This past week the Horrible Food Wonderful Food teleclass group questioned the belief that people should not be confusing.
I was struck by the way we moved from stressful beliefs about food and eating, our bodies and our relationship to food….into this thought about a human in our lives, from whom we want clarity.
But instead this person is offering confusion!
Often, this feeling permeates many peoples’ childhood.
I want clarity! I need to know! This needs to make sense! I don’t get this, and I don’t get what that confusing person is talking about!
Arrrrgggghhhhh!!!!
When it comes to trouble with food, or any compulsive feeling, there appears to be a lot of confusion present.
- I want to eat, but I’m not hungry
- I want to be calm, but I’m very stressed
- I want to be close to that person I love/admire, but I don’t understand what they want or need
- I want to be thin, but I keep eating and eating
- I need to know what’s going on with All This, but I don’t seem to be able to truly understand
- I feel bad, confused, lost, sad…and I don’t know why
- other happy people are confusing
I loved thinking about this idea of confusion being painful this week, and my relationship to confusion.
When I was 18 ready to move to college, I felt very confused about my desire to eat and eat and overeat and binge and stuff food into my mouth.
It was entirely separate from normal hunger, it was a weird trance-like state of being compelled to do it, like I couldn’t help it.
Something was triggering this behavior, and I was VERY confused about what. I had no reference for even how to figure it out…I didn’t know about the inner life of emotions and reactions and beliefs.
Fortunately, I became equally as compelled to understand myself and my behavior.
I also knew that I had whatever it took to find peace. I knew I was born a whole human being, with the capacity to heal and move through life, just like anyone else.
But how did those other people make it look so easy?
I explored, went to lectures, seminars, retreats, therapy, and read many incredible books.
Every single one helped. Every one.
They all offered a little insight, a little spark of learning, a brand new idea, another way of seeing things, an alternate position.
And then one day, not very long into my journey (I was only about 22) I was sitting with a very interesting therapist.
This man said to me, after I explained that I was really a huge mess, and full of suffering, and had had these bulimic episodes of outrageous binge-eating…
….”well, in the Roman Times, you might have been considered normal, part of the crowd. I hear they had feasts and vomited afterwards.”
He wasn’t making fun of me. He had very gentle eyes and a kind face, and many books about eating issues on his shelves, and depression and the human condition.
I remember thinking later, on my quiet walk home, that maybe I wasn’t so weird.
Maybe there were more factors present here that I thought….maybe there was society, and my family, and me….all coming together to create this experience that looked like this terrible relationship with food.
Maybe there was a way out of this confusion. Maybe there was an explanation. Maybe I might find out where the misunderstanding originated.
I knew at that time, so young in life really, that it might not be so terrible and horrendous that I was confused.
Life was complicated, life was full of opposing beliefs, a vast collection of experiences, and big feelings.
Just thinking at that time, even before I ever knew about The Work, I was inquiring.
Instead of feeling completely and fundamentally overwhelmed and wrong and like there was no way out, no answers, no hope….I felt like there was.
Even though it took me many more years of exploration, failure, worry, doubt, success, comfort, learning, understanding….and I still am on the journey….I knew I wasn’t the special weirdo who was uniquely lost beyond hope.
“The education you need is within you. How can what is already within you be taught? It can only be realized. If you’re willing to go inside and wait for the truth, your inborn wisdom meets the questions, and the answer rings true as if it were a tuning fork inside your own being.”~ Byron Katie
I knew even as I felt insane with the pain of my relationship with eating that I was not born missing something.
That’s all I needed to know. I knew that was true.
You aren’t missing anything either.
Love, Grace
P.S. On Friday, September 13th I’ll be making available, after three years of working on it, an ebook on how to move from having a violent relationship with food, to having a friendly one….by doing nothing but examining and questioning your thinking. So exciting! I thought I’d tell you now.