The first time I let a craving pass without giving in to it, I shook all over. In spite of wanting food with a desperation I’d never before let myself experience, nausea surged up in my throat. I cried. I felt like a twitchy rodent caught in a trap, and all I wanted to do was lash out verbally and physically at someone, something, anything to get this feeling to stop.
But lash out at what?
I knew reaching for the food would make that feeling go away. I also knew that reaching for the food was slowly killing me.
I used my newly-discovered recovery tools and reached out to a fellow who talked me down from the craving. My tears of being overwhelmed transformed into tears of relief. Had I actually made it through a craving without giving in? I had! A miracle!
Letting an uncomfortable feeling pass without feeding it was a miracle I’ve experienced countless times since, however, for the first couple of years of my recovery, I noticed a troubling pattern.
Whenever I would get hungry—which I was now allowing myself to do at healthy times—I would break into a sweat, start shaking, feel my heart race and my breathing speed up, and I would find myself experiencing a pressing pain over my chest that was so intense it brought tears to my eyes and put a lump in my throat. My thoughts and even my vision went foggy.
This would last about ten minutes, but then it would subside, leaving me confused and concerned. I talked with my recovery fellows, therapist, primary care doctor, and confessor about what was going on. That’s how I learned I was having panic attacks nearly every time I got hungry but had a sane reason that I needed to wait to eat.
Panic attacks at healthy hunger? Eating myself into obesity had been bad for my heart. Now that I was at a healthy weight, I sure didn’t want to destroy my cardiovascular system in order to stay there!
With the help of my doctor, I found the right medical treatment to help me get back in balance. The work I did with my therapist and my recovery fellows helped me discover the roots of these attacks and the gifts God had waiting for me on the other side of them.
Whether we’re bingers, bulimics, restricters, or some combination of all three, we don’t harm ourselves with our food behaviors because we’re stupid or ignorant. We do these things because they feel like they do something good for us. Many if not most of us use our behaviors to help us feel less afraid.
Afraid of what? I had to ask myself.
My recovery team helped me look back at my own food story. Why would I panic when I couldn’t eat? I had been raised with restrictions on food and shame for feeling hungry. When as a helpless child I would try to get my normal needs for food met, I inevitably would get a verbal lashing. In other words, from an early age, I had learned that feeling hungry was uncomfortable, and asking for help with discomfort would only cause more discomfort. Getting hungry was scary.
No wonder I became a secret eater by age five. I had found a way to stop my hunger before it made me the object of verbal abuse. No wonder I spent so much of the rest of my life keeping myself overly full. That felt like it was protecting me from the scariness hunger would bring.
If I had to pinpoint the most important lesson my time in Catholic in Recovery has taught me, it’s that every moment of constructive discomfort we let ourselves experience, when put into the hands of Christ, that moment becomes a little resurrection: a snapshot of a future to come every time we stay on whatever crosses God wills for us on our path to eternal life.
Fear is what we feel when we want to run from our crosses and to our addictions, compulsions, or unhealthy attachments, whether those are street drugs or street tacos.
Crosses are scary. No wonder we want to run from them to food. Thanks to God’s power to lead us to His will through our recovery, we no longer need to fear the fear, because now He’s shown us there’s a resurrection on the other side.
The Steps give us a roadmap on where and how to walk while we carry those crosses. The God who reaches us through the Church and the sacraments leads us through our fears to spiritual awakening, both while we walk this earth and when we get to heaven.
He even has another preview of heaven waiting for me on the other side of my next craving.
Looking for more wisdom as you navigate the emotional landscape of recovery from compulsive food behaviors? Join CIR+ and access exclusive recovery tools, including a video series specifically on recovering from compulsive food behaviors.
Erin McCole Cupp, CTRC, is grateful to be recovering from compulsive overeating, binge eating behaviors, and developmental and betrayal trauma. As a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach™, she coaches, writes, and teaches about trauma and addiction recovery from a Catholic perspective. Take her quiz, “What kind of stress eater are you?” at erinmccolecupp.com.