Violent Thinking=Violent Feeling=Violent Acting

Eating Peace in-person 3 Day Immersion Retreat is coming October 9-11 in north Seattle or November 13-15 in Newark area outside San Francisco. (And I’ll teach it a third time Jan 22-24 here in Seattle again). Mental health counselors earn 32 CEUs.

This Grace Note isn’t just for people with eating issues….

….it’s for those of us who do weird things that don’t make sense, that seem out of integrity to our truest nature.

Things that hurt, or hinder, or damage, or diminish something in our experience.

After many years of eating wars and studying how to stop the insanity I experienced….

….and then working with clients one on one for over a decade….

….I discovered some very common themes and deep-seated fears people experience who don’t know how to eat in peace.

Many of these things are true for people who eat without trouble, but do OTHER things without peace.

I started with myself, of course.

When it comes to the way I ate, I remember it well.

It was a *horrible* way to live.

Overeating, binge-eating, emotional eating, over-exercising, getting up at 5 am, avoiding meals with friends and family, pushing, pushing, pushing…..

…..ugh, what a nut-case.

What a painful life.

I didn’t know how to solve my problem of war-like activity. Constantly, my solution was to find a special or perfect way to do different activity. A different diet, a different exercise routine.

What I didn’t know was that the way I ate was not really my problem.

It was a symptom (you’ve all heard this before, I know).

My actual problem was war-like hateful thinking and feeling.

But I couldn’t see it at the time. I always thought something was wrong with me.

Thank goodness for the teachers, helpers, and healers I encountered along the way.

And thank goodness for my extreme, horrendous, life-threatening behavior…..because it made me HAVE to look, instead of avoid looking year after year.

Eating is NOT the only way war manifests in peoples’ lives.

Which is why I’m talking about it in Grace Notes (rather than only on Eating Peace news or videos, and if you want to see Eating Peace videos, just update your subscription at the very end fine print).

But you may have noticed, people have so many other very agonizing activities they engage in regularly that they don’t really want to be doing…..definitely not just food and eating.

So let’s take a look at how to work with difficult feelings (that lead to such difficult behaviors).

My thoughts and feelings in the past were violent.

When you believe violent thoughts about yourself, about your past, about other people…..you’re scared.

You feel powerless. You feel angry. You feel hateful.

Sometimes you feel like you wish you were dead.

Sometimes you ream on other people and categorize others as evil and dangerous (you’re violent in your mind towards them).

Even if you NEVER have taken a bite of food in your life that was emotional rather than based on physical need…..

…..you probably have done something in your life that you really wish you hadn’t, later.

You may have experienced the feeling of self-criticism, sadness, discouragement, depression or shame.

Have you ever noticed that even when you know a ton of stuff about some topic it doesn’t matter sometimes how much you know?

You study about diet, or money, physical fitness, communication, relationships, business, health, success….

….but nothing really changes.

You still tank on the action becoming different.

You still yell at your kid, you’re still late, you still get super anxious, you still drink too much, you still spend a huge chunk of money outside of your budget, you still surf the internet for an extra two hours, you still worry, you still cheat on taxes, you’re out of integrity.

In Eating Peace we dive into the process of exploring how it happens that even with all the knowledge in the world about nutrition, diet, glucose levels, good-feeling foods, foods for your body type, cave-man diet, or mindful eating, or a getting a degree in medicine…..

…..you still eat when you aren’t hungry, or eat the foods you know don’t work well with your body.

I’m sharing this with you all (not just people interested in Eating Peace) because looking at stressful behaviors when you think you know better is seriously interesting.

And seriously disturbing and discouraging.

Doing something you’ve vowed not to do is also fairly common.

• Why do I eat when I already know it ends in physical pain and I’m clearly not hungry?
• Why do I spend money when I already decided I’m trying to save for that special thing and I want to do?
• Why do I rip that woman to shreds in my head and decide to fire her without explanation?
• Why do I fantasize regularly about my old boyfriend?
• Why do I get all freaked out about the next steps in my career that are pretty obvious?
• Why do I never sit down and finish that book proposal?
• Why do I race from spiritual teacher to spiritual teacher and fifty retreats a year trying to find enlightenment?