Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. I don't think I've ever said this at the beginning of a vlog before. I need to offer a trauma trigger warning. I might say some things in this vlog that would be triggering or sensitive. If you come from a background of trauma, I don't plan to get graphic in it, but I might say a word or two here and there that might give a flinch. The topic of this vlog is the mental binge. I can't believe I've never shot a vlog on this. This is a thing. This is a thing. The mental binge.
What's a mental binge? A food binge is when someone consumes way more food in a shorter period of time than would be typical for someone eating food with a feeling of being out of control about it and sort of a frantic nature to it. That's a binge, that's a food binge. There're all kinds of debates among eating disorder experts and food addiction experts about what actually constitutes a binge, because some people feel like they're binging, even though they don't actually eat that much food. But it definitely feels out of control, and it feels frantic, and they feel powerless, and they gobble it up. But when all of was said, done, it was actually not that much food. Not that much. Or other people feel like they've binged if they more slowly over the course of an evening, eat an enormous amount of food, but they're not shoveling it down the whole time. They're just steady plowing through it, eating, eating, eating, eating. And then five hours later, they absolutely feel like they've had a binge. So, there's debates about how much each of those factors needs to be present only in exactly in that way for it to count as a physical binge.
I guess the same could be true for a mental binge. A mental binge is when we let our thinking run away with us like a runaway train in a big explosion of negativity, of catastrophizing, of freaking out, of getting stuck in a loop in our head about how something's off, something's wrong, someone's wronged us. I'm going to talk about the two big ways that I see this manifest, but I'm seeing it happen a lot these days to people I love and to myself. Actually, I would say that I had a mental binge this weekend. I'm seeing it happen a bit in our Bright Line Eating? community. This happens every year or two. I guess the last time was in, yeah, 2021, 2022. I think it's been two or three years actually since we had one. But it happens here and there. We've had several of them over the 10, 11-year span of our existence as a community, I guess. We've been around as a community for 10-and-a-half years now, and every now and then, the community sort of collectively explodes in little micro fires that are burning and little pockets of activity, of mental binging. And sometimes that affects me. And then I have a mental binge too.
The other thing I'm noticing is I'm noticing a lot of people having mental binges about the state of the world right now and really getting stuck in mental loops of fear and going around and around in their head about it. The example that I want to bring to this vlog is a dear friend of mine. I was on the phone with her last night. I love her. I'm her person. This is someone I feel so, so deeply close to. And she just visited me and my family and stayed in our home for two-and-a-half weeks. By the time the visit was over, she was pretty clear that she was going to move out of her house where she has always lived. And that's a very big deal. She gets abused there. She has always been abused since she was an infant. Profound, intense, mental, emotional, sexual, physical abuse, very, very, very bad. The worst I've ever known. And she's a warrior. She's incredible. She's kind. She's smart, she's loving, she's funny. She's responsible. She's great company. My family and I are insisting, begging, pleading her to move up near us to get an apartment here nearby and to get out of there. She doesn't need to be there. She just needs to pack her car and get up here. I've been saying that to her ever since I've known her. She spent Thanksgiving with me and my family, and I was saying it. Then she came and visited me last August. I was saying it then. It's always been clear to me she needs to get out of there. Her hometown is a tiny, tiny town in the middle of rural nowhere, and it's just a cesspool of abuse and corruption. The local cops are not safe. Everybody's not safe. It's not safe there. She needs to get out of there. So she finally, after two and a half weeks in my house, feeling what safety feels like, committed to moving.
She told her mom, who is incredibly abusive and sick, a very, very, very sick woman, I believe truly a loving person, deep down, but so sick that she can't face or acknowledge the abuse that her daughter has experienced and that she has caused her daughter. She can't face that. And she told her mom, and she's getting her house ready to sell. Yesterday she had an encounter with one of her abusers, her family members. She was dropping off a load of stuff at the mom's house, and one of the family members who always abuses her sexually was there, and it didn't go well. She spun out last night, and suddenly after days and days and days of getting her house ready to sell, she's got a realtor who's literally coming to take pictures of the house today. She's looking for a fast cash offer. She just wants to get out of there. Finally, last night, she fell into a mental binge. ?I don't deserve to leave. I'm not like you all. I can't move up there. I won't survive. I don't make enough money. I need to stay here. I don't deserve to leave.? Just around and around and around and around mental binge, and I don't pull punches. I just said, that's bull crap. That's wrong. Your thinking is off. You do deserve to come up here.
