Joanna Poppink shares ways to help yourself when you feel the urge to binge eat.
Joanna:
If you really want to binge the urge is upon you. You think you can’t bear it and you haven’t done any preparation work.
You haven’t done any work yourself. You are still unconscious. You will binge.
But if you are watching this interview right now, you are doing some homework, right now you are helping yourself in preparing for that urge that will come at some point. You’ve got some background.
Let me tell you a little bit about binge and who you are. You have emotions. You have urges. They come like waves.
Watch the ocean for a while. Sometimes there’s a stream of small waves, sometimes there’s a stream of huge waves, sometimes they are even. Sometimes they are mammoth.
Your emotions are like that. You can deal with the small waves, sometimes the large waves, you can’t. The old ancient Buddhist saying is, be the ocean, not the wave.
Because every single one of those waves that you watch, passes. If you can wait it out long enough, if you can breathe and wait that urge to purge or binge will stop.
It doesn’t mean that it’s gone. You are going to get another one, but you don’t have to act on it.
So here’s the story if you are the wave - if you are the wave, I am fine. I am small and I am fine and I am getting bigger and I am getting bigger and I am getting so big I love getting bigger.
I am so big now I am at the top and I can see the world that I am just fantastic but I am losing my space and I am losing my place and I am slipping and I am falling and I am going to get swallowed up and I am getting smaller and smaller and I can’t stop and now I can’t control and I am gone.
That’s the wave and it will happen again. You don’t have to identify with that part. You identify with the whole sea that’s got many waves.
And you can bare them if you know that. If you don’t know it and you have the urge to binge you are going to go right into the binge but if you do know it you can hold on to it. You can hold on to that knowledge.
You can draw a wave. You could write down your feelings. You can draw a wave and then write down your feelings on the line of the wave and watch your feelings.
It gives you a little bit more distance and you don’t have to act out and you will be so surprised at the end when that feeling has gone and the Oreos are still in the package – what a great feeling that is.
About Joanna Poppink, M.F.T.:
Joanna Poppink, M.F.T., is a psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders. Joanna’s own recovery experience from bulimia contributes to her understanding in her work with others. Her specialized psychotherapy practice is designed to allow her adult women clients to progress through anxiety situations to ongoing recovery from bulimia, compulsive eating, anorexia and binge eating. Joanna’s primary goal is to provide her clients with a way to achieve thorough and long lasting healing and to live a satisfying life in freedom.
Add a Comment2 Comments
Thank you so much for helping me out. I was about to go to the grocery store and get ice cream to binge, but now the urge is gone. I drew the wave on a piece of paper and I wrote down all the emotions I was feeling: depression, loss of control, sadness, fear, envy, loneliness. But I saw the wave crash down right before my eyes, and I don't feel the need to eat ice cream anymore.
October 19, 2011 - 1:03pmThis Comment
Thank you. Watching this video saved me from a midnight binge. Thank you. I rode the wave. and now the urge is gone.
June 19, 2011 - 3:22pmThis Comment