Thank you for sharing those very personal, profound thoughts and feelings. I am glad that you have managed to help yourself lessen the frequency of your injuries.

That must be a "compulsive obsessive" behavior - just as alcohol, smoking and overeating (not in all cases!) are. I have suffered through all three - and conquered all except for losing all of this weight. I will conquer it, too.

"...if the destructive coping skill isn't the poblem, then stopping the behavior isn't the solution..." Love the elegant clarity of this. Pretty sure MY brain wouldn't have looked at it that way.
I appreciate Tragedian's honesty. My range of self-damaging behaviors cuts a wide swath thru my life (see recently adding cigarettes to avoid emotions for a mild example)...So may I ask, can you provide some SAMPLES of POSITIVE coping skills?
Thanks so much & best wishes!

Bit late reading this, but agree with you totally WereBear. Eating all that low fat, high grain, lots of pasta, rice cakes can make you hungrier. Maybe because they are so addictive you want to eat more. However, I totally agree with your realisation that your body responds to large amounts of carbs by releasing great tankers of insulin and lowered your blood sugar.

I find that when I leave those foods out and eat fish, cheese, eggs, meat, salads, veggies etc that I am totally satisfied and never need to binge. Bingeing on carbs is easy, but bingeing on the low carb foods doesn't occur - for me that is. So, spot on WereBear.

I don't think that pushing down your emotions is a good idea as they are still there festering away in the sub-conscious. When a big stress comes along they tend to rear their ugly head. I used to push my emotions down with eating. I used to chomp on food to stop myself from saying what I thought. As I changed my personality and got stronger and stronger I no longer needed to push my feelings down. I found that simply expressing how I felt became a new way for me. This is not about being nasty or shouting someone else down. It is simply about being true to myself. Over time I noticed that I wasn't bingeing. However, every now and again when someone makes an unkind remark I find myself feeling an old emotion. As mentioned in a previous post of mine I learned to relax and breathe into my feelings and really allow myself to feel. In this way they dissipated. Since writing that post I have discovered that I no longer re-act to someone else saying something which at one time would have upset me. I guess I have had a great personality change for the better as far as I am concerned.

I think every remark by everyone of you is worth looking at. It is good to openly admit you have a problem with bingeing. At one time I would never have shared with anyone that I used to binge. I would have been too ashamed. Now I don't mind who knows. The bingeing and overcoming it was part of my personality change.

However, when I lost a lot of weight on a low carb diet a few years ago I just didn't binge. It was only when I went off low carb and included the foods WereBear mentioned that I started to binge again, but never as much as I had previously. After coming off low carb I just couldn't get back on track fully. I kept wavering and having a slice of bread here and some rice or whatever there. Even just a bit of high carb, low fat kept me from getting back on track. It feels so good now that I am eating low carb again. My body really appreciates it.

Good luck to all of you who binge. Try not to stress over it because the more you stress the more you want to binge. I don't even stress about scales, food or writing things down now. I eat in a way that my body loves, I don't jump on and off the scales and I have no need to write anything down. You would be surprised at just how much stress you release by 'letting go' and not worrying about it.

I find that people on this site really want to help each other. I really want to help because I know how it feels to binge and how my body feels and reacts badly to foods that do not suit it. Not just overweight, but things like high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, heartburn etc. When I drop those foods my body returns to normal almost immediately. I do not tell anyone what to do and I do not expect anyone to do what I do. So, please do whatever is right for you.

A lot of it is what I used to do; only without the eating part. Reading books, watching movies, web surfing; I have a brain which loves INPUT. I think curling up with a book and a box of treats was my way of flooding the system and keeping unhappy thoughts at bay.

So now I feel my feelings and I read my book and I enjoy my food. Just not all at the same time. Since my feelings are better able to be acted upon, and my books are enjoyable all on their own, and my food tastes the best it ever has; it is plenty.

There is always plenty, if we have the right perspective.

