Stressed Out and Eating

Confronting an eating disorder might be hard, but admitting you have one to others who may not understand can be terrifying.  Our 12-Step environment makes it much less so.  Here everyone has some behavior, some compulsion that needs to be confronted or they wouldn't be here.  Abusing food, like abusing drugs or alcohol, is a way of escaping the difficulties, large and small, of everyday life.  One girl is beginning to understand that.  She says she's tempted to indulge in the bingeing-purging that she did at home only when she's feeling anxious.  "But then I realized that almost everything makes me anxious, especially things I might do wrong, like making mistakes in class, not doing my chores right, and of course anything that has to do with my weight."  She's not alone.  Every one of our student could use a stress management program to teach them how to live life on life's terms, one day at a time.  That's exactly what the 12 Steps do.