Is eating a battle zone? If it is (it was a nuclear war for me) you can sign up for my free webinar offering here.
Then on November 4th a new experiment in sharing: an 8 day challenge in eating peace on facebook live. Sign up HERE to receive daily alerts via email for the live course and you can also find me on facebook here. I’ll send out the schedule very soon for everyone participating (we meet in mornings Pacific Time).
When my eating world seemed like a battle zone, one of the primary emotions propelling the ups and downs….
….was rage.
Rage Eating.
I was so furious at the rules, regulations, requirements, management, arguments, powerlessness, enforcements.
It sometimes felt like the whole thing, all of life really, was one big thing to “deal” with.
I’d hold my breath and take it, and do what was needed, and then something would snap and the anger would come out sideways like a geyser.
In the form of eating food.
Everything I ever wanted I ate that day, from one end of town to the other.
Then, of course, I’d feel absolute disgust, hatred and rage with myself.
Several years ago, I witnessed on video Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of non-violent communication, speak about facilitating raging mad prison inmates to find peace with others.
The inmates rebellious hatred of authority or “the man” had a similar feel to rage eating I had done.
The feeling of anger at What Is Greater, and the feeling of anger at ourselves at the same time.
I didn’t like myself when I raged against anything (even though partially it felt like a relief at first), and I’d isolate and hide from the world after the eating or raging was over, licking my wounds. Which is an interesting way of putting it using the word “licking”, right?
There’s something soothing about licking, what some animals literally do for their own wounds. It’s normal to find food and eating soothing, like medicine for the attack.
What Marshall Rosenberg did with these gangs of men who were so furious, was offer them a way to be heard and then speak, then listen, and use “I” statements instead of lashing out and making accusatory statements.
Rooms with hugely violent emotional energy in them completely softened, as men heard what others had to say and became willing to listen a moment and wonder what it was like to stand in the others’ shoes and consider who needed what, including themselves.
When no one felt cut off, hated, or disrespected… …something pretty remarkable began to happen. People found themselves able to relate to the other.
Then, in that space of connection and listening, dialogue could continue, and understanding.
What are we afraid of? What voice are we trying to shut down or cut off, because it’s frightening? Where do we feel we have no say, or no way to get our needs met? Where does it seem like you have no choice but to eat (or do some other kind of compulsive behavior)?
Was it really true that I was being pummeled by life, or that relationship, or this circumstance, or the rules about food, eating and being thin?
Who would I be without my thoughts, my story, about people, places, things, food, or my own mind coming at me?
Just today, a beautiful inquirer doing The Work on her feeling of compulsion with eating said that without the thoughts of fighting with something, fighting with others, fighting with the craving….she’d be aware of the vast nothingness around.
And suddenly, not so comfortable with it.
Sometimes, the wild mysterious vast expansive place we can experience when we wonder who we’d be without our story of arguing with reality…..
…..is a bit frightening.
But there’s one simple place to begin, when you notice you’re experiencing angry eating. You can at the very start question your thought that you shouldn’t be angry.
Is it true?
Without the belief I shouldn’t be angry, and I shouldn’t eat over my anger, I could ask myself what my rage is about? What does it have to say?
This would be a very kind thing to do, and a very loving-parent thing to do. It would be a respectful, clear, open-minded orientation to the experience of rage, and to feeling unmet needs, and to sharing life with others here in this world.
“To imagine that some little thing–food, sex, power, fame–will make you happy is to deceive oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.” ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
Maybe uncovering your real self begins with saying what you’re angry about, and listening closely, with respect.
I hope you’ll also join me in the Eating Peace webinar.
Much love,
Grace
Eating Peace Process 5 month Immersion starts November 13th. Short lessons each week, group calls every week, 3 live inquiry calls each week. Lots of contact and connection to dissolve isolation and share in honesty and freedom.