This is difficult to do, because the thing of primary importance about a particular coping skill is that it scratch the itch PERSONALIZED to the individual. You cannot do this by finding what works for other people, you have to do this for yourself. I'll explain if you have like, 47 hours to read the explanation. Bear with me.

The skill also has to have the other qualities I mentioned, versatility, being close at hand, engaging your mind, but if it doesn't scratch the itch it will leave you unsatisfied and it won't work and you'll fall back on the destructive skill. The real problem about the destructive skill is also its primary benefit; IT WORKS PERFECTLY. It may always work perfectly, which means it also may always be in your repertoire. Make peace with that. Pick skills that delay your use of the destructive skill, then build on them.

Since a new skill must scratch the itch, you must really examine just what 'the itch' IS, exactly, inside and out. That's why part of the journaling focuses on the use of the destructive skill, because you have to understand all the aspects of the problem you were coping with, plus all the aspects of JUST WHAT the destructive skill DOES to address that problem that works so well, that makes it SO MUCH of an effective skill that it became your only one. Because THAT'S EXACTLY WHY you're in this situation with eating(or whatever destructive skill) being your only skill, because it addresses ALL the problems, COMPLETELY, EVERY TIME, so from a mental health standpoint, from the standpoint of a brain helping you mentally cope with emotional problems, YOU'VE NEVER NEEDED ANOTHER SKILL.

BUT, it is precisely the EXCELLENCE of the destructive habit that makes it so hard to come up with, practice using, and develop proficiency with, new healthier skills, because in the thick of a persons problem with another skill, NOTHING is going to work as well as the destructive habit. That quality of excellence inherent to the destructive skill is also why there can be no shortcuts taken with the process, whether you use the process I've outlined or something else you come up with with a counselor. No shortcuts to what I used means only working on one skill at a time, because it's not gonna work at first, you have to practice it to see if it will work, and also to determine if it EVEN IS a healthy skill. Example, one of my experimental skills was shopping. However, that resulted in me spending literally hjndreds of dollars because I couldn't restrain myself, so it ended up in red on the pink list. Someone else might be able to have it as a healthy skill, or just window shop and feel better. You still want to record the skill, because the reason we have coping skills is because we NEED them, and there will be times you are going to want to know which unhealthy skills WORK, so you can USE them to avoid other unhealthy skills. None of these skills are all good or all bad, you must must must be flexible in your thinking. Taking no shortcuts with my method also means taking the time to do the homework, the journaling, the lists. You are working on yourself, this exercise I thought was stupid before I tried it, but I had given my word to my Chief that I would comply with all aspects of my treatment. It was an order I had been given, and I follow orders; period. So i did the work and all through my treatment, looking back, it's the 'stupid' stuff and the stuff that p***ed me off the most that I benefited from the most. No shortcuts; make the lists. The destructive habit has become one you follow instinctively, but NONE of the other skills will share that quality, you're not going to instinctively reach for ANY of them, so you need to have something you can refer to. Plus, eventually there will come a time when you're doing better, and you won't have had to refer to your list for a while so you'll have forgotten some of what's on there and why you put it there, so you will still need the lists long term. That means that if you haven't made the lists and done the journaling, the treatment and the progress you've made isn't going to stick and you will be right back where you started. It's the excellence of the destructive habit that also means that you do best if you DON'T stop that habit right away, even if you could, which, if you could then it wouldn't be a problem, amirite? That's because exemining what you are responding to and how the habit works firsthand is what is going to tell you how to find other skills that work. As you do this, think of the things you cope with and why you need to cope. The problems you are addressing are like 'symptoms', and the destructive skill is the medicine. Example; you have a cold. The cold is the 'problem', but you don't take the 'medicine' for the 'problem', you take it for the 'symptoms'. You take decongestant because your lungs are congested, not because you have a cold. Example; your son gets into a fight and is expelled from school. That's the problem, but you don't take the medicine for the 'problem', you don't eat because of the 'problem', you eat because of the 'symptoms', because that situation made you angry. Someone else might not feel angry, and if anger makes them eat, they won't turn to that destructive habit, but, if that situation makes them feel like a bad parent, and that's one of their triggering 'symptoms', then they get their 'medicine', eating, and they take it. The first person has to find out that anger is their trigger, then find out WHY EATING HELPS, maybe it's the chewing action that works out their anger, maybe it's the cooking that helps by distracting them, and then they just eat what they cook. They might replace chewing with, bear with me here; yelling angry poetry that they have made a list of, for the jaw action. They might replace cooking with, again bear with me, using a play doh cooking set, or using an easy bake oven set. The second person has to find coping skills that address how eating helped with feeling like a bad parent. Maybe the 'medicine', eating, helped the 'symptom', feeling like a bad parent because providing food for their family makes them feel like a good parent, and eating food they've made reminds them of that, or maybe they want to help their son feel better, and when he was a baby, before he started having problems, she would feed him and food reminds her of that. She might address this problem with dolls, one she could pretend to feed or even a doll you actually mix dollfood for, or she might address her problem with something else that reinforces that she's a parent who does her best, like reading aloud to herself the way she used to read aloud to her child, or finding another aspect of providing for a family, like ironing, and maybe while she's doing that she could sing to herself the lullabies she used to sing to her son.

