PAUSE INTO PRESENCE
OK, let's come back to the here and now. Start with some square breathing. Click on the image and do at least five breaths.
Are you feeling like you're in presence?
yes, let's go to the next step
OPEN & ALLOW
So what's happening right now?
Don’t try to change it.
Label emotions and notice how the body is communicating.
Let's do a PIES check-in.
Ready? Just pay attention and let stuff go.
- Physical: do a body scan.
- Intellectual: What am I thinking about?
- Emotional: What am I feeling?
- Spiritual: What's my sense of the world and myself in it?
Want to do a board meeting?
Ask for guidance. Who is here? People? Animals? These are reflections of my self: calm, curious, compassionate, confident, creative, courageous, connected. Do they have any advice or anything to say to me?
WISELY CONSIDER
What is the story that I’m telling myself that triggered this big feeling/reaction?
Narrative could be that I'm:
- incompetent
- defective
- dirty
- unwanted
- pitiful
- nothing
- lucky to have anyone at all
RESPOND WITH CARE
What do I need? Do I need to:
- Cry?
- Yell?
- Draw
- Write
- Stretch?
- Move?
- Get the hell out?
- Accept something?
- Ask for something?
- Be present with uncertainty?
- Be still and breathe?
- Feel something?
- Rest and sleep?
- Connect with someone?
- Am I actually hungry? Click for a list of things you can have if it's late.
What is Recovery?
Eat foods without restriction and listen to the body’s desire from a place of acceptance
We want:
- Body Awareness (the need in the moment, desire, appetite)
- Trust
- Acceptance
We’re looking to:
- Gain awareness
- Intervene early in the process
- Learn other ways to soothe
Binge eating is neurologically an effective temporary strategy for the reduction of anxiety. It is rare for people to binge without a distraction, thus quieting the small voice that might hope to stop the behavior.
Recovery is the work of moving from safety based on conforming and disconnection, to safety based on turning toward ourselves.
Tenderness in recognizing our hungers, meeting them as we are able, fighting back when they are denied, and learning we can be safe even in vulnerability.
Five Practices of Recovery
- Honor the impact of history: You binge for good reasons, not for lack of willpower. The shame voice is distorted cognition and cultural messages. Shaming feelings makes it harder to move through. Feelings pass. Self-recrimination sticks. Just know: I am safe. I am loved.
- Meet urges with POWR: To move back to the window of tolerance where emotions are present but not overwhelming. I can rewire the brain.
- Escape the mythology of “thin”
- Take back your body as your own (BODY AS HOME)
- Build resiliency for long-term recovery