more vivid to her. She tries to pour her entire being into the screen, making the pictures and sounds her whole world.

He roars at the walls. "Nothing gets done around here. What kind of mess is this?" Mary's eyes glaze. Her heart beats faster. Her mind is totally absorbed in a soap commercial. Her body attempts to retreat into a numb calm. She ignores the pounding of her heart.

From the coffee table her father picks up a small box of crayons and throws it across the room. She breathes deeply and stares at the Bugs Bunny cartoon now playing. She is oblivious to all but the cartoon. She has achieved invisibility and nonexistence.

He bellows, "Nobody does a damn thing around here!" and sweeps an end table with his hand, sending a lamp and ashtray flying. She has lost awareness of her body, the floor, the room, sounds, sights, smells. To Mary now, only Bugs Bunny exists. Her father lurches around the room, mumbling unintelligibly. In the cartoon Bugs Bunny steals a carrot. Mary laughs.

Her father whirls at her. "What's so funny, you lazy good-for-nothing brat, making a mess everywhere and laughing at me!" She looks up, dazed. She doesn't know what he is talking about. She is so removed she doesn't know who or what he is.

"Answer me, you worthless, no-good!"

He picks her up and throws her across the room. She crashes into the wall. She may feel terror and pain. She may cry out, "No, Daddy, please," or, "I'll be good," or "I didn't do anything," or "I'm sorry."

She may say and feel nothing. She may remain dazed and feel body pain later. She may not remember this happened. She may remember the events but not the feelings. She may remember body and emotional feelings, but not the event. Lack of memory or partial memory shields her from the unendurable knowledge that she lives with a dangerous person. This person can explode at any time, frighten her, hurt her for no understandable reason, and she can do nothing to stop him or protect herself.

All she can do is blank her felt existence out of existence. For a while, Mary does not exist to herself.

Discussion of Mary's Story

Mary found a way to protect herself as best she could from unavoidable and intolerable fear and pain. Her pain comes from more than the physical event.

Emotionally it is intolerable for Mary to know that her father can and will terrorize her at any time and that her mother will not or cannot protect her. The people she depends on for daily caretaking and protection are dangerous to her. She cannot bear to live with that knowledge and so she finds a way to know as little as possible about her true situation.

If Mary can blot these painful experiences from her awareness she will be able to fearlessly love and trust her father. She can also depend on her mother to care for her, and she can experience herself living in a safe world.

This has more to do with overeating than many people realize. A child has few self-protective resources. If an inescapable, painful, fearsome or humiliating situation exists, creative, strong children can put themselves into a trance. In this way they can dull the horror of their experience.

Children can divide their minds into pieces so that they are not present as a whole person during extreme torment. Different fragments carry different parts of the experience so the children do not have to know or remember the episodes in their entirety. In this way they make their experience manageable. Mary saved herself from having to tolerate through knowledge or memory what is intolerable.

Mary Grows Up
- Early Stages of Becoming an Overeater

As Mary gets older she may not be able to put herself in a trance as easily as she could as a child. Actual events and emotional memories may approach awareness levels. She may reach for food to help her maintain oblivion. If food works, and it does for many people, she will continue to use eating to help her achieve the trance state she feels is necessary for her survival.

Throughout her life she may feel body pain and emotional tremors without connecting them to any outside incident. She may sometimes attribute these feelings to physical illness or minor accidents. Gradually she will accept these feelings as "the way she is."

Eventually she may be certain she has these feelings because she is "bad" or "worthless." She may feel "special" in her feelings of terrible faults and therefore feel she deserves special attention in the form of punishment or abandonment.

Mary may feel the physical and emotional feelings she experienced during the abuse she experienced as a child without connecting those feelings to her history. Like many people who overeat or binge, she may not remember sections of her childhood. Her memory blanks may be so thorough she will not know she does not remember. 


Mary Grows Up
- Adult Stages of Being an Overeater

Observing the adult Mary who chronically overeats and binges, we notice seemingly inexplicable traits. She has limited and odd childhood memories. She cannot remember the old living room, but she does remember the TV. She doesn't want her children playing with crayons. She continually tries to please her father with gifts and attention. She is angry at her mother most of the time.

She will not have furniture with wooden legs in her home. She refuses to be in a room with any man, including her husband, while he is reading a newspaper. She is afraid to laugh in public. She has many secrets. She may steal little sweets in the grocery store or in social settings when she thinks others are not looking. She will refuse to attend violent movies. Yet she may have sadism/masochism fantasies, perhaps secret, perhaps acted out.

She may blank out at times. On careful observation we might notice that these mental blanks occur when someone around her has body, facial or verbal mannerisms similar to her father.

She has deep bouts of sorrow and loneliness where no one can cheer her up. She feels alone, ugly, bad, scared and is the worst person in the world to herself. She gets angry and sad when people will not change rules or behavior for her. If they do change to accommodate her wishes, she will be briefly grateful but will feel the changes are not enough. She surprises people by not remembering them or their kindness. She doesn't remember needing people.

She overeats regularly. Sometimes she vomits on purpose. When she feels familiar despair she will binge.

Mary is trapped in the overeater's prison. Mary exercises. She reads diet books. She doesn't understand why she can't stop overeating. She believes she overeats and feels bad because she is bad. She is certain that if she stopped overeating her life would be fine, and she would be happy and a good person. She feels humiliated and helpless because she can't stop.

Mary is not curious about her feelings. Her main concern is stopping her feelings, not understanding them. Her lack of curiosity and her insistence on making food her main point of focus are crucial in maintaining her ignorance about herself.

As long as her secrets remain unknown to herself, Mary will continue to feel she is in constant danger. Because she is oblivious to the torture and heartbreak she experienced in her past, she has not learned to recognize and avoid abuse in her present. She may allow abusive people in her life, even invite them, because she doesn't know she has more power than she did as a child. For her, abuse is more than familiar. Abuse feels like home.

The Way Out

Someday Mary might become curious about herself. If she does she might begin her triumphant journey.

Triumph actually begins with defeat. Once Mary knows that everything she has tried has failed, she may open herself to something new. This is usually the reason people seek 12-step programs, meditation, support groups, friendly and comforting religious programs and/or professional psychological help.

Their pain, fear and despair is so intense that they are willing to reach out to something unknown and perhaps frightening rather than continue their way of life.

Overeaters also look for help when they feel they have no other choice. Sometimes the overeating itself is no longer effective in blocking their feelings. They feel overwhelmed with anxiety. They are alone with their secret without knowing what it is.

This devastating feeling reduces all choices to one: meet your true self at last. The possibility of freedom lies is changing direction, reaching out to unfamiliar resources, examining your inner life.

What follows is a series of secret discovering questions, preparatory activities and action steps to start you on your triumphant journey. Answer the questions. Begin to discover your secrets. Learn how to build the inner strength and knowledge base that will equip you to discard the overeating way of life.

Bon Voyage!

 

ANOREXIA: I'M NOT A CHILD AND I'M SO AFRAID

by Joanna Poppink, M.F.C.C

HELPING PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT
WITH THEIR SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROBLEMS

by Ron Fagan, M.A., Ph.D.