Giving Compassion to Your Compulsions

I once gained 97 pounds in a year. Can you imagine how much eating that was on a daily basis? Actually, it was more like stuffing than eating. I was also washing a lot of that food down with alcohol and taking every drug I could get my hands on. Why would I do that? Because I was trying to get far away from the fear, extreme self-hate and seemingly unending despair I lived in. Food would numb me out from all this pain for a short while, only to amplify it in the end. It was a vicious cycle. 

Slowly, as I discovered how to meet, in my aware heart, everything that my compulsions were trying to get away from, the need for alcohol and drugs faded away and my body slowly let go of the extra weight. I now eat whatever I want to eat because I eat out of kindness and my body has stayed the same weight for many years.  

How did I unhook from alcohol and drugs? How did I come from being extremely compulsive around food into a healthy relationship with it? When I was told that if I didn’t stop eating wheat I would severely challenge my health, the rebellious one took over and I ate more wheat in the next two years than I had in the last 10 years combined. The struggle during those few years was excruciating. I hated myself for being so rebellious, and I was terrified that I would never get out of this huge abyss of struggle. 

This began to change when I learned the power of turning my struggles over to life by asking questions without looking for an answer. In my despair, I began to ask two important questions: “What is the way through this?” and “What am I ready to see?”  

As I worked with these questions, slowly it dawned on me that trying to control my eater only empowered it. And it became clear to me that, for all of us, our core compulsion is to struggle and all our eating, drinking, drugging, screen time, etc. is just an attempt to numb out from the heartache of struggle.  

I also saw that my compulsion was like a lumbering beast on automatic pilot. And even if I was able to stop it for a while, it would come back with a vengeance or it would switch to another compulsion. Just as your body shivers when you get cold and sweats when you get hot in order to keep homeostasis in your body, your compulsions are all about survival too. They will try to keep balance inside of you by pushing away feelings you have not yet learned how to bring home to your heart. 

Like a soft, sweet breeze on a hot summer day, I began to recognize I didn’t need to turn away from myself and that I wasn’t a weak-willed ninny for not having been able to control myself. This is when my relationship with my overeater began to change. I saw it as a finely crafted survival system that was trying to get rid of feelings that I didn’t know how to be with, feelings that if I had stayed open to them when I was young, I could have died. 

Now that I have discovered how to be with the feelings that were fueling my extreme eating, my overeating has calmed down. It still shows up in little waves every once in a while, and a European, bittersweet chocolate bar in my cupboard helps me to recognize that it is here. When I want more than a couple of pieces, I know there is something inside of me that needs me. And as I meet it, the urge to turn away from myself through chocolate simply fades away. 

It takes a while to discover the art of turning towards yourself rather than away. But it is so worth the effort. Healing the compulsive one inside of me has brought forth spaciousness, an open heart, and the pure joy of being alive. 

If it interests you to allow yourself to heal and be healed by your compulsions, my Being Healed by Our Compulsions interactive online course begins again on January 12th. This eight-week course will teach you how to open to what your compulsions have to teach you. Rather than a problem to be solved, your compulsion becomes a guide back into ease and joy. This course will teach you how to develop a nourishing relationship with yourself and your life. 

In the end, just keep it simple. Know your compulsion is not your enemy and it is not something you are doing wrong. It is your ally and friend on your path back to yourself, and the joy of being fully alive.