Our Eating Issues are Coping Mechanisms and Symptoms of Larger Problems

I realised all my overeating and my eating disorders were only ever coping mechanisms and symptoms of a much bigger problem.  

Yes, they helped me survive my life and my difficult feelings in the moment, but then I was left with two sets of problems.  

One problem was that I continually gained weight and felt trapped in the overeating cycle: starving myself first, then losing control of my natural hunger and satiety cues and ending up overeating, then hating myself for my loss of control, then starving myself again to make up for all the extra food I just ate.  And the cycle continued.

The other problem is that I would never allow myself to feel my feelings.  The moment I thought I was going to feel a difficult feeling, I would smother it with food and numb myself out, so I didn’t have to feel it. 

The result was that I didn’t get to have that essential exposure to the difficult feeling I was numbing with food in the first place and I also didn’t get to experience the deep feelings of satisfaction and trust in myself that I was enough to handle that feeling.

This is how all addictions work.  We, with eating issues, are Food People and we chose food as our substance.  We could have chosen any other addiction to escape from our pain: drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, hoarding, pornography, gaming, sex or even a dependency on another person to take away our pain – they all “work” everytime we use them.  This whole process is about suppressing and denying our true feelings, so we don’t have to feel them.

Working for Eating Disorders Queensland

In 1999, I began volunteering with Eating Disorders Queensland.  I got a beautiful encouraging welcome from the Coordinator, Joanne Blair.  I started contributing by writing for their monthly newsletter “Through the Looking Glass”.

I was completely shocked when I opened my letterbox the next month and found the EDQ had printed my letter in its entirety, with no editing!  That was the first time in my life that I had been valued for my experience, and it felt amazing. 

In my 14 years of working at EDQ, I enjoyed contributing in many different roles, including facilitating quite a few of their 10 week recovery groups.

My First Client

I’ll always remember my first client.  A lady contacted me and said “I know you don’t do counselling, but I just wanted to talk to you because I know you’ll understand what I’m going through.”

She came over to my house and we sat on the back deck and we talked for three hours.  Before she left, she told me she found our conversation very helpful and she wanted to give me something for my time.  She gave me $20.  It was the most satisfying three hours I had ever spent and it never once felt like work.

After that, I knew that I could use my experience to help other people.  There was now a real reason why I needed to have all of my experiences – however horrible I deemed them to be at the time – because without them, I couldn’t relate to what anyone else was going through.

Working with People with Eating Issues

From 2004 to 2019, I presented workshops on eating issues at the Relaxation Centre of Queensland to help people understand why they eat the way they do.

From 2006 to 2020,  I ran an office where I had a consultation room and I worked one on one with my clients in a very private space.  

After Covid, I continued to provide support to people with eating issues, but this time, it was simply with Phone Support, as I now appreciated the flexibility this option provided for both the caller and the receiver.

In 2020, I wrote and published my first book, 

“Eating Out of Control: 7 Steps to Understanding why you do it, so you can stop”.

Nonviolent Communication – A Language of Life

In 2022, I committed to completing a degree to become a Certified Trainer in Nonviolent Communication.  I initially approached Nonviolent Communication as a way to help me deal with my anger, so I could be in charge of it and I could learn to express myself in a healthy way, rather than allowing my anger to control me in an unhealthy way.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian Leader, was considered the Father of Nonviolence and the man who led India to independence from England (he was assassinated just 5 months after this world event). Gandhi used: Peace, Nonviolence, and Non-Cooperation. Gandhi believed that Nonviolence was a courageous way to confront evil and a powerful tool for oppressed people to fight for freedom. One of his famous quotes was “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Martin Luther King Junior, the Civil Rights Activist, lived and breathed Nonviolence through his courageous work in creating change in the world.  MLK was hugely inspired by Gandhi’s work and they both believed in the power of Nonviolent Resistance and the connection between social change and nonviolence. Their ideas inspired many later protests and demonstrations. A famous quote of MLK’s was “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon that cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”

Nelson Mandela’s life became a powerful demonstration of what it means to be Nonviolent, despite the harshest conditions. One quote from Nelson Mandela is “For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.”

Dr Marshall Rosenberg’s creation, the Centre for Nonviolent Communication, has given me a whole new (foreign) language, and a full vocabulary of feelings and needs to help me express myself in words, so I won’t need food to do the job. 

I can attempt to communicate with others in an honest and Nonviolent way that respects both our needs – even in situations of long-standing conflict.

