Mind full

I feel bruised today, not outside, but in. I've begun sessions in a mindful eating course, and it has kicked up a lot of very old stuff for me. We were discussing the basic human needs, based on someone's (whose name I can't remember) psychological model. First came survival, then security, then love and acceptance, then self-realization. Our group leader explained that each of these needs is first encountered and met in early childhood, and that having been put on a diet as a child threatens those needs, and makes it more difficult to meet them later in life. She also said that the more basic the need, the greater the emotional response to it. And I was sitting in that room, thinking that it's a miracle that I made it through with a personality at all. All of those needs were threatened all the time when I was little. It wasn't until I was adopted by the Lepards that I had any sort of foundation of security at all. I'm forty-two, for heavens' sake. Why does it still hurt to look back at that little girl? I mean, yes, I'm looking at present behaviors and working to make myself healthier. But oh, the issue of food and safety is still so intertwined. Add to that the IBS, where I'm not sure what I can eat or whether it will hurt, and I'm finding some very old wounds aching a bit.

I have had a LOT of therapy. Thank goodness. I have come so far that it just astonishes me some days. But this hurts, and I didn't expect it to. I expected it to be an intellectual process. Ha! Delusions of normality, I know. What I'm looking for is freedom from food as an emotional crutch. In many ways, it feels like my emotional eating is the last tie that binds me to that old childhood. Dieting wasn't just supposed to make me thin, it was used as a punishment. If I failed to meet weight-loss expectations, there was a beating. I don't own a scale, because when it gets to numbers, I get nuts. It's the same with good-food and bad-food. I'd like there to just be food. I'd like to eat what I want when I want it, and to know when I'm full. I'd like to know when I'm hungry for food and when I'm hungry for a hug. I'd like not to feel so bruised, but I feel it anyhow.

Sigh. I must be doing the right thing. I feel like crap.