Panic Eating

In this time of learning to retrain my thoughts, I have discovered so many new things.  Like, when I’m stressed, I tend to shove food into my mouth as fast as humanly possible.  My best friend and I call this Panic Eating.  Recently, I lost my W-2 form while at Trader Joes, and of course jumped to the conclusion that someone had already stolen my identity and my life would be significantly more difficult from that point forward.  During my spiral, I ate three-fourths of a bag of these potato crispy things that I bought on a whim.  With only a handful left in the bag, I realized that I had not tasted a single bite of my snack.  I asked myself, “will polishing off the rest of this bag actually help my situation?  Will consuming these potato snacks solve any of my anxiety?”  Of course, the answer was “no.”  I knew that my anxiety was stemming from a heavy fear, and in not knowing how to deal with the stress, I turned to my bff, aka potatoes, for comfort.  I sat there for a minute, took a deep breath…then shoved my hand to the bottom of the bag, scraped up what remained and heaved them into my mouth.  There, at least I can throw this bag away and get it out of my house forever.

Ugh.  This journey is not easy, and it is certainly not straightforward.  I struggle every single day.  My old ways of thinking about food and body image pop up multiple times a day, sometimes setting up shop for hours at a time.  And lately my old habits of restricting have crept back in, too.  My therapist reminds me often that this tug of war between the old me and the new me is what healthy recovery looks like.  Deep breaths.  Onward.

Ps Hours later, I parted the red sea of grocery carts and found my little moleskine planner wedged between two carts.  My W-2 form was tucked neatly inside.  Crisis averted.