My Experience with Binge Eating (Starfish)
Just a snapshot because one post spanning all the different experiences of the 3 years I’ve had my eating disorder would be either extremely long or not cover enough.
At the peak of my binging was when the food dreams started.
Ever since I started developing my anxiety, I had several issues with getting good sleep – being unable to fall asleep for several hours, having nightmares and bad dreams almost every night, and/or being unable to stay awake during the morning. But it was a while into my eating disorder before I started having dreams influenced by it. The general template is this – I am faced with a huge array of my favorite binge foods (another thing my eating disorder has ruined is the concept of favorite foods – they became associated with the ravenous compulsion to binge and the self hatred which followed my indulgence and fueled my restriction… so when I’m asked ‘what’s your favorite food?’ I flinch).
Usually the dream places me in a public place with several people healthily partaking in the food around me, such as a cafeteria, cafe, or grocery store. I debate whether or not to take something ‘normal’ to eat to fit in with the happy and healthy people around me. I consider taking nothing, because a regular meal won’t ease my sudden desire to binge. A feeling in the back of my head wants to quickly take a bunch of food and run away before anyone can stop me. Usually I end up trying to sneak away enough food to binge by using one of two techniques I use in reality. I will either take a normal amount, save it, and then come back for more… and more… and more… until I’ve hid away enough to make me nauseous when I do binge in private later – or I will take enough for many people and pretend it’s for a party. Either I wake up before I can get away with the food, or someone behind the counter comments on it loudly and i wake up feeling horribly panicked and ashamed.
The bad feelings from these dreams often color the rest of my day. I don’t know how to deal with them.
About Author
Starfish
about me.. well. i'm a queer teenage kid who is struggling with mental illness (depression, general anxiety, eating disorder), among other things. i want to have people to talk about this stuff with, which is why i was excited to apply for this writing position when i saw the requirements and thought maybe i'd be good at this. if i make a mistake, please tell me and i'll try to fix it.
Thanks for the thoughtful article, Starfish. I too have food dreams. I’ve been dealing with an eating disorder for approximately 20-25 years, starting before the age of ten (I’m 34 now). In my food dreams I’m stealing things, things I don’t normally ‘allow’ myself to have when I’m engaged in a ‘healthy’ lifestyle. I remember in one dream I broke into a coffee shop dressed like a bandit and stole and stuffed an entire garbage bag with one of my binge foods and then ran off to school. I was dragging this bag around with me everywhere, and people looked at me but nobody said anything, but I kept feeling threatened. I knew someone was going to take it away from me. Then someone did try; they followed me into the bathroom and to avoid having to share I just flushed it all down the toilet.
Mostly when I have these dreams it’s me eating everything in sight. No guilt, no shame. The guilt and shame kicks in when I wake up, and treat myself exactly the same as if I’d engaged in these behaviors in waking life. Living with an eating disorder is difficult. Right now I’ve been behavior-free for nearly two months. But my recovery is pretty radical. I have wasted a lot of good years on this disease. Right now I’m working on breaking down everything I’ve ever believed in and replacing it with the truth: I don’t need to look a certain way. I don’t need to submit myself to someone else’s standards – and I don’t need to submit to my own distorted ones either. I don’t NEED to do anything. But my eating disorder will kill me if I continue to engage in it, and it has taken me down further than I’d care to admit in the past. I just want to heal, to get on with my life. I have had eating dreams since I’ve been in recovery. Mostly I just wake up, talk about them with my partner, and move on.
When I got sober from alcohol and drugs 7 years ago, someone told me something which has been extremely useful to me: it’s just a dream. It didn’t really happen, and you have no control over your subconscious.
Hopefully you are able to find some relief. Thanks again for the article.