Have I won the award for record setting post length, yet?

Anyway, there are different reasons why the skills I practiced worked. Some of them mimicked the destructive skill. Some of them allowed me to continue to dwell on the problem I was having, allowing me self-validation of my negative emotions, some of them allowed me to spend time thinking at length ABOUT the destructive skill, some of them have nothing to do with the destructive skill. As I worked on this, I learned what feelings the skill addressed and how it addressed them, I'll explain mine;

One of the ways self harm, SH, helped me was that I would use it when I was in emotional pain, and when you are injured your body releases chemicals that bring pain relief. The best skill that worked for these times was going to the theater and watching the lates horror movie. You are scared by something in the movie, your fight or flight reaction kicks in, mimcking the effect I was getting from pain. After a scare, you feel physical relief or may laugh. Symmetry.

One of the ways SH helped was by allowing me to dwell, alone and unjudged, on suicidal feelings. I have an anonymous blog where I vent suicidal thoughts without judgement. Helps me express them, allows me to dwell on them without guilt. Symmetry.

One of the ways SH helps is that I feel like I can do nothing about a problem. Helplessness. In this instance SH was distracting me by allowing me to dwell on and think about the problem and the emotional distress I am in, while expressing my feelings of distress. When you are distressed you are in pain and i also couldn't do anything about the issue I was having. I would pray to God and tell him I had a problem I couldn't do anything about, ask him to fix it for me, he can do those things. Then I would take the problem off my shoulders and put it on His. Then allow myself to be distracted. My Father was going to take care of me. Children's parents take care of them. Children are vulnerable and to some degree helpless. Children...also...color. After going to my Father and giving the problem to him, I would ease my distress by coloring FUZZY VELVET pictures. The velvet creates a barrier so you can't draw outside the lines, the black/vivid color contrast makes them turn out beautiful, I have dozens of these on my wall. I am allowed to spend time feeling childlike, vulnerable, and helpless. The issue remains, but I am abiding the uncertainty and pain, and have also done something about it by telling my Father and letting him in on the problem so he can go through it with me, and my hands are occupied coloring, and my mind is occupied choosing colors, a simple activity. Symmetry.

