Saving the king

On one of my first days of isolation my son offers to teach me how to play chess. (Hey, no judging. So I don’t know how to play. That’s okay, right?)

I’m leery of his offer due to many previous experiences of him “teaching” me how to play other games, where the rules seem to constantly slide in his favor and I never, ever win.

But I say, “Okay,” and he lays out the pieces.

Before long, a graveyard of my pieces pile up on his side of the board.

Then he says, “Hey, Mom, you can still save your king.”

He says it’s called “castling,” a move allowed only once per game where the rook and king can switch places to try to protect the king.

(He still killed my king, lol.)

The castling didn’t save my king this time.

But after the game, I wondered how often do we castle in our lives in an effort to protect ourselves? How often do parts of us step in in urgent moments to try to help us the best they can?

For many of my clients, a part of them binge eats in an effort to do just that. The binge is the castle that tries to protect them from something that seems threatening.

In the end, the consequence of the binge is negative.

But, in the beginning, the intention of the binge was—in perhaps the strangest and most counter-intuitive way—positive. It was trying to serve in some way.

The way out of bingeing begins with honoring that.