What's your ledge?

A ledge is any hopeless place. If you're learning intuitive eating, you're probably familiar with ledges. At a ledge, you feel shaky and unsupported. You can see the bottom, a long way off. You can too easily imagine yourself hurtling through mid-air off that ledge, headed toward the craggy surface below.

Suppose you just had a binge, let's say. You're anxious bout having binged, and that makes you want to binge more because it will numb your pain and self-hatred, and will further the euphoric high. You're on the ledge, peering over the edge. How do you pull yourself away from the ledge?

Happily, this phenomenon has been studied quite a bit for the community of people who have anxiety disorder. And you can handle it in much the same way that a person with anxiety disorder learns to manage it.

Now think about his. If you had a serious case of anxiety, the pressure to calm yourself down is immense. Wouldn't that pressure only make you more anxious about it? To peer further over that edge?

How does a person with anxiety disorder perform the neat trick of calming themselves down when what they really find easier is to become doubly anxious? Is it possible?

The answer is yes, and it's done all the time. Some may be helped with medication, but medication alone doesn't take you away from the ledge. They do something more. With the help of a book or a therapist, they learn how to talk themselves off the ledge.

Folks at the ledge need to understand that they have choices. They need to train themselves to talk themselves off the ledge. It's that simple. And that challenging.

What's your ledge? The ledge is that hopeless place. For people re-learning, or learning for the first time how to eat, the ledge could be:

1. Binge disorder
2. Social blunders
3. Avoiding parties or other social situations because of the food or the way you look
4. Spring season when everyone seems to be dressing skimpy
5. Obsessively weighing yourself
6. The way your clothing fits
7. Faulty beliefs such as "I can't pursue my dreams until I lose the weight."
8. Self-rejection in order to be acceptable to the world
9. Too much stress

Your personal ledge could be any of these, or could be something not even on the list.

How often do you find yourself on that ledge? A few times a year? Every month? Several times a day? It may feel like a hopeless place, but it doesn't have to be. Granted, you might continue to go to the ledge more than you like, but you can learn to talk yourself away from it sufficiently so that your life can move forward.

So, when you're on the ledge, ponder your self-talk, and see if it's helping you move away from your ledge. If you realize your self-talk is not helping, or it's pushing you closer to the abyss, make a choice. You can replace it with new self-talk:

1. I'll put away this outfit where I can't see it and be reminded. I have a lovely outfit in my closet that fits me nicely. I'll wear that.

2. If I don't accept myself, I can't imagine other people being able to. So I'll start accepting myself as I am today. After all, I can't be anybody else today.

3. I really did overeat this time, and I have an inkling as to why. But I'll walk away from this hopeless place by stopping right now in the middle of the binge, instead of waiting for pain or sleep or midnight.

4. I just said the wrong thing, but everybody does that sometimes. Why do I think I have to be more perfect than other people? To make up for the weight? Later for that.

5. I'll go to that reunion and just be me. Reunions may seem like they're all about first impressions and outdoing each other, but I'll avoid that part of it. There's someone going that I haven't seen in thirty years, and I can't wait!

6. Weighing myself this often isn't pushing me away from the ledge. I think that in terms of ledge management, once a week is quite enough.

7. I reject myself at this weight, and all those self-rejecting things I've been telling myself are only keeping me at the ledge. I'll walk away, and decide it's time to accept the new me. I may be overweight, but nobody's perfect.

When you're on your ledge, you can either jump off into that hopeless abyss or you can talk yourself back down. It's your choice, and nobody will do it for you.

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Find out more about Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet.