Dear Tati:

I still suffer anxiety around food because of my history of eating disorders. Binge eating was a very painful experience for me and I still fear it.

I learned that indeed, severe restriction leads to severe overeating/ bingeing. So avoid severe restricting.

I also learned that I got so attached to eating because it is so pleasurable. As a child, my life experience was so miserable, so much of the time, that food was the break I craved- and still crave- from that misery.

What I really wanted all along is to feel good. This is the valid message in my craving food: I want to feel good.

The title of your thread is “Why do we self-destruct?”- as in by bingeing. My answer: because we are afraid, afraid of feeling as badly as we already did, and wanting so desperately to feel good, safe, content, unafraid.

anita

Dear Tati:

You are welcome.

You wrote: “getting rid of ED brings new fears and anxiety”- anxiety exists before, during and after an eating disorder. Disordered eating is the result of anxiety and the cause for more anxiety.

You wrote: “I’m not sure how to deal with the pain, and especially the numbness, without food”- first step in dealing is enduring, that is, to endure the pain without automatically reacting to it. To suffer without trying to stop the suffering in any which way.

Mental health is about replacing automatic/impulsive reactions with thoughtful choices.

And you wrote: “It will take a while to have new healthy habits. I hope these habits will bring me the contentment I seem to be lacking”- habits are hard to change, but possible. In my experience, the power of the will is not enough. It is empathy for myself, gentleness toward myself that is necessary. After all, it is empathy (love) we needed in childhood, not (more) food. We still need the same thing… not more food.

Post again, anytime.

anita

Dear Tati:

You are very welcome. Return here anytime and I will remind you! We do forget what work for us. Key is to return to what worked before, to persist and learn more about what it is that works. There is always more to learn.

anita

Dear Tati/Tatjana:

Thank you for your expressed appreciation- I value it. My commitment to your thread and to others’ threads go hand in hand with my commitment to my individual healing.

anita

Dear Tatjana:

Welcome back!

You wrote: “shame is awful cause it makes me want to die”- and I can relate. For shame to be effective in a person’s life, it needs to be experienced, when we do something wrong, in a very small quantity, like a very hot, strong spice that only a very small quantity of it is needed in a dish being prepared. Just a little bit. More than just a bit and it overwhelms a person.

Let’s look at what happened today: your friend witnessed you eating leftovers. First: was there any wrongdoing on your part? Did you deprive him of the food you ate, were there other plans for the food you ate?

Let’s say you deprived him of the food you ate, that it was planned that you and him have it for dinner but you already ate it, so that is a wrongdoing. How much shame does it require?

Just a little bit. Because again, shame is like a very hot spice, very strong, too much of it and it burns, overwhelms. So you allow just a bit of it in your heart, offer an apology, an amend: go shopping for an equivalent amount of food to what you ate for his dinner.

anita

Dear Tatjana:

You are welcome.

You wrote: “I was more ashamed of him finding out I eat cold food at inappropriate times, standing up in the kitchen. I don’t want him to think I’m a freak”-

it is you who thought: “I am a freak!” You projected that thought to him. He may have thought nothing of that sort. Maybe he thought: she must be hungry. Maybe he thought something else. I don’t know, but neither do you unless he tells you and honestly.

Thing is, you were telling yourself that you are a freak before he showed up, only the voice in your head telling you that was weaker in the background, while your focus was, I am supposing, on the pleasure of eating. Correct?

If so, then notice that for as long as you disapprove of your own behavior, that behavior needs to be stopped whether or not you are observed by another person. You are always there to observe and comment on your own behavior. And so, your behavior has to be okay with you.

anita