Holidays -- A Time for Triggers

I've been having difficulty the past couple of days with stopping when I'm satisfied...or even judging how much to cook to begin with. There has been a little devil on my shoulder urging me to cut up a bit more bacon to put into the scrambled eggs...and add another egg or two too...and more toast.... I haven't done the out of control quickly bingeing that I have sometimes been known to do...but I have been eating more than I need at most meals for the past couple of days.

As often happens, I have been working out on the issue...mentally questioning why I am having such a hard time with this when a week ago I was peaceful and centered and was finding it very easy to wait till I was hungry and to eat just enough to satisfy.

This morning the answer I have been searching for came to me kind of suddenly, out of the blue.

It's the holidays....it's the fact that I will be traveling to my parents home...it's the fact that I will be out of control of my own food. I will be a guest in their home...I will not have the ability to as easily eat on my own schedule. It's partly returning to a setting that reminds me of times in the past that were similar...when it was important to "stock up" on food because meals were eaten on an irregular basis at restaurants or at my grandmother's house. There wasn't usually food in our house. Snacks were not an option as we were not snackers. There were times in the past when I was hungry and it was not yet time to eat or when my parents would be embroiled in a heated argument and when everything else took second, third, or tenth place to their battle of wills.

The threat of returning to a situation that was problematic in my childhood has triggered a fear of being hungry and not being able to eat...and that has triggered me to almost compulsively want to "stock up" by eating more now...as if that will help me two days from now. :-)

The situation is much different now than it was when I was a child...there is now no real danger of being hungry. If I really wanted to I could get in the car, drive to town, dine at McDonalds or Pizza Hut. But the compulsion isn't really about whether there is enough food now...it is about the feelings that are left over from the past. It's about reacting now to a feeling that has its roots in my childhood 35 years or more ago.

So often we go along oblivious to all the things that lie just under the surface....not really realizing that though 35 years have passed and we have grown up, we are still triggered by things that happened when we were children.

If I look at the reality today I know I can arrange things so that there is sufficient food to eat whenever I choose to eat it. However, my actions the past few days have not been based on the reality of today...they have been based on the leftover feelings (and the reality of childhood). I have been "stocking up," eating more than I have needed to eat because of emotional triggers I was not even aware I was feeling until the knowledge hit me this morning...after I had been trying to figure out why I've been wanting more than I need for the past couple of days.

Holidays are prime time for triggers as many of us travel, many of us return to people and places that contain emotional triggers. We may not feel the trigger...we may not know that we feel uneasy or fearful...we may simply realize that we are eating a little more than we normally do. We may be quite stumped about why we are doing this and we may not be quite sure what to do about it.

Understanding the triggers helps...because knowing that I'm going back to a situation where I feel out of control and uneasy about the availability of food gives me some specific options for dealing with the feeling and making myself more comfortable with the situation. It is important that I make myself comfortable with the situation in a way that doesn't include eating more food than I need.