Some on Maladaptive Overeating Behaviors

When we discovered overeating in our youth, we obtained a benefit from overeating. That is why we continued, and the problems developed.

What benefit? Well, if we have anxiety due to being slower than others in school, constantly told to hurry up, belittled by parents, teachers, harassed by other students, we develop anxieties. That is to be expected. Now sugar and starches cause a rise in blood sugar and insulin. These are sedatives, so the excess food takes the edge off life. Is it any doubt that I became addicted to food? And as I used food for relief, I never learned other more reasonable ways of dealing with the abuse.

Learning to deal with abuse is teachable, it can be learned. It is a very useful skill, once we learn. Some use self defacing humor or comments, not the best way I think. Some just walk away, blank the abuser. Some turn to something they are good at, studying something as a method of isolation, reducing the contact with abusive people. Some turn violent, beating on the abusers. Some of us have come to understand the abusers are just assholes, and avoid them.

Some things are up to us and some are not. If I take care of the things that are up to me, it becomes my responsibility to learn to deal with assholes, and to become self-sufficient in this activity. I can use a support group or mentors, live or dead, to figure out what should be done and carry on. The stoics have some good ideas. Ultimately, I have control over my personality, characteristic, and I can choose which characteristics to build and which to leave dormant. I can try to develop understanding of this problem, and ignore the detractors and the miss-informed. I am in control of my own thinking. Some may be right, some wrong, but I can ratchet my way toward the truth, as I test reason and make progress to food sanity. I cannot be returned to something I never had.

So I can go away and live in my head with my thoughts. I need not to be bothered with time pressures, for production, for revenue, for progress, although I am making progress from time to time. It is all about stoic self sufficiency, learning to take responsibility only for those things that are up to me, my desires, efforts, values, and value only virtues, the "goods".

Enough head noise. and a picture

Splat