Dear Mary K:

I am sorry you are in distress, that a relationship has ended. When we are in distress, what is our go-to- pattern? For many of us it is food. How to feel distress and not go to food, is the question. It is a well worn path: distress-> food. Eating and obsessing and compensating, not much different, is it, from a street drug addict, life becomes consumed with getting the next dose, life becomes centered around that.

The two angle approach then is to calm ourselves as much as possible, manage and heal anxiety and when distressed … endure the distress without automatically reacting to it. I just had lunch, could have gone without it since I had a big breakfast and will have dinner, but had it anyway. Then thought to myself (the well worn thought pattern): since I ate this, why not eat that?

But I didn’t. And now, I am about to take a long walk, not so to burn the calories but to reduce my distress.

Let’s keep this thread going.

anita