If you're here, it means you've followed the link from my video essay about finding resources for mitigating binge eating and learning to build interoceptive skills. Once again I implore you to remember that this is difficult work, it is work that takes time, and energy and can be difficult and annoying and boring as fuck- but it has absolutely changed my life. I believe in you. I believe you can do hard things, and I hope that you give yourself the gift of trust, of confidence, and that you CAN learn to work with your brain instead of against it.
Each of these sections is a list of questions I came up with to help me extrapolate and gather data about what was going on with my emotional and physical being. You can ask yourself these questions at any time- before, during a moment of crisis, but it's also totally okay to ask yourself these questions when literally nothing important or exciting is going on, just to practice. I won't say "get in the habit" of asking yourself these questions because that can feel impossible on its own, but consider putting reminders up, setting alarms, or even making a point of journaling through these every day. I still have to manually remind myself to use my tools, to make the decision to try and treat myself kindly and with compassion.
Hope this helps.
For hunger/eating urges:
- When did I last eat? (External data)
- What did I eat? Was it enough? (More external data)
- What was I doing right before this urge hit? (Context clues)
- What would eating right now give me? (Getting at the actual need)
- Am I thirsty? When did I last drink water? (Often masquerades as hunger)
- What time is it? Is this close to a usual meal time? (Pattern recognition)
- If I wait 10 minutes, does this feeling change? (Testing urgency)
For emotional processing:
- Where in my body do I notice something? (Locating sensation)
- If this feeling had a temperature, what would it be? (Concrete descriptor)
- Is this feeling moving or still? (Observing rather than analyzing)
- What was happening in the 5 minutes before I noticed this? (Timeline)
- Have I felt this physical sensation before? What was happening then? (Pattern recognition)
- If I had to pick a primary color for this feeling, what would it be? (Bypassing verbal processing)
For movement/exercise decisions:
- Did I sleep okay last night? (Energy assessment)
- What did I do yesterday? (Recovery needs)
- On a scale of 1-10, how much pain am I in right now? (Baseline data)
- What's the minimum I could do today that would still count? (Breaking binary thinking)
- Am I avoiding this because I'm tired, or because I'm scared? (Motivation check)
- What would I tell a friend to do in this situation? (Removing self-judgment)
For all-or-nothing thinking spirals:
- Is this thought using words like "always," "never," "ruined," or "failed"? (Pattern recognition)
- What would "good enough" look like here? (Introducing middle ground)
- Will this matter in a week? A month? A year? (Perspective)
- What's the actual worst case scenario if I'm not perfect right now? (Reality testing)
- Have I been in a situation like this before and survived? (Evidence gathering)
- What would I need to believe for this to feel less catastrophic? (Identifying the underlying belief)
For executive function/task initiation:
- What's literally the first physical action I need to take? (Breaking it down to one step)
- Can I do just that one thing and stop? (Permission to do less)
- What's the barrier - is it knowing what to do, or doing what I know? (Diagnostic)
- Do I need to do this, or do I need to schedule when I'll do this? (Separating planning from doing)
- What time is it? What was I supposed to be doing? (Reorienting)
- Have I eaten/slept/taken meds? (Checking basics first)
For binge urges specifically:
- Is this the void, or is this my body? (Differentiating sources)
- What am I trying to feel, or not feel, right now? (Emotional function)
- If I can't eat right now, what else could give me what I'm looking for? (Alternative meeting of need)
- Am I trying to punish or soothe myself? (Motivation check)
- What will I feel after if I do this? (Future orientation)
- Can I sit with this feeling for 5 minutes before deciding? (Pause practice)
For rigid thinking about food/schedules:
- Is this rule protecting me or imprisoning me right now? (Function check)
- What would flexibility look like here without everything falling apart? (Imagining middle ground)
- Am I following this rule because it helps, or because I'm scared? (Motivation)
- What's the actual consequence if I break this rule today? (Reality testing)
- Is this my rule, or is this the eating disorder's rule? (Source identification)