Day 383: Purging in BED - The Illusion of Control

If you come from a family with eating disorders or from a culture that worships food and has historically considered purging as the way to go to manage excesses, you may, like me, never have considered that there is a point of desire to be in control in 'purging' like there is in anorexia or bulimia that manifests in different ways.

My personal experience with purging is mainly one of relief, I never considered the point of 'control' until I was looking for a picture for this blog and found the one I posted above.

But what was the sense of relief always about? Relief from the physical discomfort, this would be for sure one, but there was a relief as well from the sense of being out of control, overcome by a pattern that is unstoppable, having boarded a train whose destination has to be the toilet bowl, that is the end of the line if you can't get off the train sooner, not even by jumping out of the window.

Today as I listened to one of the amazing Eqafe interviews, specifically the one about Spite, I was overcome with emotion as that interview spelled out the story of my life and my childhood, I will write extensively about it from my next blog, but I saw how this behavior as well ties into it nicely, I took on the excesses of my grandparents to spite my mother, without realizing she had done the same, so I made a copy of the spite system and then activated my own - and then went on to blame others for what I saw as a copycat behavior I assumed I was given and not saw I had taken on partly without awareness and partly deliberately.

So, letting now go of the past shame for this self abuse and the perception that then became a belief that I would never be able to get off my family train, whom I blamed for having made a BED for me to Lie in it, when this in fact was never the case.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to perceive myself as out of control regarding food and for accepting eating disorders as who I am

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that food is both a joy and a threat and as such condemn myself to never have a pragmatic relationship to food as just the fuel for my body but allowed myself to base my food choices on emotions, feelings, memories projections and expectations while seeking good positive experiences

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not realize the extent of our delusions regarding matters of the world and the mind within food addictions and for desiring to blame another for my own self accepted and self created patterns, instead of seeking a solution that would end this pattern with me -for good

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fear taking on this pattern because it seemed too extensive, too big, impossible to dismantle, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that I was facing resistance from my mind that feared to lose one of my major energy and personality construct as the deranged addict to excesses

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not see realize and understand the part I played in the creation of this eating disorder as a way to spite my mother, who herself suffered from an eating disorder but did everything in her power to not make me follow in her footsteps including pushing me to do exercise and eat healthily, solutions that just ended up compounding my sense of being abused and violated and reinforced my desire to rebel and spite her back by embracing her eating disorder as my own

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not see realize and understand that an eating disorder is nothing more than a dis-order, in which something misaligned in my mind and then was reinforced through justifications and excuses to prove why I was allowed to abuse myself to spite my mother -and make her suffer from guilt and shame in the process

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel disheartened as I wrote this within the realization that I played the victim when I was in fact the perpetrator of behaviors I knew would inflict  anguish on my mother to get back at her for pushing me to get the best for myself in this life, which I did not, so I could show her that she had ruined my life and she should be responsible for me forever instead of stopping my self destructive pattern and become a point of stability for myself and others, equal and one

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel afraid as I wrote this out because I perceived a momentum of release of energy and patterns that made my heart beat faster fearing that I may not be able to get to the bottom of it and release this system completely in one go, instead of seeing realizing and understanding that I'm not in a race and that I can stabilize myself in any point while dismantling a pattern to take it on again when  the point opens up further either through my own investigation or as a consequence of the words I am writing now

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when indulging in binge eating, not stop as soon as I saw I was walking the same pattern over and over again but instead project myself already at the purging point as the solution, as my point of control, reassuring myself that I was in control because there it was, purging as the solution, instead of taking a stand and push against a behavior I had now automated  to its completion to the satisfaction of myself as the mind

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hang on to fantasies of myself as a balanced woman with a healthy relationship with food because within these fantasies I separated myself from the solution, accepting and allowing myself to believe that the solution was out there somewhere in the future and that it would come naturally to me, instead of actively working toward the solution until the solution was one and equal to who I am as a balanced woman within a pragmatic approach to food as simply nutrition for my body

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel ashamed regarding my lack of control in relation to this food pattern and to live in fear that I could always be attacked by one of my patterns and then I would have to live it out all the way to the toilet bowl and within this for standing inferior to my mind accepting and allowing myself to abuse myself instead of standing one and equal to myself as the mind and correcting myself and my patterns equal and one to a solution to end all self abuse

