What Makes Recovery “Work”? Part III (You Don’t Need to Work so Hard)
This is the 3rd and final post in my blog series, “What Makes Recovery Work?”. In Part I, I talked about expectations surrounding what it means for a recovery method to work. In Part II, I discussed the work you personally need to do in recovery, which is to dismiss each urge to binge (and also eat enough food). Now in Part III, I want to talk about eliminating unnecessary work in recovery.
When I was in therapy for binge eating, it felt like I had a lifelong journey of work ahead of me in order to stop the harmful behavior and then to maintain my recovery. But, since then, I’ve seen that it’s not necessary to work so hard to put aside the binge eating habit.
I know you aren’t afraid of doing work; I know you aren’t expecting recovery to be effortless; and I know you are willing to do what it takes to stop your binge eating. Working hard is certainly not a bad thing, but if right now, you feel that your hard work hasn’t gotten you closer to freedom from binge eating, you may be doing work that isn’t actually targeting the binge eating problem.
Commonly, in traditional eating disorder therapy, the work that is required has to do with managing emotions, healing pain from your past, and learning to cope better with daily stress. This is meaningful work that can help improve your life, but if it isn’t helping you avoid acting on the binge urges, it’s not helping with the binge eating specifically.
It can be baffling when you feel you are doing all of the hard work that therapy requires and you are still binge eating. If you find yourself in this situation, you may understandably start to look for something else to work on, and then something else after that. This can lead to a constant state of trying to find another problem to solve, or something else within yourself to fix, hoping it will eventually put an end to your binge eating.
You may also be working on improving and fixing the way you are eating, thinking that will get rid of the binge episodes. You may be trying to create the perfect meal plan, or trying to adhere to strict eating guidelines, so you may be working hard every day measuring, counting, and weighing your food intake. Additionally, you could be going through a lot of trouble to avoid certain foods that you believe are problematic or addicting, or you may be trying to research nutrition and take all of the right supplements.
Although improving your eating in ways that feel good to you is a positive thing, and although it’s certainly important to make sure you eat adequately, it’s possible you are putting a lot of unnecessary time and energy into your eating plan, without it making much of a difference in your binge eating. It can feel like a never-ending quest when you are always looking for something else to fix or change about your diet, hoping that will put a stop to the binges.
If you think a lot of hard work is required for recovery, it only makes sense that you would keep looking for something else to solve or fix, whether that’s in your life, your relationships, your personality, your emotions, or the way you are eating. It’s admirable, and shows determination and resilience. But, I know how frustrating it feels when it seems like no matter what you work on, you still end up binge eating.
What if working harder in recovery is not the answer?
It is my belief that no matter how much you improve your life, your emotional state, your relationships, your ability to cope, or the way you are eating, binge urges will still inevitably come up. Even if you work very hard in all of those areas, you’ll still be left with the fundamental work of recovery: not acting on the binge urges.
To stop acting on the binge urges, what if less work is actually more effective?
I had a conversation with Dr. Amy Johnson on my podcast last week, and part of what we talked about was how just seeing your binge eating habit differently can allow change to occur without the struggle or without needing to work so hard. When you have a fundamental shift in the way you view your urges and respond to them, it suddenly seems unnecessary to sort out and deal with all of your other problems or have a perfect eating plan in order to stop binge eating.
So, instead of thinking “what other problems and difficult emotions can I work on in recovery?”, you can change your mindset and think, “how can I work on developing a new perspective about the urges and respond to them differently?”
Ending binge eating doesn’t need to feel like intense, complicated, or tedious work. The work can simply be you deeply seeing that the urges do not express your true wants and needs, and then learning to connect with your own power to avoid acting on them.
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Do you need more help as you stop binge eating?
Free Inspiration Booklet – The booklet contains 31 daily messages to help you stay focused and motivated each day as you let go of binge eating.
One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn Hansen. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.
Group Coaching – Includes 4 group coaching calls per week with Kathryn. You’ll also get access to a forum for encouragement and accountability, and course access.
Brain over Binge Course – Self-paced online lessons (plus an app) for only $18.99/month. Includes over 125 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.
Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.
If You Decide You Binge to Cope
If you are familiar with my blog or books, you know I hold the opinion that binge eating is not a coping mechanism for underlying emotions or life’s problems. Instead, I believe binge eating is about coping with the urges to binge.
In the Brain over Binge approach, the urges to binge are the one and only direct cause of binge eating; and even though an indirect link can develop between binge eating and negative emotions, there is nothing inherent about those emotions that make you binge. Furthermore, binge urges can and do arise under any emotional climate in the body, even during times of happiness or calm.
However, some people have told me they can’t let go of the idea that their binge eating is an attempt to cope with feelings or problems in their lives. Although I still maintain that this idea can make the urges much more meaningful and compelling than they actually are, and recovery more complicated than it needs to be, I understand why it is hard for some to let go of this belief.
The idea that you binge to cope may be longstanding for you; it may be something you’ve built your identity around in some ways. It could be that, through years of believing that binge eating was your coping mechanism (regardless of where you acquired that belief), you haven’t even tried healthy forms of coping in a very long time. It may be difficult for you to see the urges as just faulty signals from the lower brain, because to you, it feels like the urges are signaling something emotionally meaningful. It may feel as if the urges are pointing you toward something you need: a way to avoid your feelings or cope with problems.
If this is the case for you, you may believe that the only way to stop binge eating is to learn to manage or solve your difficult feelings and problems, and implement healthier coping behaviors. You may feel like, if you did that, you would no longer want to binge. (This is the approach reflected in mainstream theories and therapies for eating disorders).
If you decide you binge to cope, you may be wondering if the Brain over Binge approach would be useful for you, or if it’s incompatible?
I believe it still could be useful in a very important way, and I’ll explain how and why:
If you feel that healthier coping behaviors are what you need, it’s likely that the urges to binge are preventing you from learning and using those behaviors.
When you have a binge eating habit, and therefore have urges to binge, no alternate behavior (including coping behaviors) will feel as compelling as binge eating. When your thoughts are only fixated on getting large amounts of food, the idea of doing anything else, including anything that would help you cope, is going to seem unappealing. Your brain simply isn’t driving you toward a healthy coping behavior, it’s driving you to food. Even if an alternative coping strategy would help you deal with the emotions you are experiencing, getting yourself to do it in spite of the urge to binge, can seem like a monumental task.
So, how do you get yourself to actually do the coping behavior you think will truly help you?
You first need to dismiss the urge to binge.
Dismissing the binge urge means to stop giving it value and attention, and to see the urge as not what your true self actually wants.
Even if you believe that binge eating is a coping mechanism, it doesn’t change the fact that you (in your higher brain) don’t actually want this coping mechanism. You don’t want to binge to cope.
The urge to binge is still a faulty lower brain message, not worthy of your consideration; and you have to dismiss it in order to learn to cope.
If binge eating felt like an effective strategy for coping and it was helping in your life, then there would not be a problem for you. But that’s not the case. You are here trying to recover, and that means binge eating is creating pain in your life that you want to get rid of. Even if you feel like it has a strong connection to emotions and helps you temporarily avoid certain feelings or problems, those ‘benefits’ simply don’t feel worth it to you.
You may find yourself thinking that you can’t stop binge eating until you find healthy ways to cope, but I challenge you to start considering that you can’t find healthy ways to cope until you stop binge eating.
Or, said another way…
You can’t implement any healthy coping behaviors until you learn to dismiss binge urges.
For example, if you can dismiss the urge to binge in a moment of stress, you are then free to use any coping behavior you want to deal with the actual stress–a behavior that will not cause harm to your body and mind and that will not create even more stress in your life, like binge eating does.
Regardless of when, why, or how the binge urge arises, it is still neurological junk, it is still a harmful message that your true self doesn’t actually want to follow. You, in your higher brain, want to choose to do other things in your life that are in line with who you are and who you want to to be. Dismissing binge urges gives you the capacity to do those other things–whether those are healthy coping behaviors or anything else you want.
*If you are unfamiliar with the concept of dismissing urges, I’ve written a free eBook to help you understand and learn this approach.