"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Truth Versus Our Stories

One major hurdle for disregulated eaters who’ve struggled with food for a long time is believing in recovery. Perhaps you believe there’s a truth that says you won’t or can’t have a positive relationship with food and eat “normally.” What you don’t realize is that this so-called truth is only a story that you tell yourself over and over.

More on Meaning Making

Ever since I took Jon Connelly's enlightening trauma resolution workshop back in July (Rapid Resolution Therapy), I've been more focused on how we make meaning of life events, sadly, often to our detriment. In order to heal from emotional wounds, traumas, and eating problems, it's crucial to understand how we arbitrarily and mistakenly couple together the random occurrences in our histories. Then learn to uncouple them.

To Love or Be Loved?

Earlier this summer, an interesting discussion arose on my Food and Feelings message board (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings): Is it better to love or be loved? In my world, we need not choose, but should expect both in an intimate relationship.

Personal Bill of Rights

Most adults who grew up in dysfunctional families in which their parents drank or used drugs, were physically/sexually/emotionally abusive or neglectful, and/or were mentally ill, have difficulty knowing as adults what their rights are. Here’s a Personal Bill of Rights by Charles Whitfield (his books are great!) to live by:

Purity and Purging

In my work, I’ve met many women who are relentlessly driven toward purity. To be sure, there are men out there as well who yearn to be flawless or perfect, but the need seems to come with the cultural territory of being female. It’s a compulsion that can take over your life, ruin your chance for happiness, and make being a “normal” eater impossible.

Rationality

How rational are you about your eating and weight? Perhaps you haven’t given much thought to the subject. If so, you won’t get far in changing your beliefs or behaviors. Some thoughts from a winter lecture I attended on rationality and intelligence.

The Last Word

We all know that there’s a rational part of ourselves and another part that’s got its own silly, and sometimes harmful, ideas. These aspects of self often battle with each other over food and other decisions: rationality asserts one thing while irrationality says quite another. This is a natural and inevitable process that we go through in making choices. What determines health over lack of it is which thought we let win each skirmish.

Solutions

An avid reader, I was struck when a character in a mystery I was enjoying proclaimed, “I won’t stop until I figure it out. There’s always a solution.” I wished right then and there that I could magically transfer this must-have, winning perspective into all the troubled eaters I know so they could focus on finding solutions rather dwelling on their problems.

Reframing Not Succeeding

When you haven’t succeeded in reaching your eating (or other) goals, does that mean you’ve failed? Does not succeeding signify that you’re at the end of a process or in the middle of one? Does it mean that you’ve tried your hardest and should give up or that you’re simply not there yet? How you answer these questions will predict your success.

Learned Lovability

We believe we’re lovable or unlovable based on our early experiences with people, primarily our parents. If they cared for us lovingly, we come to believe we’re lovable. If, due to their own limitations, they didn’t love us well, we may end up believing we’re unlovable. The whole lovability concept is that simple. Don’t believe me? Read on.