Others I chose, healthy and unhealthy;

Buying myself things.
Throwing away things in my apartment I don't use or need.
Learning a new language(now 4 new languages, this was a huge one for me, it allowed me to feel like I was continuing on in life, instead of having no choice and going nowhere. And let me invest in myself. This one is Asymmetrical, it does the OPPOSITE of what SH did, but was phenomenally successful)(think outside the box, give yourself no limits, not every coping skill involves candles and incense, some of them involve jumping out of planes or taking risks and leaps)
Writing a novel
Cleaning my collection
getting a selection of barbie dolls ready for 'the ball'. Then holding the ball. (Yep.)
Having a tea party with a selection of stuffed animals. We discuss things I'm going through.
Driving and smoking.
calling suicide hotlines if needed(they will discuss SH too)
Making a plan of how I will use SH the next time, elaborately planning it out on paper and buying the things i will use, then putting the plan and supplies in a box and wrapping them up like a very elaborate beautifully decorated birthday present and putting it on display in my apartment, and never using it.(THIS little beauty I stumbled on by accident. It's creative, and it's soothing. The elaborate drawn out planning of the SH makes me feel like ive already done it, the wrapping and preservation of it is soothing because it made me feel like I didn't have to give it up, that SH would always be there for me even if I didn't do it, and it felt like a present I was giving myself, and the elaborate wrapping job you don't want to open.)

I've mentioned toys a lot. Im tempted to give christians a pat answer to the problem of being uncomfortable acting like a child, and that answer is; you ARE a child. We're all GOD'S children and we should all act like it. However, I have another answer, too. Dealing with, acting out, and working through our problems with our playthings is ALREADY BUILT INTO us all, unless you had no toys as a child, therefore, it may initially, as you try to turn to habits that aren't the destructive skill, be easier for you to turn to a plaything or a toy activity, because they may be the only other effective coping skills you have experience actually using. In other words, if as a child you played with barbie's or clay a lot, then odds are you already, in your past, have used those activities to cope with something, so it has worked in the past, you have used it in the past, whereas, if you want to try to replace eating, or whatever destructive skill, with meditation, and you've never meditated, there are several drawbacks to that; you've never done it before, so just like anything else someone tries for the first time, odds are until you've done it for quite a while, you're gonna suck at it and that's going to make it inneffective. Also, you don't know if you're actually going to like it. Furthermore, there's a difference between someone who WANTS to start meditating because they have an interest in it and someone who wants to start meditating because their goal is to find something to address their lack of coping skills. You cannot address this problem by learning what works for other people. You are starting from square one, as a person who has only one coping skill. It has to be something you are interested in, it has to scratch the itch, you have to find it YOURSELF, nobody can find it for you.

Anyway, children have powerful feelings, and their play is how they manage them. Go to toysrus. If you can walk into a giant warehouse sized building FILLED WITH TOYS and NOT have fun, there's gotta be somethin wrong with ya. Find something that appeals to you. Tell them your niece is having a birthday. Or tell them, 'no, these are for me', and walk out of the store all ballsy wich ya bad self. If you want to go the highbrow path, may I suggest American Girl doll company (top notch quality), or asian ball jointed dolls. Take a class and make your own. Gentlemen; slot car racing. Miniature trains, rockets, model making. Ladies, build a dollhouse. Theyre toys, but kids dont do that stuff because they dont have jobs. But you dont have to spend a lot of money. Just get a coloring book. I give them to the adults at the homeless shelter I work at. Coloring is meditative, plus you don't have to learn 'how' to do it, and it doesn't get less fun as your age increases. When I was in the hospital i met a young soldier, 20, and he still had blood on his boots, and he had had to shoot children because those children had AKs pointed at him, and his young wife had cheated on him while he was deployed, and in a military mental hospital you wear your uniform, so he was going through this at a base away from his family, he had no friends at the base because he had been deployed for months, the only person he should have had to help him was his cheating wife who he had split up with, he had been armed and in a war zone killing people less than a week before, and he had to see counselors at the hospital still in his literally bloody boots. He was the first person I told the fuzzy picture thing too. The depth of thanks he brought back to me is the reason I can never be ashamed to color, dress dolls, have tea parties, talk to stuffed animals. If it worked for his problem, I dare you to bring me what YOU got that won't.

wow...i really appreciate your taking the time, Tragedian, to explain this all so thoroughly to me. :-) Therapy today, I think I will print this out and take along to discuss.
I was angry last night with my DH and I def wanted to binge, although that's not usually my first course of action...i wound up eating 2 tbsp of pb and going to bed. :-/ so i guess it was kind of a win.

