Taking notice

Binge eating is an attempt to momentarily soothe ourselves. Soothing behavior can be seen as our best compassionate attempt to take of ourselves, using the tools we know. But is also a way to avoid facing ourselves.

Basically, we soothe to go unconscious. We thrive by becoming conscious. We become conscious by taking notice.

Have you noticed how the cycle of eating continues as if of its own accord? How many times has shame pierced us when we discovered that we’d done it again? We lose track of how we are moving ourselves into the kitchen, of the food going into our mouths, of the rush of being filled, of the remorse of feeling stuffed.

What happened?

We lost our attention—our ability to track and to be in control of what we are thinking, feeling and doing. Losing attention allows mechanical habitual patterns to run wild.

A key part of healing from binge eating is recovering our attention.

Traditionally, meditation has been the path to cultivating attention through slowing down enough to observe what is going on. Being mindful allows us to find the skills to dismantle the momentum of unconscious habitual patterns.

As we grow in attention, we become more aware of how we give ourselves away to the promise of being soothed by food. We become more aware of the feelings that drive us in the first place. We become aware that we are triggered by feelings of inner, emotional emptiness, and become better at consciously nurturing physical emptiness with nutritious food. We learn, with each new experience, that the feelings that drive us to eat can become more and more tolerable.

The act of sitting quietly for 10 to 15 minutes ever day is valuable in itself. If there is no time in the day to sit, we can do meditation in motion and hone our abilities of observation.

By slowing down, we give ourselves the space to notice our thoughts and to see how they lead to our feelings and actions. As we develop attention, we shine a light into areas that were previously beyond our awareness. By doing this, we slowly dismantle the momentum that causes us to hurt ourselves and allow ourselves to look at better options for positive action.

Who would you be without your pattern of binge eating? Please feel free to email me your reflections.

Would you like someone by your side on your path to recovering from binge eating? Book me for a free mini-session, and let’s explore what lies ahead.