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to carry such a weight on the top of my shoulders made of guilt and shame and regret for what I have become and for what I have participated within and as me, as spite that culminated into self abuse that took the form of a BED instead of releasing myself from my past and releasing all the other people involved with me in keeping this pattern alive by rewriting for myself a script I can live out when and as I activate one of those BED patterns until I come to the total deletion of them once and for all

When and as I see myself moving or about to move into that mental space where I know I exist as a binge eating disorder I stop, breathe, remind myself that I clearly saw the origin of this pattern and therefore I can't fool myself any longer, instead I seek where is the point of anger that made me wish to become spiteful toward another and that I am now attempting to turn on myself,  work on the emotional content to release myself and do not give in to BED as a solution  to suppress my emotions

When and as I see myself become angry at someone for something I perceive they have done, said, not done or not said to me, I stop, breathe, remind myself that I cannot afford to go down that route because I have turned spite into an art form that I yet have to work on to release myself from, instead I take out a piece of paper and make a note of my perceived received wrongdoing to work on it to a solution as soon as I have the opportunity

When and as I see myself in a conversation with my mother reacting to something like I did the other day, I stop, breathe, do not allow that point to fester into anger which will then in turn fester into spite, instead I commit to not engage any thoughts about it but to flag the point so I can work on it when I have the opportunity once the conversation with her is over

I commit myself to no longer use food as a way to spite myself and others

I commit myself to forgive myself and others unconditionally for everything that comes up within me that is related to this specific pattern

I commit myself to let go of food as a positive experience to re balance my perceived negative experiences of and as myself and to work to resolve the negative experiences into a solution that ends my participation within and as them

I commit myself to support my body one and equal with me in relation to food and when I see, sense, perceive that I am about to not stand by my commitment, to not do anything that would compromise me and lead me to walk my previous patterns but to stabilize myself within and as breath until I can further investigate what is going on and bring it to a solution once and for all

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Day 381: Prey to the Food God

This is a follow up to my Unhealthy Food relationship posts.

Binge Eating Disorder - Making My BED to Lie in It

Italians: Living to eat or Eating to Live

 

Considering another dimension of food together with my self commitment.

I found that there is for some reason an hidden dimension to Food and how we relate to it. Fat people will say they eat normally but keep putting on weight when in fact they overeat in secret, skinny people say it is their constitution and they do nothing special to keep in shape, when most either starve themselves or purge or overexercise to keep fit.

How do I know? because I have been all of these people.

The main point that goes with this dimension of food is secrecy due to shame.

because we cannot explain how we created a specific dimension to almost anything in our life due to our extensive living automatically vs living in and as awareness, it's not surprising that when we wonder -mainly briefly - how we got to a certain point we can almost honestly say that we don't know.

This is because we never considered our thought relative to everything we live as something to keep into account, thoughts, beliefs and ideas we have regarding any point in our life seem to be part of who we are, who we are in fact, we believe those forces to be just like 'market forces', compelling us into behaviors we no longer like or consider self supporting, we believed that they would self regulate (oh look, it's the same logic of our economic system, the belief that even though no one is responsible or accountable, the market will magically realign to something supportive from something abusive).

But the more we live the more we accumulate, until those Forces -force us and to dismantle the energy that is connected to them we have to stand at one point and will ourselves to change.

To no longer be victims of our own 'market forces', those that put us on sale to the best bidder, we have to redesign in awareness our programs.

I don't particularly enjoy this process, partly because I am one piece of the economic system and hence I enjoyed not being responsible or accountable for myself, this is why there is a sense of release when one finally 'gives up', the inner conflict ends, one accepts that there is really nothing to do and accepts to succumb.

Mainly this is how Food, among other things, became my God, it doesn't really matter if I were slim or fat, most of my day was focused on food, what to eat, when, how to not feel responsible, how to arrange dinners and lifestyles that allowed me to blame my food choices on my surrounding, friends, family, celebrations, anything would do.

