Reclaiming our wholeness

Binging happens due to a few different reasons. Either we are trying to distract, reject or avoid a truth that we carry inside of us. That may be a part of that we don’t believe is lovable & accepted or it may be an emotion that feels hard to deal with. We tend to use binge eating as an outlet to relax for a moment, to undo, to unfeel, to just be.

This is why binge eating feels both terrifying (because we are feeling out of control) and comforting. It is because we need that undoing, we need that ungripping, where we are going overboard and outside of the tiny box we are trying to fit into all day every day. As we keep our breath to lift up to our own expectations, binge eating is the exhale that eventually occurs.

So how do we heal these habits of feeling out of control with food and actually feel safe within ourselves? We want to work on different levels of the process. We have the thoughts/beliefs, the emotions, physiology and the actions. We carry certain beliefs about ourselves, that we were given when growing up, which are like lenses in which we see reality from. These believes trigger our emotions, which then shift our physiology, our physical state and it influences our actions and therefore our results. Healing happens when we work on shifting our behavior, our believes, our thoughts, we learn how to really care & carry ourselves and we reclaim our wholeness.

Reclaiming our wholeness

We come into this world as whole, pure beings of light, carrying all contrast and all colors within us. When being raised in a certain family and community, we get influenced by the values they put on to us. Coming of course with the most loving intention, our parents implement these values into us. They tell us which qualities of us are good and which are not. When we are too loud, they might tell us too quiet down. Or when we feel shy, they might push us to speak up.

There are two energies in the universe. The energy moving toward and the energy moving away. As babies and little children we are extremely dependent on to our environment for our survival. Therefore, implementing the values of our parents and community becomes our way of staying alive. When our parents tell us that it is better to be quiet than to be loud, the moment we will be loud, their response will be a moving away response. Because we need them, we understand that we have to split off from certain parts of ourselves that cause that moving away response. This is how we become internally fragmented.

When we have grown up, shame & insecurity comes up (which is again this moving away response, now coming from within) the moment when these parts which we now believe are ‘bad’ come up. We try to restrain from these parts and this may be the whole reason why we go to food. To either push these parts of ours down by numbing or to deal with the emotions of shame that we instantly bring forth through our beliefs.

Teal Swan says that this internal fragmentation is the cause of loneliness. We can feel lonely in a room of people, because we are not allowing wholeness within ourselves. We redeemed some parts good and others bad and so we move away and disconnect from certain parts of ourselves. We feel lonely within ourselves.

To come back to connection then and to not experience loneliness, is then to integrate the parts of ourselves that we have pushed away. When we integrate, we won’t have the desire to reject, distract or avoid something by going to food.

Integration means adopting this part as a part of your own. Becoming very familiar and curious about it & relating to it. Becoming an expect in this part that you pushed away. What are the needs that this part is trying to get met? How could you meet this need?

I would love to give you an example from my own experience.

I have a part living within me which is desperate for love. It comes up in almost every single relationship I have, when the love I receive seems threatened. She comes out like this ugly, sticky little thing, clinging on to the feet of the person I am relating too. I hated her. I pushed her away and away, into her little dark corner. Desperation would never be part of my personality vocabulary!

Moving now then through this process myself, understand that every time she came up, I tried to numb and push her away in an instant, I realized I had to become more familiar with her. Actually connect with her. So I started to look what it was about her. Why was she the way that she was? What need was she trying to get met?

Moving closer to her, I realized she was actually my inner child. This little scared child that is terrified for its own survival. When we are threatened like that, we become desperate. Again as little children receiving love meant surviving. I see now that she has a very valid reason for being the way that she is. She needs to feel safe in love.

I am now in the process of bringing that love to her myself. To make her feel safe from within, so she will feel safe in every situation. She sometimes squirms anxiously up out of my depth and I try to caress her, instead of pulling her back by her hair.

It creates a completely different experience, when we respond with love as we embrace all parts of ourselves. To actually look right at them, asking: ’What is it that you have to share with us? What is it that you need?’

Allowing our full self is to breath into & move towards these parts that we normally contracted and moved away from when they arrived.

We all deserve to come back to wholeness, since this is our birthright. It is not a finding, but a returning. It is not an understanding, but a coming home. You deserve this!

Much love,

Iza