Full week of therapy.
New coping strategies that my therapist has practiced with me:
- Reverse Sensory Enhancement/Deprivation
One or more senses that are either given more attention to, or ignored completely during a binge-purge cycle are flipped.
So in essence, usually vision is the first thing that’s given the most and immediate attention. Looking at the food alone is enough to start a cycle along with the emotional and cognitive issues that follow. For me, this a a fairly important issue. If I avert my line of sight to whatever is the Kickstarter, I’ll stay fixated on it.
In a sense, the goal is not to completely take away vision, but to kind of go on cruise control regardless of what you’re seeing. A distraction of sorts.
Which is where my most ignored sense comes in: tactile sensations. I more or less don’t even remotely pay attention to anything I can feel on any part of my body. Small things like an itch, touching your arm, touching something textured, feeling your tongue move around in your mouth, all serve as distractions if you pay them enough attention. Even 5 seconds worth of averting your attention can be a great start, and can be built upon.
Same with auditory sensations. Playing music while you eat is good, making tapping noises, whistling, listening to white noise that occurs naturally in your surrounds, etc.
I spent all of this week just touching random things whenever I felt a cycle coming on. Not for long periods of time but just enough for me to think about what I touched, and how I felt. My carpet, my hair, my face, my arms, my clothes, the wall, a flower, grass, trees, my car, etc. the trick is just start doing it. Don’t think about doing it for too long. And feel how stuff feels against your hands, or whatever part of your body you choose to focus on.
- Empathy/Sympathy Techniques:
This more a thought process/experiment, and it’s a bit second place to number 1, since it’s something to be worked on over time, and isn’t something you’ using to directly divert a cycle.
One is not to feel sympathetic for themselves, however it is important to empathize with your own emotions. It’s kind of like the Leaf/River Technique I used to do. (If you’re wondering what this let me know) So it’s like saying, “ I feel [insert emotion], and that’s fine. I’m feeling it, and I’m not going to ignore it. It’s normal to feel how I’m feeling.” That’s not to confuse further condoning irrational behavior, but to establish that recovery is a life long journey. Feeling sorry for your shortcomings defeats the entire purpose of recovery. Instead of looking at a small stitch that’s been missed in a knitted sweater, look at the entire sweater as a whole. The missed stitch doesn’t make the sweater not a sweater anymore. Having a bad day, month, or even year(s), doesn’t automatically make recovery impossible.
- Association Technique:
This is something slightly similar to Synesthesia, but it’s purposefully done. My therapist and I call it “Swatching”. Essentially you’re giving yourself free range to possibly jumble up stuff. Hear colors, taste sounds, etc. This one is my personal favorite since it allows me to drift off into my imagination. There’s no right or wrong way to really go about it either.
I wake up in the morning and just play around with how I perceive stuff. “Im feeling yellow today” or “this tastes like how warm blankets feel”. In essence it’s not supposed to make sense logically, but make sense mentally and emotionally. A lot of other aspects can be tangible to this too. Lots a gray area to work with so things don’t feel so defined.
This Technique can be a bit tricky if someone is already fixated on anything to do with food and eating, but my therapist mentioned that that is prime time to try and swatch whatever comes to mind. Everything from the color of the food, how it tastes, how it was prepared can lead someone to thinking about something completely different, and other random things we associate with our experiences. Again, more or less a creative distraction technique of sorts.
I haven’t really been doing 1 all that much, or at least giving it some thought, but number 3 has been something I’ve been doing more than anything else since I was introduced to the concept. I take significantly longer to eat, but I’m enjoying the experience because I’m not tying it to the negative or obsessive associations I still have with eating. Instead I’m looking at it as…an interesting activity of sorts. Sometimes weird, sometimes good, sometimes funny, sometimes serious.
So I’d say this week was very productive.
