My psychiatrist has been pushing me to seek out an eating disorder clinic to learn how to better manage my compulsive overeating. I'm torn. Part of me is in denial and just thinks I have poor self-control. But another part of me knows that what I've been trying to do on my own isn't helping.

I feel like there is so much shame involved with asking for this extra help. It's just food. How hard is really to just eat normally? But the reality is that it's pretty d*** hard. I hate the stigma involved. My fiance, while supportive, has a really hard time understanding. He's on the opposite side of the spectrum. He only eats when he gets hungry which isn't very often. I eat whenever I get a craving or I'm bored. And once I start I can't stop until I'm in both physical and mental anguish. And the money! Don't get me started on how expensive binges are!

My only issue is that my insurance is changing and I'm not sure that I'll be able to afford going to a clinic to see a specialized therapist.

The only shame here is the one you impose on yourself. Nutritional therapists don't see it that way. I don't see it that way. I don't know what your boyfriend thinks about this, is he telling you're lazy? My husband is also a normal eater and although he can't understand what I've been through he supports me and he believes me that I have a problem that is not reflective of my personality, courage, willpower etc.

There are ways to address disordered eating but dieting makes it worse. And it will keep getting worse the more you try fixing an ED with a diet. With intuitive eating I've been able to overcome my binges. I lost some weight, not a lot, but at least I'm not a binger anymore! I had he help of a fantastic nutritional therapist and it was costly. But it was worth it! I don't know if I'll ever be skinny. Restricting my food leads to binges so I cannot and will not diet anymore. I've made peace with that. I do not want an eating disorder.

I hope you find a nutritional therapist that can help you conquer this, this is really not about weightloss, apples and oranges!

http://cormn.org/

Cor retreat center: A food recovery program. Its near Minniapolis. I haven't been there myself, but it comes highly recommended. I thought about going but I couldn't manage the cost. Residential help is expensive! I used a program that is local and all but free.

Can you afford a therapist?

Recently, - over the past two weeks, I got my cravings almost completely under control. What happened was that I had to address passive-aggressive people in my life or long-term situations that were causing emotional problems.

Something as small as signing my name with my full first and last name, plus mailing address versus only my first name when the person I am responding to uses his full signature and omits my name cured cravings. Oppositely, getting accosted by an intrusive/over-friendly stranger caused me to be unable to maintain my diet. Without a therapist a few years ago, it probably would not have occurred to me to do these things.

I do have a therapist but we don't focus on food, we mostly work on my C-PTSD. However I do know that therapy is a huge trigger for me, and it doesn't help that there is a grocery store across the parking lot. It's kind of a catch 22. I need to deal my deeper issues before I can fix the emotional eating. But working on the deeper issues makes me emotional, therefore I eat. That's why my psychiatrist suggested separating the two. But I'm not sure how that'll work out as far as my insurance change. I need to wait until March to see how things change.

Hi LovelyLeah,

I have a history of trauma and bingeing was my life for a very long time. Like 2 days worth of calories in one sitting. I understand the shame you feel, as I'm sure many people here do. And, yes, it's mostly self imposed, but it was definitely there for me.
I've been in therapy with a therapist who specializes in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which is helpful for people with history of serious trauma. When I first learned about it, it seemed kind of weird, I was skeptical, but processing my trauma in this way has really helped with my bingeing and how I look at myself, my weight, and my health. And, it's relieved some of the anxiety that comes with PTSD. I feel like I'm not articulating it well, but it's been really good. And, it can be relatively brief in duration, so that might work with your insurance/budget.
I've restarted on my own journey over the summer, shortly after starting therapy. I've been losing slowly, but the bingeing has been really sparse since. Now I need to find the motivation to exercise...but that's a different battle.
I hope this helps and I wish you the best on your journey

I could have written your post myself. I completely get the shame involved. This is so random but a few years ago for no reason while at my dad's (my aunt was mentioned in a conversation) he started talking about how she'll buy 2 dozen cookies and go home and eat them all at once. Now he didn't say this with compassion. He was mocking her and saying how ridiculous that is that she has no self control. I have 2 very over weight aunts actually and I know that he finds that disgusting and shameful and has passed many comments over the years about them. It has always given me a sense of panic when I get too fat bc I start to feel so ashamed.

I don't know what the C before the PTSD means in your original post....I'm in therapy to address my abusive mother. Despite what I said about my dad, he was the lesser of the damaging parents, go figure....

On therapy for BED. I have called when I have hit bottom a few times for help and there are NO out patient programs in my area. And I've tried one on one counseling for eating disoder and it didn't help at all, I really need a group program or more structured intensive program....I tried OA and the one in my area was no good. I don't feel like going into detail. However, if you are able to find a treatment program for BED and can do it, do. I felt ashamed just calling, and I get how that feels, but oh to be stuck in the constant eating disorder prison, never getting out. Maybe having better days or weeks and thinking "I'm ok" then sliding back into old ways and feeling hopeless again. If you can get help to stop that, you'll feel so much better for it.

Something struck me when you said "I need to deal with my deeper issues before I deal with my ED." I don't think that's true necessarily. If it is true then it will be a long arduous road. Not all emotional problems can heal but we can learn to cope and move on with our lives. I went to therapy for a long long time to deal with my emotion issues and traumatic past. I got to the root of the problem yet that did nothing to help my binging.

Have you read Brain Over Binge? I think it may be of value to you. Luckily I cured my binging with IE but I still found this book essential to my recovery and to help me obliterate lingering habits.

