Any Thin Overeaters Out There/Any "Food Addicts"/Overeaters of Any Size?

by lcathf

Hi, for relief I want to try to post the truth about myself. I am tired and can't write for long right now; but I want to make a small attempt and come back later.

I have suffered since a very early age with eating excessively. I would gravitate to desserts and feel thrilled by them. Food is a drug for me. I grew up at a prep school where there was a cafeteria. I'd get hysterically excited when they'd serve these turnovers, cherry, blueberry, frosted. They'd have sheet cake and it was a matter of extreme importance to get the corner piece (3 sides of frosting). The results -- my being heavier than I wanted -- were not OK with me.

However, was told I was bad FOR GETTING UPSET ABOUT IT. I was never helped not to eat -- I was shut up and told to continue to eat... I feel as if I was actually pushed into bingeing. They told me my pain was not valid and I was a danger to myself.

I was never fat but if you look at pictures of me you can tell I am overeating and you can tell how distorted were the people screaming at me for having painful feelings about what I ate. They told me my own experience of being violated by the food was not, they screamed at me that I was not supposed to think of that as violation but it was.

I have all the symptoms of a rape victim or victim of chronic sexual abuse and I have PTSD, I really want to believe, FROM MY OWN EATING, from my forcing food down my own throat. I was told my feelings of frustration and disgust were not valid.I want to believe they were valid.

But I was silenced. I was forced to live entirely inside my own mind. Today I control my diet but I go to the food as a way to regulate everything. This is so painful and is taking its toll.

My goal is fasting and I know it is right. The trouble is the emotional thing that happens when I fast. One thing is I get so incredibly badly the feeling of emptiness. When I get the compulsion to eat and I think of resisting it I get terrified, as though I will die.

It seems giving in to the compulsion is also a way of staying safe from possibly falling into real bingeing again. But it hurts me so much to give in and I have got to stop.

The emotional dependence on food is what makes fasting hard. Cleaning up my diet really helps
But I slip and just want some "comfort " or "satisfaction.

HOW TO DO WITHOUT THIS COMFORT?

So I need to fast since fasting lifts me out of the state in which I eat when eating is not OK with me. I really want to build self trust and the ability to ENDURE the bleakness of fasting emotionally. I need to learn in my life to STOP AND FEEL instead of pushing and driving myself.

Everything I do seems driven by a fear that I will not get what I need and a conviction that life is over if I do not get what I want. I have even pretended to be an alcoholic to get into a rehab once. I wanted to consider food the same as alcohol and I need to be respected in that, NOT screamed at that I am a danger to myself.

I can not say it any different. I cannot say it any different. I do not want to be shut down or silenced. I think of it as creative and not "bad" or "dishonest." Please do not call me bad or sick. I am sincere and work hard at this
My major project is to FEEL FEELING IS HEALING I was once told.

Well, it is a risk to post this but I don't know how to proceed. I hope to get responses: lcathf@gmail.com Lately I have been fasting and just in the period after fasting, my compulsion to return to my old habits (anticipating food as a release) has become so painful that I have to really slow down and stop.

I need to make a commitment to staying with the healing I have gotten from fasting so far and the diet cleanup. I need to fast again and get on a real program of lengthening my fasts but I need to commit to real behavior change afterward.

Sometimes this happens naturally as the fast really takes away compulsions ... but when it doesn't -- I have to be prepared and control my behavior through my will and through my ability to stop and follow rules of "food sobriety"

A really big and hard thing to stop doing is just in my manner of eating. I bear down intensely on each bite and try to force the food to let me enter another world, a trance like state. Doing this is a sick way of self-soothing and it is something I profoundly depend on.

I have got to confront this because I have begun to be sensitive to how much it hurts. I think this manner of deliberately getting high on food really leads me to overeat. It is such strange little problem and one which I thought I could get away with. How can I even name it? All i know is : I am trying to force myself to feel good, and anything i do to try to force

I experience panic when I try to force myself to feel good. But: I experience panic when I have feelings that are not good feelings. I experience real terror. I don't know the way out.

Example: I was talking with a friend on the phone last night and started to get just panicked about whether she really liked me or would reject me. This happens regularly. i examine what I am saying and whether I am being a "positive person" or someone who will be rejected and left alone or whatever it is I am afraid of.

This is a necessity, much greater than any physical need for food ... I can hear people screaming that I "have to eat" at certain intervals and in my case here I really believe it is NOT this way.. that it is MUCH more important to push away the food whenever there is compulsion to eat it, so as to build real self-trust.

We,, again, it's lcathf@gmail.com Please, anyone respond. Though I am not overweight I believe I am exactly the same inside as those who are and can engage and help and be helped.