Healing Binge Eating: How Often Do You Cry?

In the process of healing binge eating, ask yourself honestly:

How often do I cry?

How often do I shake with fear?

How often do I punch pillows?

Let’s take this past month as an example. Ask yourself, how often have I cried? If so, for how long did I cry? Have I healthily expressed anger in the past month? Have I felt my fears rather than avoiding them?

Often, we think that we are quite emotionally connected, and that we do not really have a lot of emotional suppression going on. We thus feel confused about why we binge eat.

It is helpful to take a step back and reflect on these questions.

Often, we realize that we've cried once or twice, maybe for a minute or two. Or maybe we haven't really had a good cry, though a few tears rolled down our cheek. For some people (and I used to be one of these people), we haven't cried in years.

"How many times in the last month have I expressed and felt my anger in a healthy way?"

A reminder that healthily feeling anger is doing so by yourself and without taking it out on anyone. So how often in the last month have you gone crazy on a pillow, punching and releasing? How often have you gone into your car by yourself and screamed your head off?

"How many times in the last month have I stayed with my panic and fears, feeling them rather than avoiding them?"

How many times have you sat with the discomfort of fear and anxiety, done nothing to distract yourself and just allowed the sensations to overwhelm you? Have you allowed yourself to shake and perspire in fear, or have a fear-cry?

To heal our behavior with food, we have to start fully experiencing our suppressed emotions. And if you overeat, it's guaranteed you have them.

Thinking about emotions isn't experiencing them. Meditating isn't experiencing them. Exercise isn't experiencing them, unless you're screaming or crying while you are exercising (wink).

There is no other way to express feelings other than the same way a 2-year old does. So how many times have you done that in the last month?

Photo by Andreas Kretschmer via Unsplash