When it rains…
It’s been a stressful week.
My car needs to get into the shop before the brakes fall off and Big Dog is trying to lick a hole in his paw. I can usually only deal with one Impending Crisis! at a time, and so having two in one week can throw me into a tailspin.
When the anxiety comes, it comes hard and it comes fast. One minute I’m swimming along, mostly okay, and the next, I’m sinking, a stone.
Today I sank.
There was some freaking out and, while at work where I can’t cry with the wild abandon I do here at home, I went for other ways of self-comforting. Say it with me: Food.
But even in the midst of my panic, I found myself thinking, “Hey, chickie. It’s okay. Right now you’re upset and having this bag full of frosted mini-wheats makes you feel better and that’s okay. But remember, food can’t fix feelings and you’ll need to take care of those when you feel up to it.”
And the bag of mini-wheats went back into my desk because acknowledging the panic and how it was causing me to connect with food? Completely defused the moment. I still felt panicked, but I didn’t feel like I needed to eat to calm myself.
So, instead of crying and eating and eating and crying, I left work a little early, took Big Dog to the vet to get his paw checked out, and made a phone call in regards to getting my car into the shop.
My disordered eating and compulsive exercise weren’t just about my body; they were also my way of avoiding the emotional minefield of every day life. When you obsess about your body, it pushes out all the other very real issues that are coming towards you. It becomes a substitute for coping.
And now that I don’t let myself use that substitute? Well, I’m finding out I’m actually pretty okay at dealing with whatever happens.
And, as long as nothing happens to Little Dog, now I may just make it to the weekend.
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Wow what a proud moment for you…congratulations on listening instead of stuffing.
How great for you. I too am an emotional eater. I think realizing and acknowledging the reasons why we turn to food instead of dealing with crisis is the easy part - it’s the actual act of mentally and physically stopping ourselves that’s so hard.
That is AWESOME. It’s really difficult to give ourselves permission to feel certain things and it’s even harder to break out of the coping mechanisms we develop. You are fantastic.
This is sort of tangential and really late.
However, I hope you’ll forgive me ’cause it sort of goes with the tenor of your blog and it’s something I’ve been wondering a long while.
We have compulsive eating. We have Vicodin, Quaaludes, pot, smack, meth, booze, compulsive shopping and spending, compulsive gambling, compulsive sex, smoking, Xanax, Paxil, Prozac, Wellbutrin, and the Big Blue Valium.
Now I read Aldous Huxley and George Orwell probably before I should have. (I was a 10-year-old nerd. Sue me.) But I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t the round pegs, and this 21st-century life to which so many of us feel we must conform conform conform conform isn’t the square hole.
Does anyone else ever wonder whether maybe it’s not us? That whatever the problem IS, maybe — just maybe — we aren’t it?
Oh, littlem, we are *so* not the problem. You’re absolutely correct.
And for the record, I too was the big ol’ dork reading those books long before I should have. That’s just one of the ways in which we are awesome.