After reading about this book here, I went out on Friday and bought it. Amazing. She lived my life. Almost. My mother didn't beat me with a stick, but she have wild mood swings that seemed to have no pattern and were impossible to predict. There are a lot of things that are being dredged up. It's not coincidence that there are big black holes where a lot of my childhood memories should be.

Anyway, I'm finding this book to be very helpful to me. I'm going to collect all the "weight loss" journals I've started over the years and have ceremonial burial of that part of my life--being disappointed and critical of myself, collections of "failures". I've started a new journal where I'll investigate the reasons behind my bingeing and go back to those missing years. I'm also going to get another of Geneen Roth's books which is more of a workbook.

Has anyone else found this or another book on compulsive eating especially helpful therapeutically?

geneen roth has written a whole series of books. you might find the others helpful.

therapeutically i've found other books more helpful because they helped me with problems i needed to deal with. they weren't so much about compulsive eating as emotional issues that were triggering problems. if you click the link it will take you to amazon to read more about the books. I'm not sure if all these books are still available

The Family Patterns Workbook by Carolyn Foster

This one is sort of along the same lines as Geneen's book "appetites" When is enough, enough? By Laurie Ashner

I can probably come up with other book recommendations if you're interested

Thanks very much for your response, sweet pea. I'll look those up.