The binge as barometer

Every instant presents an opportunity to respond or react, to heal or spin.

As we build our awareness, especially of our thoughts and feelings and the connections between them, we’ll begin to see how we maintain our limited perspectives. We hold a space for ourselves to help us uncover how our minds work, to experience our feelings, and to observe our actions with greater clarity. We take an interest in our reactions—our binges—as a kind of barometer, a signal that we’ve bought into a thought that cascades into feelings and actions that don’t serve us.

What are we reacting to? What are we threatened by? What are we seeking relief from? Often, we use food to defend ourselves from our own painful thoughts.

We can approach this in a couple of ways.

We can spend some time getting to know our feelings—identifying them, describing them, owning them, experiencing them, breaking them down in as many nuances as we can detect. Untangled emotions are much more manageable than tangled ones.

We can also inquire into what thought is creating the feeling and ask whether the thought is productive. After inquiring into the thought we might choose to keep thinking it. If so, we learn to honor the feelings and let them subside on their own accord. However, the thought might not be particularly helpful or even true. We can then begin to explore why we are choosing such a painful thought, to take in the full consequence of thinking it, and consider other thoughts that might be more helpful.

What do you think your binges might be signalling to you? Please feel free to email me your reflections.

Would you like some help to try to decipher the signals? Book me for a free mini-session, and let’s get to work untangling some of your thoughts.