At a Christmas party, two guests are standing by the buffet. One has their plate piled high with food. The other has cleverly taken a Buffet Tour and has selected only the food they really wanted. The first guest is eating very quickly, the other is taking their time and savouring their selection.
It’s a good old-fashioned Christmas meet-up with family, friends and acquaintances.
So who’s here? There’s your aunt who tries to emotionally manipulate you. There’s that old family friend who always makes inappropriate remarks about your body. Over there’s your cousin who never fails to give you “helpful” diet tips. She’s talking to your mother who’s giving you “that look”.
And there’s you – mindlessly eating mince pies in an attempt to deal with the stress and misery.
A friend is having a Christmas get-together. The house is decorated, the tree is trimmed and in the middle of the room a table groans under the weight of an impressive buffet.
There’s everything you could imagine: sausage rolls, veggie vol-au-vents, smoked salmon pinwheels, stuffed peppers, bread, salads and olives, not to mention those little cheesy ball things you just can’t resist (apparently this buffet is from 1974).
In the kitchen, an array of cakes and puddings is waiting to be brought out once the savoury course is finished.
What do you do?
It’s so easy to beat yourself up when you binge eat. Especially if you begin to suffer health complications as a result of increased weight.
“It’s my fault”, you say. “I’ve brought this on myself”.
Except you haven’t.
Self-trust. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?
Actually, if you’ve experienced a lifetime of self-doubt, it’s more like difficult difficult lemon difficult.
It can be hard to connect to that quiet, assured, trustworthy voice within you.
But it’s there.
You may struggle to hear it, but it’s there.
If I were to ask you why you’re not enough, you’d probably say “I don’t know, it’s just what I feel”.
But a feeling isn’t truth. It’s not fact.
It’s just a feeling.
If I challenged you to give me a list of your deficits and defects, would you struggle to produce evidence?
Julie de Rohan 