12 Reasons to Thank my Eating Disorder
This list is a collection of examples from clients using an exercise in the Healing Your Relationship With Food program.
This list is a collection of examples from clients using an exercise in the Healing Your Relationship With Food program.
1. Thank you for being consistent, predictable, reliable, loyal and always available when I am in need, unlike other relationships in my life.
2. Thank you for giving me something I can control. Even though it's painful, it is a pain I know.
3. Thank you for providing me privacy through preoccupation, secret rituals, rules only for me, purging and binging. Without you as a privacy boundary, I would be gobbled up by the needs of others and lose even more of myself.
4. Thank you for helping me feel better about myself through secretly being selfish, critical and superior toward others while deep down hating myself.
5. Thank you for helping me control something in my life when my emotions and everything around me feels out of control.
6. Thank you for helping me secretly express anger toward others, resentment about pressures, and resistance to the expectation to be perfect.
7. Thank you for keeping my secret (at least for a while) that I am weak, needy, desperate and out of control, while pretending to have it all together on the outside.
8. Thank you for changing my neurobiochemestry so my anxiety and depression are relieved if only for a short time.
9. Thank you for giving me relief from being the super cute, responsible, caring, smart, driven, accomplished, reliable, perfect person I expect from myself by reminding me that I'm messed up and imperfect somewhere (even if no one else knows).
10. Thank you for allowing me to take in good, if only for a while, until I purge, exercise, take diuretics, and/or use self-ridicule to give it back. I believe I don't deserve good.
11. Thank you for giving me something miserable to focus on with a logical fix instead of focusing on real problems that overwhelm me and don't have logical fixes.
12. Thank you for creating a barrier from unsolicited sexual attention, an excuse not to get physically close to others and help control my lack of sexual boundaries when I am too afraid and unskilled to cope with these issues myself.
It is crucial to understand that your relationship with food is based on a long-standing intimacy. It needs to be acknowledged as a functional means of coping with life in order to renegotiate it . It does no good to pretend that the eating disorder is all bad and you need to banish it forever. You will likely panic and judge yourself mercilessly when you inevitably run back into it's arms. This is a long good-bye with a significant other, not a surgical removal. Take some time and comment about any reactions and any items not listed here.
2. Thank you for giving me something I can control. Even though it's painful, it is a pain I know.
3. Thank you for providing me privacy through preoccupation, secret rituals, rules only for me, purging and binging. Without you as a privacy boundary, I would be gobbled up by the needs of others and lose even more of myself.
4. Thank you for helping me feel better about myself through secretly being selfish, critical and superior toward others while deep down hating myself.
5. Thank you for helping me control something in my life when my emotions and everything around me feels out of control.
6. Thank you for helping me secretly express anger toward others, resentment about pressures, and resistance to the expectation to be perfect.
7. Thank you for keeping my secret (at least for a while) that I am weak, needy, desperate and out of control, while pretending to have it all together on the outside.
8. Thank you for changing my neurobiochemestry so my anxiety and depression are relieved if only for a short time.
9. Thank you for giving me relief from being the super cute, responsible, caring, smart, driven, accomplished, reliable, perfect person I expect from myself by reminding me that I'm messed up and imperfect somewhere (even if no one else knows).
10. Thank you for allowing me to take in good, if only for a while, until I purge, exercise, take diuretics, and/or use self-ridicule to give it back. I believe I don't deserve good.
11. Thank you for giving me something miserable to focus on with a logical fix instead of focusing on real problems that overwhelm me and don't have logical fixes.
12. Thank you for creating a barrier from unsolicited sexual attention, an excuse not to get physically close to others and help control my lack of sexual boundaries when I am too afraid and unskilled to cope with these issues myself.
It is crucial to understand that your relationship with food is based on a long-standing intimacy. It needs to be acknowledged as a functional means of coping with life in order to renegotiate it . It does no good to pretend that the eating disorder is all bad and you need to banish it forever. You will likely panic and judge yourself mercilessly when you inevitably run back into it's arms. This is a long good-bye with a significant other, not a surgical removal. Take some time and comment about any reactions and any items not listed here.
