Avoiding anxious overeating

I am so anxious right now, I can barely sit still. And I can feel my anxiety churning right in the pit of my stomach, which is where I seem to feel most negative emotions.

The way I usually deal with anxiety is to eat. Although it's totally subconscious, I think my reasoning goes something like this:

My stomach feels funny.

I don't like the way it feels, not at all.

Maybe if I eat something, it'll feel better.

No, that didn't really work. Maybe I should eat something else.

That didn't work, either. Let me try eating something else.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Yuck. I'm so full. I'm such a pig. I hate myself.

In other words, I replace one negative emotion—anxiety—with another—self-loathing. But unlike my anxiety, which makes me feel out of control, my self-loathing feels familiar and manageable. The anxiety comes from an external source that I can't control, but the self-loathing comes from overeating. It's like re-routing a river: the river still flows, but at least it's flowing down a pathway that I've chosen.

I know, I know: that is some seriously crazy shit! And so self-defeating! What can I say, it's been a very effective coping mechanism for a good chunk of my life.

But today I'm trying something different. My stomach is churning like crazy, but I'm desperately resisting the urge to run to the fridge. If I start eating, I know what the outcome will be: I'll end up feeling sick (but in a familiar way) and unhappy with myself. But what if I don't start eating? I have to confess, that is a very scary thought.

Okay. It's scary. But this is supposed to be an adventure, right? So let's explore that scariness a little. I'm not going to run to the fridge, but this churning in my stomach is unbearable! I can't stand feeling like this! What's the alternative to trying to stuff down this feeling? Well...maybe I should...explore it.

And this is where I run into a brick wall. How the hell am I supposed to explore my anxiety? Since I'm a writer, the obvious answer is to write about it...but I'm not sure I can. It feels too big for that, too big to encompass with words.

But maybe that's the answer: if I can put my anxiety into words, maybe it won't be so big any more. And if it's no longer so big...well, then maybe it's something I can manage.

Agh, I'm just going around in circles here. I'm going to take a break—step outside and draw in a few lungfuls of fresh air—and see if that helps clear my mind a little. Then maybe I'll come back and see if I can put my feelings into words instead of stuffing them.

Resolute.

I don’t believe in making New Year’s resolutions. The concept is too clichéd, the resolutions themselves too fragile. Really, I stopped making New Year’s resolutions as part of my recovery from my eating disorder; inevitably, my resolutions were about losing weight. Giving that up was like throwing away my scale: liberating and absolutely necessary.

But this year I’m making an exception to my rule. There’s just something so fresh and new about January 1^st, I find it hard to resist freighting this arbitrary date with special meaning.

And so here I am, resolving something for 2011: this year, I will begin my adventures in mindfulness anew.

My forays last year were interrupted by…well, my life. My 2010 was filled with both sorrow and joy in equal measure, but those highs and lows were at times so overwhelming it was all I could do to just batten down my emotional hatches and let it all wash over me. I quite often didn’t have the strength to do more than just make it through the day, so trying to work on my relationship with food seemed impossible.

But just last week it hit me like a bolt from the blue: I remembered that the reason I decided to explore mindfulness in the first place was to learn to be more present in my life. Whatever is happening in my life, be it joyful or tragic, I want to be there for it. I do think there is a certain utility to checking out when events are particularly overwhelming, but I have spent too many precious years stuffing down my emotions. That seemed like a reasonable coping mechanism when I was 18, but now that I’m 42? It seems like a shameful fucking waste of something terribly precious.

What does this resolution actually mean, in concrete terms? I wish I knew. I guess figuring that part out is part of this journey, and that’s the whole purpose of this blog: exploring, documenting, journeying, and figuring shit out along the way. If I had a road map or a protocol, I wouldn’t need all this…but then again, that would be quite beside the point. This is my life to figure out, after all, and I'm afraid I'm the only one who can figure out how to figure it out. (Agh!)

So. Here I go, again.

Image: nlmAdestiny under CC BY 3.0.