Tag: geneen roth

This past week I worked with two clients who felt very, very discouraged after having the experience of an episode called “binge-eating”.

I remember it well, like it was yesterday even though the last “binge” episode I had was many years ago, compulsively overeating food, absolutely stuffing myself until my stomach hurt, feeling like I couldn’t stop or wouldn’t stop until I was in extreme pain, like something was taking over me, almost another personality!

In that state of mind, there were no obligations, no future, all rules broken, no control, no care for consequences, surrender to the craving.

What exactly is this thing called a Binge? The dictionary defines it as an uncontrolled period of excessive self-indulgence, immoderate, unrestrained. Humans go on spending sprees, gambling binges, eating orgies, crying jags!

It’s like we’re ON these things, as if they are a trip. A train is running and it feels like we can’t get off.

I find that there’s a really interesting flip-flop between being in control and out of control, and people with different kinds of personalities gravitate towards the two sides more or less. And some of us bouncing between both sides.

In control looks careful, regimented, disciplined. It gathers information and data, really uses the thinking mind. I used to live in this place when I was not bingeing. Reading, collecting, analyzing. It felt very mental. I couldn’t get enough information, go to enough workshops, or ponder the meaning of my life and my problems ENOUGH.

Then there would be the state of FEELINGS breaking through and what felt most dominant would be anger, grief, fear, anxiety….some kinds of very intense feelings that seemed overwhelming, serious, and so powerful. Unplanned, unexpected and sometimes very extreme behavior would become the dominant experience in this dramatic place.

But both experiences are reactions to stories. The stories are simple. They go something like this:

• This could be better, things could be better, I could be better
• This moment is not perfect, I am not perfect, my body is not perfect
• Who is God? What’s going on? I NEED to KNOW!
• My feelings are not perfect, I am angry, scared, sad.
• I am not complete as is. I need a partner, more money, happiness, a better body, a better mind, more fun, more knowledge, success.
• Death is terrible
• Life is boring
• I’m not good enough

When you can hold still and not react to things like they are an emergency to which need to be figured out, then you can see what’s on your list of stressful beliefs.

The fantastic news is that the more I have found out that what I believed is not actually true for me afterall, the more calm and peaceful I feel. Sometimes it’s pretty stormy inside my mind, but it never works its way up into a frenzy of a binge.

No controlling anything, no being on plans, budgets, rations. No flipping out and going wild as if escaping from a jail.

Byron Katie says that when we feel stress, we’re actually believing something that isn’t really true for us. Which means, when we really get down to it and look…we already know it’s not true. The stressful moment or feeling is the little temple bell ringing, a wake-up call.

OK, OK, tornado sirens for some of us!

It’s just saying “Woah, you’re really believing a story here. This story hurts. You’re forgetting that it’s a story, and that it isn’t true”. Like a little kid believing there is something terrible in the closet.

The next Horrible Food Wonderful Food class starts the first week of April. A great place for first identifying what you’re actually believing about food, eating, your body, and then questioning these thoughts.

Love, Grace

Today I read an article about how many people reacted to Angelina Jolie’s apparently very skinny shape at the Oscars. The article was suggesting that people shouldn’t tweet things like “Dear Angelina Jolie….eat something.”

I remember my starvation days well. It’s true that if anyone said to me “eat something” it would have made ZERO difference in my behavior at the time. I would have written them off as being crass, ignorant, and rude. How dare they say that to me!

Everyone was suspect, everyone was either against me, unaware, too nosey, pushy, judgmental, uncaring, or needy. They did not understand. I was in control, and not eating was practically the only place I felt any personal control over my life.

The amount of energy it took to deny my own hunger and eat so little left almost no mental or emotional space to do anything but focus on NOT eating. Interacting with others was something I wanted to spend very little time doing, it was pretty scary for me. I was too afraid of people. I was too afraid of telling the truth!

I didn’t want to hear the truth from other people either. It felt too crushing.

Now, I have such gratitude for the people who spoke up and said something during the years I was “anorexic” and starving all the time.

I will never forget a fellow student in college who also ran cross-country on the team. I have no idea what her name was, and can hardly remember what she looked like. But one day at a meet she said to me “Have you ever been anorexic?” and as I looked at her in stunned silence (no one was supposed to ever mention this out loud) another team mate said “Don’t ask her that, jeez!”

I never said a word. But I remember it now, 30 years later. I KNEW at the moment that young woman spoke that she was noticing how thin I was and watching the way I rarely ate and worked out a lot in my running.

I was seen. I had a love-hate relationship with being seen. I couldn’t pretend I was invisible and slowly wasting away into nothing when that woman spoke up. I was noticed.

Around the same time when visiting home, my father came to me with a small plate of sliced fresh pears. He said “won’t you please eat something, sweetheart?” He had no idea how to be with his daughter who was so thin, he was sad and scared. I said “No!” and left the room. But I knew he cared and I knew he was seeing me.

Byron Katie suggests that anything said to her is something she needed to hear in that moment. If it’s said loudly, she needed to hear it loud.

When I was at the School for The Work once, a man stood and talked about himself being sexually inappropriate with a child once many years before. He said how ashamed he was and how afraid he was of others’ judging him for being so awful. Another man in the same room, filled with several hundred people, shouted at him and stormed out of the room, slamming the door so loudly behind him that the walls shook.

 Katie then said something like “there goes one person who doesn’t like hearing what you are saying and may be judging you for being awful.”But that was one person, the rest stayed in the room.

The experience I have with the Work now is that my past actually feels different than it once did. I am now grateful for those people who spoke up and said something….even if I scoffed at it at the time. It was part of  what I needed to hear, right at that moment, just in that particular way.

If you notice judgments rise about Angelina Jolie, write them all down.

See what you think is “wrong” with her and her body. Go ahead and write it! Watch your mind fill with what it means that she has that body looking that particular way.

When you do The Work, your own answers may surprise you. One of my favorite exercises in the Horrible Food Wonderful Food teleclass or weekend workshop is judging those other people out there with their fat or thin bodies. Let’s get the judgments out on the table, because only then can they be set free and seen, sometimes even with gratitude.

Much love, Grace