Good move FelHodg. Any improvement is fantastic. If you try relaxing and breathing whilst at the same time feeling your anger; the anger slowly dissipates. Well, that is what happens for me. I don't need to use this now. DH are notorious for making one feel angry. What I do now is look at what I am angry about. In the past it could be anything from being controlled, called names etc. In the past I would have reacted very badly to this control etc and would have gone into a binge. Now I look at it and see that it is not worth holding onto it and I simply drop it. It is really only the ego that is being bruised when being called names. Control, I don't allow this because I have become my own person. It took a long time achieve this. So, as I look at things now I totally let go and drop it and leave the 'problem' or whatever you want to call it with them. I have not 'given in' as such like I might have done in the past which led to a binge. I simply do not care what other people might say or think about me. If you take a good look you will probably find as I did that their ego is bruised. They control without realising it, but this is a need within them. They call you names to put you down. In my case often because I stood up for myself or didn't agree with something. I found that the more I became my own person and the more I let go of worrying about what was said and left the ball in their court, the more things changed for the better and the easier everything got. Now, yours might be entirely different things that make you feel angry, but if you can get beyond the anger and look at what is actually making you feel angry you can deal with it in a different way. This does not mean that you cannot say how you feel about things. I express myself clearly, but I am no longer being drawn in and made out of control by what is being said. If you allow others - what they say or do to upset or control you, then you are a victim. I choose not to be a victim. I choose to love myself.

I would be interested in hearing any feedback. I always try to remain receptive to any ideas that might be on offer.

Sayria: well, in brief, DH was drinking last night, which usually doesn't go well; we live where I work and what I would like to have done is go out for a drive to escape having to see his behavior. However since I was "working" (=being on site), I couldn't leave...His drinking makes me feel anxious and I want to talk things through but reasoning with a drunk person isn't really viable. This is my third marriage and I also facilitate a relationship class, so for the most part I can handle anger (I actually don't get anger that often, instead think things over, talk things thru after processing alone...) but I guess last night I was feeling trapped and anxious. I don't want his drinking to impact the clients or endanger our housing...{eye roll} Sorry if you didn't want all the details.

That's okay FelHodg. Details not a problem, so no need to apologise. Although never being married to a drunk, I have witnessed the havoc that can be caused by someone who is drunk. You certainly cannot get through to someone who is under the influence of drink. Difficult problem for you. The person I know, who is married to a close family member, was a lovely person when not under the influence. When drunk he was a completely different person and caused untold suffering. However, maybe with age, he is much better now and I am not sure he even gets drunk now. Pleasantly merry. You have my sympathy and I wish you all the very best.

Wow, so much good info and thought provoking stuff here.

To address the OA issue- I went a few times but it was just a room full of triggers for me. Hearing how people overate and what they did- couldn't take it. However, I have been in AA for many years. In AA we know that if we start getting into specifics (what kind of drink, how it looked, tasted, smelled, how cute it looked with a little umbrella ) we would be told to knock it off. At least in the OA group I went to there was a lot of specific talk about food. So that was that for me.

I will give you this one thing, the one thing I can tell you from years and years of studying my addiction to alcohol, from sponsoring others, from reading about food addictions, etc, is this: you will never be a non addict. You will never be in the safe zone. A lightning bolt in the shape of a T bone steak is not going to come down and cure you. You just try to put one day in front of the other. If you find yourself giving in to the craving/obsession/mindlessness, just try to put it off "for now", just go hour to hour if you have to. Day to day. 14 days in a row is two weeks without giving in. And so on.....

Some people use food as a drug, some people use alcohol as a drug. Not all people, some people. I stuff my emotions, I know I do. I also use SH, and I'm learning other ways of coping. I like the idea of the present. I think I will do that next time I feel like hurting myself. I also use deep breathing and meditation.