(a bargain with the devil - me)
real answer:
"...a healthy relationship with food means eating in response to physical hunger most of the time. However, normal eating can also include experiences such as eating occasionally because something looks good, eating past fullness at a special meal, eating in response to an emotion once in a while or choosing foods based on nutritional content because this feels care taking. Attuned eating means that eating for satisfaction is predominant, and experiencing deprivation is virtually non-existent. Attuned eating is a natural skill. It can be relearned by people who have lost touch with their hunger and can be reinforced and nurtured in children so that they maintain this healthy relationship with food throughout their lives."
Matz, J. and Frankel, E. (2004). Beyond a shadow of a diet: The therapist's guide to treating compulsive eating. New York: Brunner-Routledge
!!!!! ..."and experiencing deprivation is virtually non-existent"
wow. my entire diet is based on deprivation. even though i am appear to be, and really am, at a healthy weight.
my thpst. has guided me toward meeting needs. basic needs.
Would you deprive another person?
Why do you treat yourself that way?
i suggested to a friend that he imagine saying some of the hateful things he said to himself to another person, his child for instance. He looked shocked and said, "i never thought of it that way"
My sister told me some things that she did to herself when she was little.
i wanted to cry! I said, "but if someone else had done that to you, it would be considered torture! I would have wanted to kill them!! She said she still didn't know why she did it.
I deprive myself now, but when i was fourteen years old i literally starved myself for a year.
Now, at thirty, I combat this behavior and more importantly, I combat the underlying reasons.
I would never starve a fourteen year old innocent child.
At fourteen, i would have never harmed another human being.
But sometimes, when i do it now, and when i idid it then, it was as if i was torturing, starving, hurting..a demon or some awful thing that was inside me. It didnt ALWAYS feel as if it were somthing that i was doing to myself.
Sometimes it felt as if the "torture" was something that a "devil woman" or "witch" was doing it to me.
As if i was NOT the only entitiy in my head.
And i believe that religion is a really good explanation as to why thinking another entity could inhabit your head or body and make you do/deserve things.
Believingin angels/demons/heaven/hell is normal its not mental illness.
Believing that a devil has a doll of you, and is torturing it to make you do something is mental illness, not religion.
but sometimes its real hard for me to tell the difference, especially when i look back at the things i felt and thought as a child/adolescent.
So i try not to really think about it anymore but i do kind of fear falling back into that way of thinking.
i focus on controlling actions as far as being good to myself and everything.
but i really and truly have no idea how to eat normally. my existence is based on deprivation.
even though i maintain a healthy wieght now and do not appear to be deprived.
i am bargaining with the devil.