I would have to agree. The order is mixed up. You can't deal with your deeper issues before you deal with your food. Using food numbs you to those deeper feelings. Eating insures that you will not be able to assess them enough to deal with them or heal them. For me, this is true: I only found peace after I stopped numbing myself with binge foods. I don't, however, really suggest that people give up binge foods with only a book for support. If if works for you, that's great, but it would not have worked for me.

Thanks for agreeing but you're not familiar with the book and I'm not sure you're really agreeing with what I really meant. I'm not saying that she has to deal with binging first and then emotional issues. Binge eating may have developed as a coping mechanism to deal with strong emotional trauma but dealing with that emotional trauma does not mean the binging will go away.

If you are not familiar with the book I recommended it's about dealing with binging as a behavioral neurological function. It trains you to rewire your brain, because once you learn to binge nothing can stop that behavior besides behavior modification. Binging is a behavior.

This is not just you! This is every compulsive eater in the history of compulsive eating. Its a right of passage - bingeing on our way home from therapy. The problem that we compulsive eaters have is that we can't handle emotion. We can't deal even with the happy emotions. Food numbs that emotion, so we will always use food if we let our emotion get too intense. The key is to find a way of living that keeps our emotions at a workable level, and gives us a release valve when something comes up and they do get intense.

That's the thing about therapy. Its great, don't get me wrong. But your therapist can't be there every time you need (yes, I said "need." Nobody wants to binge, we NEED to in order to deal with this emotions.) to binge. The only solution I've found is to develop a tight circle of other people who also have this problem. We are able to call each other any time things build up too much. And we all use the same method to really address the problem at hand in a way that allows the emotion to disperse without bingeing.

For those who inquired C-PTSD stands for complex PTSD. Usually PTSD only involves one specific trauma whereas C-PTSD results from prolonged and sustained trauma, usually as a young child. While similar in some respects to PTSD the symptoms differ. With PTSD the symptoms are usually more acute and trauma specific and for C-PTSD it's more chronic and very ambiguous to the specific cause. Food wasn't my original form of coping or escaping. The maladaptive coping skill I remember first was self-harm and that started when I was 6 or 7. It wasn't until I hit puberty and I became more acutely aware of my body that I started having issues with food. I began bouncing from one extreme to the other between fasting, bingeing, and purging. More recently food is the most socially acceptable means of self-medicating myself into numbness so I go with that. I know that numbness isn't what I need to grow and move on...but numbness is what I need to survive. I don't have the coping skills built yet to deal with the overwhelming pain that is stored in my brain.

FillUpTheSky Unfortunately EMDR didn't work for me. At least not yet. I wasn't able to maintain the eye movements because the moment the image shifted into something triggering I'd immediately dissociate and that was pretty much the end of the session. As messed up as it sounds I love dissociating. I love being able to just shut off and not exist for awhile. Unfortunately the only way I know how to force that to happen requires drugs and that's not a road I want to go down anymore.

Palestrina and Blog Let me better clarify what I originally meant. I know that dealing with my deeper issues won't stop my bingeing or make it go away. What I meant to say was that the deeper issues need to be prioritized above the emotional eating. Food isn't the only aspect of my life being damaged by my past and so I shouldn't focus on that just yet. I don't know. I'm kind of a mess of thoughts and emotions and sometimes it's really hard to articulate what I really mean

I just want to say I'm so sorry you are going through such a difficult process.

I'm sorry you're going thru this process LovelyLeah . I will say though that I read your Metaphor thread this morning and wanted to comment that you seem to have a really amazing and intuitive understanding of what's making you tick. I'm not sure what your ultimate degree and career goal is but I'm fairly certain you're going to be amazing at it. Your dedication to working thru processes - especially when it's really tough is inspirational.

I've quoted something you said initially in this post though really hit home with me. Don't discount the aspect of "it's just food". I think a lot of us have "justs" - things that we look at in our lives and feel so stigmatized because we just don't handle it like the rest of the world seems to. And you reach a point in your life where you think damn, I'm a grown woman - this is no big deal for the rest of the world, why can't I handle it?

To me, the reality is it isn't just food or <insert issue here>. Sometimes I think that letting go of the feeling that you need extra care or help with an issue gains you major progress in actually dealing with it.

Fingers crossed that there is a way to make this work financially and insurance-wise.

I know exactly what you are saying. I'm not trying to be harsh, just clear. I know complex PTSD very well and very personally. I have a long history of psychiatric diagnosis. That's just one of them. I was placed in special education as a child, for symptoms that were mostly emotional in nature, and I started therapy for the first time when I was 8. Very few people can one-up me on the sucky childhood front.

This is the message: A real food addict cannot heal any psychiatric problem until AFTER you solve the food thing. This is every time. Binge eating acts like crack in your brain. This blocks you from doing any of the work you need to do to heal from your childhood. You can't heal until the crack is out of your system.

Would you tell a hard drug addict that he needs to heal his childhood trauma before he stops shooting up heroine? No! The idea is laughable. But you think you can do just that. You want to wait to give up your drug until after you meet the magical healing unicorn fairy who will make all that pain go away.

Look, you can ignore what we are saying. You can say that I just don't understand. You can keep going to therapy without giving up bingeing. You can buy your therapist a new boat as you keep shelling out cash over the years for therapy and never get better. But it doesn't have to be this way.

If you get your head clear, the therapy will actually start to work - this is why she's pushing you to get into a ED program - because she cares about you more than she cares about padding her wallet with money from the patient fees from a woman who is getting herself high after her therapy instead of integrating the session.