I Going to go through the five corners stones of C-PTSD starting next week. But as the genesis of my issues from childhood trauma, I want to discuss something we all have in common.
No, not death and taxes; but eating.
Eating is something we all must do in order to survive. It’s a thing, right? Like a rule. As a medical professional, we need to eat calories in order to maintain the metabolic rate. In laypersons terms means the nutrition needed to make sure breathing happens, our heart keeps beating, or the kidneys still filter.
Without nutrition, these fundamental life preserving organs will die, which means we will die. Make sense?
So why is the consumption of food an emotive subject for so many people, including me? There are three eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder (BED), and BED is the label I was told to wear by a clinical psychologist.
This is my journey.
Until I started therapy, I didn’t realise I had a toxic relationship with food, that even this was a thing.
To gain a better understanding, we have traveled back in time, a time where on the outside, everything seemed okay; normal. But behind closed doors, I was living with a monster.
My father was a military man, through the cold war living in Germany. His absence was something which was normal and appreciated by me but not so much for my mum.
Always working; by his own admission, the army came before his family. My mum wasn’t particularly engaging nor maternal, leaving my sister and I to our own devices. Boredom often paved the way to wayward behaviour which became a trigger for my father. The only emotion we could have was happiness. Be angry or upset at your own peril in my home.
My father’s abusive behaviour provided and state of constant fear in me. Relieved when he deployed for six months and then home for endless weeks, where fear and loathing would cause me to retract. He of course wouldn’t see his hard parenting as abuse and to be honest, neither did I until my therapist said, ‘his behaviour to you was ghastly and unacceptable.’
I had a healthy appetite, even as a child. I ate a lot and when I mean a lot; it wasn’t to excess, more to capacity. I am the All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet restaurants worst nightmare. I remember once when entering a Chinese restaurant, the owner of the place said, ‘I should charge you double.’ As rude as this is, they weren’t wrong.
I’d eat until it hurt. The number of plates I’d eat was something not human. Emotion regulated my reflex to eat, and it wasn’t until the therapy started in my forties did I get to understand this. A lifetime of self-abuse had left a trail of destruction through my health, my kids, my relationship with my wife and my spiritual self.
As a boy, it singled me out. I was always the big lad in the class. The one who stood out. It wasn’t by design, due to abuse at home, I was overly insecure as well as introverted. I had friends, close ones, but anyone outside the clan, I would shrink. My whole demeanour would change. Gone would be the goofing about boisterous boy to someone who hid in the shadows of my other friends until the threat no longer was a threat. But with food, ‘no, I’ve had enough,’ wasn’t in my vocabulary.
Combined with the inner critic, food becomes more a crutch than an adjunct. The eating becomes such, the weight gain is inevitable. When you’re sharing the same space with a covert passive aggressive narcissist with a propensity for violence, the weight becomes another target for the abuser. They took me as a 12-year-old on runs with soldiers, dragged around the route throwing my guts up and being mercilessly pushed by someone who was supposed to love me; but this was tough love, right?
This was where the name slug originated.
I don’t know how I processed this. The only thing I found was food. The only thing which comforted me in my home was food.
These thoughts I have about my past are an uncomfortable truth. They twist my guts and toxic shame tries to manifest itself with an emotional flashback. Time being the true healer along with therapy, having the coping mechanisms in place so I can talk about these things without them affecting me is a momentous occasion.
Although trauma never leaves us, it lives within us, festering. A vicious inner critic weirdly isn’t there to hurt you, but wants you to be okay. The Inner critic grew inside me as the abuse started in order to preserve me by adapting to the world around me.
But in the face to abandonment evolves into an appetite which can’t be curbed.
As a young adult in the army, the level of fitness I was doing always outweighed the calorie intake. It was when I left the army; I kept eating the same number of calories without the exercise did the weight pile on. When I hit my thirties, I hit rock bottom. My eating was out of control.
I didn’t stop. I would eat and eat and eat. The petrified little boy inside of me was still being nurtured by me. The child who had had a lifetime of pain, who trusted no one and was still cowering in the corner of my soul. I would overeat, secretly eat, find opportunities in order to eat, plan my eating with or without Sam. I was out of control. Even when the therapy started, it took an entire year to come to the realisation there was a problem.
Addressing the problem created a challenge all of its own. The freighted little boy in me reacted. With folded arms, a jutting out chin, the small boy in me was angry. No longer was I able to overeat was all I heard from doctors and family members. The only thing this child knew was to eat. It had been getting his love and nurturing from a lifetime of overeating. The habits of secretly eating now brought on toxic shame, augmented self-loathing and a nagging inner critic who was so vicious, it would make me feel nauseous.
