First, I’m adding an evening class of Horrible Food Wonderful Food (Pacific time) for Tuesdays 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Write me grace@workwithgrace.com if you’re interested.
Working with a troubling relationship like “food” and eating can be very tricky. It’s similar to other substances like smoking, drinking, using drugs in the way it feels hard to stop using it in the way we do. We consume, take it in, ingest it when we don’t like the way we are feeling or thinking.
The difference between food and other consumable items is that we apparently need to eat to keep the body alive. So we HAVE to face this relationship daily.
When it’s a very addictive, agonizing relationship that triggers a lot of emotion, then it’s like having a neighbor who is mean, angry, critical….or sad, depressed, suicidal…that you see on and off all day long. And maybe all evening or all night long, too.
It’s a troubling encounter, almost every time you meet.
The thing is, this difficult neighbor, this relationship with food, needs to be invited in for tea. I found I had to make friends with it—there was just no other way.
It is not easy to do that with an entity that feels so vicious, powerful, enraged, condemning, and unpredictable.
But of course, it is our THINKING that is spinning off in all these directions, with lots of uncomfortable feelings following all the thoughts that are going a thousand miles per hour.
The way I found the most peace around food was to do the following, which I did not plan out…it was not a strategy or anything I was forcing myself to do. It was what I most desired, so I was drawn to it:
- Stop every plan or diet (they never worked permanently anyway) that categorized and listed foods as “good” or “bad” or had measurements or time on the clock for eating.
- Accept my emotions, fears, terrors, loneliness, fury, grief as part of being alive, not that it meant something was wrong with me.
- Never give up believing that I could be normal with food and eating.
This can also be done with smoking, using drugs, drinking, or any other compulsive addictive behavior, something you don’t love doing but you can’t seem to give up.
For any behavior you notice that you engage in, but you don’t really like the outcome, Step #1 above becomes STOP making a plan for tomorrow or “the rest of your life”.
In the moment when you feel like doing the thing that you know doesn’t work in a permanent way (eat, smoke, drink, watch porn, over-exercise, shop, gamble) see if you can find out what exactly is so intolerable about THIS moment, now.
I found that I thought of my feelings as unbearable (Step #2 above). I was furious, heartsick, grief-stricken, scared, feeling trapped.
I hated feeling strong feelings so much that I believed I must get away from them, alter them, suppress them, attack them and destroy them.
So really, working with addiction, whatever it is you do to escape, starts with allowing this experience of feeling, being alive, and having that mean neighbor. It’s allowed to be the way it is. Leave it alone. Let this moment be here.
I still have strong feelings. Huge big feelings that seem overwhelming. I don’t necessarily like having them all the time, but I don’t round them up and send them to a concentration camp to be annihilated.
Big feelings are allowed here. What you are angry about, scared of, confused, or frustrated by is OK.
You are not terrible, unusual, missing something, unworthy, wrong, or stupid.
When starting to look at all the beliefs about food and eating that we’ve ever had, about bodies and weight-loss and weight-gain and fat people and skinny people….we begin to see what we thought was true might not be true at all.
When we have big painful feelings, we can invite them in and write down what we are most bothered by. We can be willing, open, curious to see what this terrible experience is all about.
Even if you just ate a gallon of ice cream.
“Whether you are aware of it or not, self-centered thoughts are polluting everything you do. Inquiry is just noticing that, so that the true quietness of who you really are can be realized.”~ Scott Kiloby
You are not “self-centered” really. Maybe you believe you are, and you believe this is very bad. You believe you are not spiritual and there is something greedy and disgusting about you. At least that’s what I used to think constantly when I overate.
But this is only your mind, working out things by “thinking”. It’s doing it’s job.
“The mind exists in a state of ‘not enough’ and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied. When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or — and this is not uncommon — transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting more food.” Eckhart Tolle
See today if you find you have a compulsive urge to do something if you can wait 60 seconds before you do it. Yes, that short.
While you are waiting, see if you can write one sentence down that is a reason you are suffering in this moment. What is happening here that is painful?
“Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.”~ Tao te Ching #3
If you’re ready to look at what you believe about food, hunger, and bodies…come join the teleclass that starts Tuesdays, either morning or evening, Pacific time.
Teleclasses also begin soon on Money, Work and Business, Our Wonderful Sexuality, and Turning Relationship Heaven to Hell. All using Inquiry to find out what we’re thinking that builds stress….and dissolving our stress by answering questions about what is really true.
Love, Grace