This is how I ended up as a Prey to the Money God, on this purpose I would like to share one of La Fontaine fairy tales that I have read recently to a student and that I found sadly, telling the story of humanity

Its titled The Sculptor

A block of marble was so fine,
To buy it did a sculptor hasten.
'What shall my chisel, now 'tis mine--
A god, a table, or a basin?'
'A god,' said he, 'the thing shall be;
I'll arm it, too, with thunder.
Let people quake, and bow the knee
With reverential wonder.'
So well the cunning artist wrought
All things within a mortal's reach,
That soon the marble wanted nought
Of being Jupiter, but speech.
Indeed, the man whose skill did make
Had scarcely laid his chisel down,
Before himself began to quake,
And fear his manufacture's frown.
And even this excess of faith
The poet once scarce fell behind,
The hatred fearing, and the wrath,
Of gods the product of his mind.
This trait we see in infancy
Between the baby and its doll,
Of wax or china, it may be--
A pocket stuff'd, or folded shawl.
Imagination rules the heart:
And here we find the fountain head
From whence the pagan errors start,
That o'er the teeming nations spread.
With violent and flaming zeal,
Each takes his own chimera's part;
Pygmalion[6] doth a passion feel
For Venus chisel'd by his art.
All men, as far as in them lies,
Create realities of dreams.
To truth our nature proves but ice;
To falsehood, fire it seems.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to design a problematic relationship with food as I copied the unhealthy food relationship that my family and my country held with it

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to blame others for my food choices because it seemed better and easier than being self responsible and accountable about it instead of seeing realizing and understanding that my power to change exists only within full self responsibility and blaming others is diverting some of the shame but all of my powers and is not a solution but a temporary band aid that I commit myself to stop using once and for all

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, when called out about having gone mental about food and my food choices, to justify myself about having had a hard day, a bad news, the need for a pick me up, instead of seeing realizing and understanding that all food choices I make are a statement of either self support or self abuse within the polarized relationship I am living at the moment and that unless I make self supportive choices I cannot ask the world as me to do the same

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I have no control over food and can never have it because my mother didn't and my grandparents didn't and so I accepted and allowed myself to believe there is nothing I can do about it even after my body moved into self defence by switching off my taste and within this for pushing my body to defend and protect itself from myself as The Mind

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from my body to such an extent that I was no longer able to hear what I really need to sustain myself physically vs what I wanted to indulge in to cater to my mind and ideas and beliefs about the positive kickback I could get from eating

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that there was no one else creating my relationship to food as it is, but me and that as I created it I can change it into a self supportive stance for myself and my body, equal and one

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have memories of sweets and the pleasurable experiences I would get if I could sink my teeth into a pastry, a cake a biscuit only to become disappointed when I do because the imagination of that moment is always way superior to the moment itself instead of seeing realizing and understanding that I am flashing myself memories as images with an emotional attachment, seeking for a positive experience and a sense of reward to supress a negative experience of myself that I could instead address in writing, self forgiveness and self corrective application and solve it once and for all

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to give up on myself regarding food to the point that I moved to a tropical island next to a fasting centre, believing that I could do damage control instead of correcting myself because I believed I was unable to do, which in itself was the acceptance of my failure instead of seeing realizing and understanding I can take the time to rewrite this program into a supportive one and walk my correction until my new feeding program would be one of support and one and equal to who I am

I fogive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to live one and equal to the shame for having accepted and allowed myself to believe I was weak and disfunctional regarding my relationship to food and that I had to hide what was really going on inside myself and my worship of food instead of seeing realizing and understanding I created Food as My God by accepting my submission to it instead of walking one and equal to food as a source of sustenance and one of support

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to make up food stories to show people around me that my relationship with food was effortless and fine and that I didn't have any problem regarding food due to my perception that my shameful relationship to food was a diminishment of myself instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that my perceived diminishment was due to my own self judgement and that I could stop judging myself so I would not be feeding the shame and the desire to pretend that everything was fine and instead address this relationship to a point of correction

When and as I see myself desiring to justify my food choices, I stop, breathe, see, realize and understand that if I make self supportive choices I don't need to justify them and that if I desire to justify them is because I am holding a judgement toward myself or the food I am about to it, which I need to correct in writing and SCA

When and as I see myself wanting to diminish my efforts to realign to a self supportive relationship to food by minimizing the steps I am taking to do so, I stop, breathe, see, realize and understand that my dishonesty regarding my relationship to food affects others that feel equally justified to never come clean about this problem so we can correct ourselves once and for all and stop our self abuse to become instead self supportive human beings

When and as I see myself fearing what others may think of me regarding my relationship with food, I stop, Breathe, remind myself that I only fear my own self judgements that I project on others and apply self forgiveness to any judgement I am holding against myself in the moment to bring myself back to a point of stability

When and as I see myself wanting to believe that I have no choice, no power, no say in my relationship to food, I stop, breathe, see realize and understand that there was no relationship to food within me until I created one through my allowances and acceptances and then loaded it with my justifications and excuses but I can undo everything I have done, it will take a little time to peel all the layers but I can do if because ultimately I am always the one that decides

I commit myself to write about Food until food doesn't have an energetic content for me but just a nutritional physical value where, while preferences are fine, choices that are just supporting my mind vs my body are no longer acceptable and accepted

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Day 378: Italians - Eating to Live or Living to Eat

A couple of weeks ago a Romanian girl came to my home and made this comment about Italians - that we live to eat.