All of this came down to programming. The programming I wired into the neuroplasticity of my sub-conscious. I needed to understand that I was now the adult. The child wasn’t in charge of my emotions any longer. It was my job as the man to take my scared inner child by the hand and show him I was in control, and everything will be okay.
The next step was forgiveness. It’s very hard to forgive yourself and your abusers in order to step into the light. It’s the hardest thing I have ever done, and it is not over yet, something I have had to come to terms with. In the fast-paced world of quick fixes, me will not be fixed just yet.
When you deconstruct the behaviour of over-eating, it’s down to habits. We form habits through repetition and this repetition is something we cling on to. It gives us purpose, something familiar in a world where unfamiliar opens the door to the demons. You can’t shy away from these habits; by not fulfilling the habits requirement, you’re steered through a complex myriad of inner critic and self-loathing. Constantly guiding you to make sub-conscious decisions to eat. Deconstructing the habit further, exposes the true intent. The habit is addiction and as an entity; the addiction wants to destroy me/you.
I picture the addiction in my head as a rickety old Victorian house with a series of badly painted green doors. Each door opens to a new line of addiction. When each door is opened, I know the addiction is brewing in my head. It just needs a catalyst. An argument with my wife, some guy cuts me up on the roundabout, the tyre gets flat on the way to work, getting criticised by my wife, children, friends, colleagues whoever; it doesn’t matter. The point is, if the addiction gets any foothold in my mind, like peeling a healing scab off a cut, the spiral starts with the sole aim to isolate, separate, and destroy.
It was during these times with no coping mechanisms or understanding of what was happening, I would isolate, allow the addiction to direct me and control me. For me, it was food and sex and although I have the sex under control; the food is still my biggest challenge.
To be safe from the self-abuse of eating, I have to be consciously aware and present. Living in the now. Addiction uses the past as the pain and the future as the anxiety to keep me heading toward that isolate, separate and destroy mantra. Addiction cannot be in your present if you allow it. Buying the sandwiches at the gas station because I had a s**t day (past) or driving into work and head to a s**t day (future) is just what the addiction ordered.
Consciously thinking at this exact point is — ‘okay, I can buy those sandwiches or that chocolate bar, but what does this look like in a week’s time if I do this every day?’ ‘What about in a month, or in a year, or in ten years, what does this look like?’
I programmed the inner child to have that hit of love, security, and nurture through the food it wants you to buy right there and then. But in the long game, your addiction doesn’t want you to think and decisions are made as a reflex, with no thought, they made no effort to rationalise your decisions. Before you’ve realised, your screwing the wrapper up in the car.
Remember, addiction is trying to kill you, it’s not your friend and your inner child has a quasi-understanding of what normal is because it’s had a lifetime of abuse.
This is where the hard yards of recovery come into play.
You have to first consciously forgive yourself, self-talk to your inner child and telling yourself things will be okay, you will not die if you don’t eat that sandwich. Tell your child you’re in control and everything will be okay. If the inner critic is overpowering, phone a friend, do something to distract and this can occur multiple times throughout every day of your future self.
Taking a step back and appreciating what you have reverses the darkness. When you see the things in your life which you love, darkness cannot permeate. Gratitude is the Kryptonite to your isolation and your addictions will hate you more for it. The inner voice becomes more urgent, more self loathing occurs, ‘you’re already fat so just one more and hit that diet tomorrow will be okay,’ — is not okay because there is no tomorrow when getting a handle on your addiction.
Your emotions and the inner critic will be on a full offensive every second of the day, until you’ve lost everything, including you. To make your mind work healthily will require a resolve you think you might not have. Remember, if you think you can’t, you’re right.
Applying these tools to my situation isn’t easy. Some days, I’m tired, had a stressful day. I worry about everything, which is another hang up from my childhood. I agonise to the point of paralysis over how people perceive me and avoid conflict wherever is happening. My ability to engage on a social level is impossible without high levels of anxiety, shame and pinch of self-loathing; remember those green doors? opens up and if I let it, allows the addiction back into my life.
The road I am travelling is long, bumpy and a tough gig. I could have sat back and not bothered but If I had done this, I think the reaper would have come to fetch me far too soon.
Remember, I know I was never designed to just fit in. I was designed to stand out. I have something the world wants, I just have to dig deep, ignore the hate in my head and keep ploughing ahead while living in the present.
