I came across this today while skimming through an old Geneen Roth book (“When Food is Love”) and it seemed worthy of sharing…
Being loved in the present brings up all the ways in which we were not loved in the past. No amount of love in the present, not a single person, not ten thousand people loving us all at once, can make up for or take away the pain of the betrayals of the past, just as bingeing today for deprivation in the past or for deprivation to come does not make up for the many times we said to ourselves, “You can’t have that, you’re fat and you’re ugly.” The only insurance against repeating the pain in the past is to allow ourselves to feel fully and release it in the present.”
So many times I took part in the ‘pre-diet binge’ and I do think that my bingeing overall was partly a response to the years of deprivation I put myself through while in high school. When I look back on it I realize that, as Geneen Roth says, none of those binges actually made up for the suffering I’d went through in the past from restricting, nor did they somehow lessen the suffering I was about to put myself through (in the case of ‘pre-diet’ binges). So why did I do it?
I think sometimes it’s hard to see through the foggy lenses of ‘in-the-moment’; but if we are fully honest with ourselves, I think we know that these binges aren’t helping anything…and by allowing our past to dictate how we treat ourselves in the present we are stealing ourselves of ‘today’.
Similarly, if we allow the pain and hurt of yesterdays impact how much joy and contentment we experience today, we are, again, allowing our past to steal from our present. I am not suggesting that we should ‘suck it up’ and keep our scars buried deep inside of us (such behavior, as I’m sure you know, only contributes to our poor relationship with food), rather, we need to allow ourselves to “feel the hurt fully”, as Geneen Roth says, and release the pain so that it no longer has a hold on us. Then, and only then, can we fully enjoy the beauty of Today.
Hope you are all doing well!
Much Love,
~ Lauren Bersaglio