I had already noticed our cultural food pattern as a way to confirm our 'special identity', since I came back from abroad I have noticed that we have so many food programs on TV it's hard to keep up with them, Eating in Italy is not like putting fuel in a car, it's not a point of self support, it's a Religion.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to copy and paste my cultural programming about food and its relationships to a positive experience, satisfaction and feeling good

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not question the point that people eating when not hungry would be like trying to fill an engine tank when full, which is not common sensical but an obvious point of misunderstood/mistaken functions both of the body and of the food meant to nurture it

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to connect the word food with the word love so that when I seek to 'love myself' I feed myself just like my family did with me

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to obsess about food turning it into a religion to which I go and pray when I am down and feeling blue

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that as I define food as a positive experience I will create negative experiences in my life to grant myself permission to feed myself beyond my needs with the excuse that 'I need a little pick me up'

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to think, believe and imagine that there is nothing left in my life once I understood that I had to let go of my energetic addictions without seeing, realizing and understanding that food is an energetic addiction all by itself and that I am having troubles to let it go, because I have defined my life as empty and hollow -apart from food, instead of correcting my perception of my life being empty and hollow if I don't participate in energetic experiences

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that a country where the focus on food is higher than the focus on social issues, politics or what goes on in the world is in fact sick and not special, because we won't be able to change the world one slice of Parma ham at the time but we will have to redefine what is important for real and address what is at the core of our dissatisfaction that we learned to treat with food

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel proud and superior because I come from a country where the food is superior, best, incomparable, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that I belong to a system where our slavery has been carried out through food as one of the means of keeping us entertained and dull to the reality that unfolds around us

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to go into discussions with people and create conflict over what food was best, insisting that there is no comparison to our food and all our traditions instead of seeing realizing and understanding that I am a product of an environment where food is used to increase our sense of nationalism and belonging and it is a divisive tool and not a uniting tool and hence nothing to be proud about but something to redefine into self support

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to file memories of happy moments related to sharing food with friends or family without seeing realizing and understanding that my memory were edited in support of a construct that already existed within me as 'food is a positive experience' where I edited out the fights, the nasty words and the energetic games that went on with the food to make sure that I could hold on to food as a positive experience that was not affected by anything else

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to perceive letting go of food as an addiction as something sad, as something that is not auspicable or desirable, as something that goes against my very culture and one of my reasons to exist instead of seeing realizing and understanding that I am resiting the letting go of the positive experience of food in fear that I will have to experience the void I created by defining everything else that I perceived I am left with as negative, as not enjoyable, as not enough while I now see realize and understand that I can change those definitions until I remain stable beyond the need for positive experiences to balance out my self created negative experiences about my reality

When and as I see myself desiring to get up and go and get some food when I am obviously not hungry, I stop, breathe, push myself to face what has come up within me that I have defined as a negative experience so I can correct myself and move beyond the need and desire to reach out for food to give me the positive experience I am seeking to balance out my self created negative polarity

When and as I see myself picturing in my mind a food moment as a way to escape an experience of myself, I stop, breathe, remind myself that my internal experiences are not to be feared or suppressed and that I have the tools now to bring them up, look at them and apply myself to let them go for good

When and as I see myself having mind food tantrums in which I seek specific food that I have connected to a sense of fulfillment, I stop, breathe, look for what I am not fulfilling that is leaving a void within me and address the void and not my imaginary food solution

When and as I see myself feeling pride for some Italian food or tradition I stop, breathe, see realize and understand that food is just fuel for my body that I can enjoy but I don't have to worship and bring myself back here in stability with and as breath

I commit myself to sort out my relationship with food and change it into a self supportive point of nurturing for my body and no longer an energetic feed for my mind

I commit myself to keep digging into the food construct I am wanting to change and realign to what is best for me and what is best for all until the change as me is stable and one and equal to who I am

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