But the mental binge, when it takes us over, it can be hard to get out of. So, in this vlog, I want to share how we get out of a mental binge. First step is to identify it. This is where those of us who've been here for a while, listening to the vlog about authentic self, highest self. The eight Cs, what are they? You're in your highest self. That's not a mental binge. That's your authentic, true, highest self. When you are calm, clear, compassionate, confident, connected, curious, courageous, and creative, those are the eight Cs. I think at any given moment, we can pause and say, am I calm, clear? You just start with calm and clear, and you'd be like, ?Nope, I'm not calm and clear. Okay, so then what's going on in my head is a mental binge.? It might take one of two big forms, litigating or catastrophizing. Maybe there're other forms too. Maybe the form that my friend was falling into is the ?I'm no good self-doubt, shame, self-pity, negative thinking,? cesspool. And maybe that's a form of catastrophizing. But another form is litigating. This is where it's more fueled by self-righteous anger or by a Part of us that you ever do this. You've got the jury assembled, right? You're putting people on the witness stand, you're making your case. Maybe it's just you making your closing argument to the jury, and you're just making your case. And around and around in your head, it goes about how this is off and that is off. ?And they did this, and they said that, and that was wrong,? and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's a mental binge. That's a mental binge. I was putting on makeup this morning and getting ready to shoot this vlog. And I, a friend called and I picked up the phone and I said, I'm about to shoot the vlog on the mental binge. I explained what it was, and she said, oh. And then she said, how do we know that it's not right? If we're litigating in our head, how do we know that that line of argumentation isn't true? I thought about that, and I thought, oh, what a good question. I guess my answer is that there's usually kernels of truth in the mental binge of every form. There's usually a kernels of truth. Often most of it is BS, like my friend's mental binge of, ?I don't deserve to get out of this abusive hellhole.? That's wrong. But there are kernels of truth. Like for example, she'd noticed that the apartments up here near me were asking for someone to make three times the rent, but she doesn't have a job with a salary. She's a freelance copywriter, and she doesn't make a lot of money because her self-worth is so low that she's only charging $15 an hour as a freelance copywriter. So, she's afraid that the finances will be difficult, and she won't be able to get an apartment. Now, I've said, I'll co-sign on a lease for her. Her credit score is 794, and when she sells her house, she's been putting faithfully paying her mortgage. She's got about a hundred thousand dollars in equity in that house that she's going to pull out of there and get out of there. She's going to have money in the bank after the mortgage is paid off, everything else is paid off. She'll be walking away with thousands of dollars in a bank account, and I'll co-sign on a lease for her. So, the kernel of truth is the finances might be sticky at certain points. There might be an apartment that turns her down, they don't want a co-signer or whatever. But I guess my point is, the litigator who's got the jury assembled and is making their closing argument, the catastrophizer, that seeing things legitimately go wrong, there's kernels of truth in that.
I guess what matters is that action that's productive and helpful comes from the highest self-reactive, fear-based, mental bingey action is often things we need to backtrack and make amends for. It often doesn't go well. Nobody would be well served to live their life making decisions from that kind of energy. Does that make sense? So, it could be that the litigator's, right, and that something does need to change, in which case with some tools and some time, that same course of action can be pursued from a calm, clear, compassionate, confident, connected, curious, creative, courageous place. The difference might be less urgency, more compassion for self and others, more of an ability to take the other person's perspective and understand where they're coming from. A calmer, saner approach, it might be the same. Action is warranted, but reaction from a place of a mental binge doesn't go well. It just doesn't, right? And so what do we do if we're in a mental binge, either of the catastrophizing sort, the part of us that is saying, this is all wrong, everything. It spirals. It goes, it spins and spins and spins. The catastrophizer just blows it up, blows it up, blows it up, spins it out, spins it out. That's coming from a place of fear, and that's a Part of us that wants to be heard. It wants to be told. I hear you. That is scary stuff. There is hard stuff going on here, and it wants to be able to explain it all to a grownup calm presence inside you. That's your authentic self that can hear it out. It wants to be heard, right? And then the highest self in, you can tell that catastrophizing Part. I've got you. I've got this. Would it be okay if we just took a bubble bath right now and did some breathing, and then we can figure out what we need to do about it? That catastrophizing Part often needs you, your highest self to offer a listening ear and to help deescalate the situation. It doesn't feel safe. It wants to be heard, and then it wants to be comforted. The litigating Part is also coming from a place of fear and self-protection, and it also wants to be heard. If you turn your authentic self to that litigating part of you and say, it sounds like you think some BS went down here, tell me more about it. I hear you. It sounds like they really did the wrong thing there. I can see why you're upset about it. Okay, and can I ask you a question? Yeah. ?I've heard you make this case in my head now a bunch of times. Would it be all right if we put a pause on making this case so that we can have lunch? Would that be all right?? Yeah. Okay. And then breathe, and then do the next right thing.