Dr Marshall Rosenberg says “Shame is a form of self-hatred and Nonviolent Communication helps to transform shame into understanding: NVC offers a framework to unpack shame, move away from self-criticism, and focus on the needs that are not being met, ultimately fostering self-compassion.  https://www.cnvc.org 

Rock and Water  – Feeling Calm, Safe and Strong Inside our own Bodies – While speaking up

After I stumbled upon learning Nonviolent Communication, I thought for a few brief moments, I had everything I needed.

Then one day, I was running an NVC Practice Group and I was confronted by a woman who was not qualified to be in that group, and was also behaving in a very disruptive and disrespectful way. I went to tell her that she was in the wrong class.  

My words came out, but they were shaky and unconvincing and the woman refused to leave.  It was then I realised I had another problem; I thought, I can have the most perfect Nonviolent Communication script in the world, but if I don’t feel safe or strong inside myself while I speak, it’s all pretty pointless.

I instantly recalled a Program called Rock and Water, that I had taken my sons to twenty years earlier.  It was run by a gentleman named Tom Wixted, who is a black belt in Aikido (Aikido is a non-aggressive Japanese martial art.)   

Rock and Water is a series of stances, postures and simple physical movements that can help us to feel strong, safe and grounded inside our bodies.

I attended 6 days of training in two different States.  On one of my trainings, I got to meet the founder of the program, Freerk Ykema, direct from the Netherlands.  He called me out onto the mat to spar with him a few times and told me I was a “Warrior” (or maybe with his accent, he actually called me a “Worrier”!)  In any case, it was an honour to meet the man and I am now a Facilitator of Rock and Water, qualified to teach the basics.

This whole experience of physical re-training reminded me of my years of Panic Attacks and how scared I felt inside myself all the time.  So I recorded a Podcast titled “Feeling Calm and Safe” and I followed this up with another Podcast titled “9 Ideas to Ground Yourself.”  I then saw the need to turn this information into a mini book, and a PDF version is available on this website called “Feeling Calm and Safe – 36 Ways to Ground Yourself”.

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Self-Compassion as the antidote to Shame

In the last 20 years, there has been much scientific research that has proven that effective healing for our “chronic shame” is learning self-compassion – being able to regard ourselves highly and speak to ourselves consistently with genuine kindness, tenderness and warmth, so that we may experience growth as human beings and know we are loved because we have found a way to love ourselves and care for ourselves.

After 40 years of research, Professor Paul Gilbert created the Compassionate Mind Foundation.  He says that people with a neglectful or trauma-filled background have high levels of self-criticism, shame and blame and rarely feel safe.  

Even the suggestion of learning self-compassion has been shown to cause this group of people to feel frightened, threatened and to reject their own treatment. 

I have completed a number of workshops with the Compassionate Mind Foundation, and it was through these courses that I got a full handle on just how central our experience of shame is in maintaining our eating issues.  Our shame also keeps all our self-sabotaging and self-punishing behaviours in place too.

I realised how important it was going to be for me to be able to find a way to learn this additional foreign language called “Self-Compassion.”

The Compassionate Mind Foundation has created books, workshops and resources to help us learn processes to soothe ourselves in a constructive way when we feel unsafe, without abandoning ourselves or our inner children in the process. 

Dr Gabor Mate – “No child is born feeling ashamed of themselves”

Dr Gabor Mate is a Hungarian/Canadian Physician specializing in addiction and trauma. I attended a virtual Summit on Shame with Dr Gabor Mate in 2023, which I found extraordinarily helpful for my personal understanding of where our shame comes from and for my willingness to develop a self-compassion for my experience of shame.

Dr Gabor says:  “Don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.  To understand people’s pain, you have to understand their lives.  In other words, addiction is a normal response to trauma.”  Well known causes of trauma are our experiences of: abuse, abandonment, neglect, rejection, loss, loneliness and grief. 

“Shame can trap people in a cycle of self-blame and addiction.  People can learn to understand and release their shame, recognising that their addictions and mental health issues are responses to pain rather than personal failures.  

This shift in perspective is crucial for healing, as it allows people to approach their recovery with self-compassion rather than self-judgment.”

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My Approach – The Road to Recovery and the Bottom Line in Healing

It’s been a long and rocky road to recovery and I have tried many different types of therapy and forms of healing in my search to feel whole and to heal the past.

I have discovered through decades of therapy and all my own trial and error, that the bottom line in what I do when I work with someone, is attempt to help them understand their internal experience of shame, to know themselves better, and to make friends with their inner children.  

Beyond that, the real journey this work will take you on is one of self-acceptance and I sincerely hope my work will help you to find yours – I believe that’s why I am here.