Triumphant
Journey:
A Cyberguide To Stop Overeating and
Recover from Eating Disorders
Mary found a way to protect herself as best she could
from unavoidable and intolerable fear and pain. Her pain comes from more than
the physical event.
Emotionally, it is intolerable for Mary to know that her
father can and will terrorize her at any time and that her mother will not or
cannot protect her. The people she depends on for daily caretaking and
protection are dangerous to her. She cannot bear to live with that knowledge
and so she finds a way to know as little as possible about her true situation.
If Mary can blot these painful experiences from her
awareness she will be able to fearlessly love and trust her father. She can
also depend on her mother to care for her, and she can experience herself
living in a safe world.
This has more to do with overeating than many people
realize. A child has few self-protective resources. If an inescapable, painful,
fearsome or humiliating situation exists, creative, strong children can put
themselves into a trance. In this way, they can dull the horror of their
experience.
Children can divide their minds into pieces so that they
are not present as a whole person during extreme torment. Different fragments
carry different parts of the experience so the children do not have to know or
remember the episodes in their entirety. In this way, they make their
experience manageable. Mary saved herself from having to tolerate through
knowledge or memory what is intolerable.
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