Watching a car chase on the news or in a film can thrill you.  You heart pounds.  Your breath comes short.

You are mesmerized and fascinated.  But your inner spirit is untouched.

 

When you live with an eating disorder you remove yourself from your authentic emotional experience as you live your life. You can trick yourself very nicely with high speed experiences.

"Without memory there is no healing. Without forgiveness there is no future"
Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Your Binge Eating and Restricting Healing Journey Guidelines

Binge eating and restricting food signal, and hopefully invite the individual who suffers the cause of her anxiety and compulsive eating behavior. If this is you and you accept the invitation to increase your awareness of yourself and your inner world you are about to start your healing journey.

The guidelines are in Tutu's quote. I add that the missing sentence in the middle covers the journey.  It's the second act of a three act play where challenges are faced.  Here what is  denied is exposed., This is where your courage and determination bring you to your genuine truth.  You increase your ability to trust and love.

Return of binge eating, restricting and pervasive anxiety: a call to grow

Waking up with anxiety feel compelled to binge eat days, weeks, months or even years after being free of the behaviors and desire to act out is shocking. If this is you you may be feel disheartened, weak, frightened and uncertain of your worth as a person. 

You not only experience this anxious state in the present. You remember all your past experiences, the trials you thought you healed yourself out of with psychotherapy, group work, reading, 12 step, maybe residential treatment. Was it all for nothing?

Understanding the cause of your reaching for your old coping style and what you need to restore your balance helps you through this challenge. Pay attention to this call and you can move into a healthier, stronger and more satisfying way of living than you ever had before.

Welcoming Garden

A psychology graduate student felt she could ask me questions about being an eating disorder psychotherapist and get some help in writing her case study because she read that my patients wait in a garden before their psychotherapy sessions. She said she felt welcome to write and ask because of my waiting garden.

Nature of Welcome

I lead with this because gardens do call us to enter. People put fences around gardens and install entry gates because a lovely, open garden invites us in. The boundaries creates safety. The open gate gives permission to enter. A garden can be soothing, quieting and can hold you regardless of what you feel or how you look or think you look.