What does an elephant on a freeway have to do with you and binge eating? Keep listening!

Welcome to The Done Bingeing Podcast. This is the place to hear about how you can pair the emerging brain science about why you binge with powerful life coaching to help you stop. If you want to explore an evidence-based, non-clinical approach to end binge eating, you’re in the right place. 

It’s time to free yourself. You have more power than you know. To find out more, go to www.holdingthespace.co and click Programs.

And now, your host, Internal-Family-Systems-Level-3-Trained and Master-Coach-Certified Martha Ayim.

It’s great to be back with you for episode 62!

We’ve been talking about key number 12 to end binge eating—find the power in you. In episode 61, we talked about the steps to bringing the leader back home.

In this episode, we’re talking about why those steps are so important.

How do you feel when I ask you this: Would you be willing to get to know the part of you that binge eats from a place of profound compassion?

• Confused?
• Annoyed?

And if I suggested that the part of you that binges holds the key to understanding how to stop, would you think …

• That’s total crap.
• Come on, who’re you trying to kid?
• I hate that part and now you’re saying it holds the key? OK, Martha, stop talking now.

If so, that would make sense to me.

You’re probably not super-inclined to go to the part of you that binges with sincere love, curiosity, and even … wait for it … appreciation.

Why not?

Because the reasonable, logical ideas are where we’re encouraged to go instead:

• My bingeing is harmful and must stop.
• I should grow up and face it: food can’t offer lasting comfort.
• I just need other ways to feel better.
• I should just find a sensible diet.
• If I could only listen to my body, this struggle would end.
• I have to accept the choice between eclairs or evolvement.
• I just have to promise myself I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want.
• If I really choose to restrict from the inside (and not because someone told me to), this won’t be a battle anymore.

Do these ideas make sense?

Of course they do.

Are they obviously trying to help?

Yes they are.

But have you ever noticed that, no matter how logical or reasonable these ideas are, the bingeing inevitably returns?

And have you ever noticed that, if these ideas don’t work out, it can feel like you’re adding a fine layer of salt on top of an already hurting, open wound?

It’s so easy to side with the part of us that wants to stop bingeing.

You want to.

Most experts want you to, too.

But there’s an elephant in the room.

The part of you that wants to binge.

And when it’s essentially dismissed as the problem, the opportunity to address the obvious conflict between these two parts of you gets missed.

What if the most counter-intuitive thing in the world—the thing that’s rarely, if ever, considered—is the missing piece of the puzzle?

What if you didn’t assume that the part of you that wants to stop bingeing is

de facto correct?

What if you risked giving equal voice to the part of you that binges?

What if the reason it keeps returning is because it’s never been fully understood?

I know what you’re thinking … “This sounds kinda iffy.”

I get it.

But have you ever really tried it?

Binge eaters often have an internal conflict between the part that wants to binge and the part that wants to stop.

It’s exhausting.

Much of the conflict comes from constantly judging the part that binges and presuming it needs to be eliminated.

What if it doesn’t need to be weakened and removed?

What if it needs to be heard and healed?

And … what if … right inside of you there lies the power to lead this healing?

These ideas are the brainchild of renowned clinician, Dr. Richard Schwartz. His approach offers a way to heal the parts of us that make us do things we don’t want to do, even parts that make us binge.

In fact, it’s so effective that it appears on the National Registry for Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, a repository maintained by SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Wanna know where Schwartz discovered much of his approach?

From working with clients who were bulimic—they were binge eating and then compensating with extreme exercise, use of laxatives, or purging.

When he stopped and really listened to his clients’ parts, he discovered this:

The parts that were bingeing and purging were trying to protect his clients in the only way they knew how.

We all have parts that try to protect us like this.

Some parts try to protect us from unwanted touch or endless work. Some want to simmer a boiling rage, soften a haunting loneliness, or soothe a bruise in our heart that never, ever, stops aching. Schwartz learned that all clients, no matter what trauma their parts were trying to address, had access to a Core Self that could heal these parts and free them from these roles.

This is the Self we’ve been referring to in this key, find the leader in you.

His clients had the power to heal unhealthy behaviors from within, right then.

They didn’t need to wait for an external attachment figure.

They didn’t need to wait for the perfect food or exercise plan.

They didn’t need to wait until they’d lost 10 lbs—or 50 or 100.

They didn’t need to wait to pave new neural freeways.

They didn’t need to wait to evolve.

They didn’t need to wait for anything.

And neither do you.

What you need isn’t in a different place or in a different time. What you need is right here, right now.

And it starts with getting to know the part of you that binges.

As Mary O’Malley’s once said, “What’s in the way, is the way.”

Most approaches teach you to dismiss the part that’s bingeing and listen to the part that wants to stop.

Ever notice that the bingeing part doesn’t like being dismissed? 

Would you? 

Me neither.

What if, instead of dismissing that part, you listened to it and tried to help it? Think of how you notice when someone listens to you in a caring way.

Our parts notice too. Your bingeing part will definitely notice. It might be the first time anyone has ever truly done that. And then …

Soon it begins to feel heard and known.

Soon it begins to feel safe to share.

To share what it thinks and feels.

To share why it does what it does.

To share what it fears would happen if it didn’t make you binge.

Bingeing parts often feel relief, or will even sob, when someone finally comes to them with tenderness. And it is in this very softening and relaxing back of the part, that the calm, clear energy of Self has the space to comes through and lead.

So many people want the bingeing part to drop back or—who are we kidding?—drop dead. That elephant in the room has trod out a well-worn freeway of its own and as it cycles through bingeing, time after time. But what if you don’t have to heave the elephant off the freeway or tar a new set of lanes in the opposite direction guarded by a behemoth of its own? 

If you’re open to exploring this question, you’re opening the door to Self-energy. 

And what does that feel like? 

Stay tuned to episode 63 to find out more.

That’s it for Episode 62. Thank you for listening! I rarely have space for new private clients, but a few spots have recently opened up. If you’re ready to explore this profound work together, you can apply to work with me by going to www.holdingthespace.co/apply.

Thanks for listening to The Done Bingeing Podcast.

Martha has the highest-level training in both the evidence-based Internal Family Systems approach and in life coaching, and she’s available to help you stop bingeing. You can learn more about her programs by going to www.holdingthespace.co and clicking Programs.

Stay tuned for the next episode on freeing yourself from binge eating and creating the life you want.