{"id":3244,"date":"2017-08-03T01:38:51","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T08:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bingeeatingtherapy.com\/?p=3244"},"modified":"2024-02-06T23:09:12","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T07:09:12","slug":"eating-disorders-protect-you-from-thinking-too-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bingeeatingtherapy.com\/eating-disorders-protect-you-from-thinking-too-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating Disorders Protect You from Thinking Too Much"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Eating<\/p>\n

I have this brilliant client. Let\u2019s call her Megan. Megan\u00a0is brilliant. She comes in and waxes poetic about politics, philosophy, relationships, ethics, medicine\u2026 Really anything. She has a lot on her mind and needs to talk through it. I love to listen to her and I love to hear her thoughts and her ideas on life and the world around her. \u00a0But Megan\u2019s big brain tortures her. It keeps her awake at night. It keeps her stuck and paralyzed and it keeps her from moving forward in life. And there are some weeks, after months and months of being free of eating disorder symptoms that she comes in and says, \u201cI spent the last 48 hours bingeing and purging and I can\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I have several Megans in my practice. In fact I have \u00a0been having Megans for years.\u00a0\u00a0These Megans have helped me come to a very important conclusion, which is that\u00a0eating disorders help calm down an overactive brain. \u00a0<\/strong>I continue to see brilliant people with active\u00a0minds using food to help them stop thinking. Eating disorders come in handy that way. If you are thinking too much, bingeing can just shut it down. If you are thinking too much, you can go on a diet and redirect all of your stress into working out and losing weight and restricting and bingeing. It\u2019s a way to distract, it\u2019s a way to shut down. And it\u2019s common.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you ever go on a diet because you just have so much going on in your world? In your brain? Like maybe work is making you crazy, your relationship is not working or you don\u2019t have a relationship, your kiddo\u2019s IEP is a mess, your dog has diabetes and you can\u2019t afford his insulin, the theoretical framework of your\u00a0dissertation\u00a0just isn\u2019t working, your husband\u2019s ex-wife is sending you\u00a0death threats, you got fired, you can\u2019t find a job, you can\u2019t pay for diapers, \u00a0your wife is having an affair\u2026 and you just want to stop thinking about life\u2026 so you go on a diet. Or maybe none of these things are happening. Maybe you just can\u2019t shut your overactive brain off, so you go on a diet and you put all of your energy into it. And then you start bingeing. And maybe then you start purging. And then what happens? Then you have to go back into treatment and your whole life is about treatment and nothing else matters for awhile. \u00a0Eating disorders and eating disorder recovery become coping mechanisms, ways to not have to think anymore when thinking is so torturous.<\/span><\/p>\n

So when life gets too much and all you want to do is dive into a binge episode or run on the treadmill to\u00a0avoid food and your feelings, what else can you do?<\/span><\/p>\n

Other Options:\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

You can send yourself love and compassion, you can talk to people about what\u2019s going on in your mind. You can use<\/span>\u00a0guided meditations to calm your brain<\/a>\u00a0and its meanderings. \u00a0But mostly you can try to remind yourself that your thoughts are just thoughts and you don\u2019t have to be afraid of them. Just electric impulses that pass through you and you don\u2019t have to follow them down the rabbit hole. Even thoughts about bingeing, purging or dieting. It is possible to teach your brain not to follow certain thoughts that don\u2019t serve you and not to feel controlled by them. In the<\/span>\u00a05 week program\u00a0<\/a>we use cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness techniques and neuroplasticity to learn how to take control of the thoughts that feel overwhelming. A quick CBT trick is to ask yourself \u201cis that thought objectively real or true? how do I know it\u2019s true? Is there another possible truth? If there were another possible truth that I could think of that would feel better in my body, what would it be?\u201d Then write that down and think about what that would be like. Just the mechanism of finding the possibility to change thoughts can help you to calm the overwhelming feelings.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have this brilliant client. Let\u2019s call her Megan. Megan\u00a0is brilliant. She comes in and waxes poetic about politics, philosophy, relationships, ethics, medicine\u2026 Really anything. She has a lot on her mind and needs to talk through it. I love to listen to her and I love to hear her thoughts and her ideas on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,32],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBinge Eating Therapy - Help for binge eating, bulimia, obsessive dieting and body image issues<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I have this brilliant client. 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