The antidote to the mental binge is first of all, recognizing it. And you do that by understanding that when you're not calm, clear, compassionate, connected, curious, courageous, creative, et cetera, and your mind is spinning, you're in a mental binge. That's the definition of it. Just like I encourage you to put a wall up against food thoughts and not fondle them, not let those dragonflies grow into dragons, I encourage you to put up a wall against the mental binge. Don't let yourself fall down that rabbit hole. That often involves listening to the part of you that wants to be heard about what it's scared about. Here's what I do when I'm in a mental binge. I breathe, I BFF like Everett Considine says. I breathe, feel my body, find my feet. I do something grounding. I might do a see, hear, feel meditation, which I did a vlog about. You can search up the vlogs on, ?see, hear, feel.? I do a see, hear, feel meditation. Just get me grounded.
I was at a workshop with Amanda Leith from SHiFT the ShiFT Recovery by Acorn. Someone was having a mental binge in a group session. There's like 10 of us in the room. I'm there, she's there. Then eight clients are sitting around a circle. These are people with extreme food addiction who are in inpatient treatment, and one of them is spinning out. She thinks she needs to leave. She made a mistake by coming here. Everybody's against her, blah, blah, blah, blah. Amanda just said, I forget what the woman's name was, let's just say Amy, okay? Amanda says, ?Amy, Amy, Amy.? It took that much to get her attention. ?Amy, look around. Are you safe right now? Is anyone hurting you right now? Look around. Look around. Is anyone hurting you right now? Or are you physically safe at the moment?? It took Amy a second to just come back to the present, to the physical here and now, and she was wild-eyed. Then she looked around the room, ?Are you safe right now? Amy, are you? Look around, check. Go ahead, check.? Amy looked around the room, and then she nodded, ?Yeah, I'm actually safe.? ?But you think people are thinking things about you. Is that right?? And Amy nodded. ?Do you want to check? Do you want to see what they're thinking about you? Do you want to ask? Do you have a request?? And Amy said, ?I don't know.? And she said, ?Would you like me to help you formulate a request?? Amy said, yeah. And then she said, ?Okay, do you want to ask people, what are you thinking about me?? So, Amy said, ?What are you thinking about me?? And we went around the room and people said, typically things like people said, like, I can see you're really scared, and I have a lot of compassion for you. I mean, that's what people were thinking and the whole thing, deescalated, right?
So, when we're in a mental binge, we're not connected to the here and now. We need to get grounded. Look around. Are you safe right now? Is everything okay right now? Then turn to what's the next right thing? Because positive action changes everything. You can't think your way into right action. You can act your way into right thinking. So, what's the next right thing? Maybe it's a Bright meal that you need to weigh and measure. Maybe it's you need to get to the grocery store. Maybe it's that you need a nap. Maybe it's that you've got work to do and go back to work. What's the next right thing? Then if there's something to be done about this, whatever you're spinning out in your head about, say, if there's something to be done about this divine all-knowing essence, whatever is out there, show me when and how and have me come from a place of calm, of highest self. The mental binge does not serve us. It doesn't serve me. It doesn't serve me. I do my best not ever to take action from that place. Sometimes I mess up and I take action from that place. I almost always regret it. It doesn't go well when I'm in a mental binge. The right thing for me to do about that thing is nothing. And the next right thing for me to do is whatever is in front of me to be done in my life. Then the next, right, action. Make my bed. Do the next right thing. Easy does it everyone. Easy does it.
I don't know if we'll ever have minds and hearts that don't fall into mental binges, but we can learn not to believe them and not to take action in that state. I've heard it said that longevity and recovery doesn't get you that much. That the person who woke up the earliest today has the most Bright time under their belt. I think mostly that's true. I work my program one day at a time. But what longevity and recovery has bought me, I've noticed, is just a few more seconds of pause. I think for every year that I put my food on the scale, I get another minute of pause, just another minute between the mental binge and an action that I might regret. Just pause. That's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
