AS and eating to alleviate overload - anyone experienced this?

[Ocarina]

I do this, I believe it is the dopamine released by the overeating that reduces my anxiety overload. I can get the same feeling from exercise and meditation, but I can never think of it while overloaded. Food is there and is just too easy.

Me too - food is instant.

 

[Ambi]

I also hope you've turned the corner - it's not easy to break longstanding habits.

I don't think the habit part is broken - I think those are tracks with deep biochemical grooves in my brain, unfortunately! But that constant appetite is gone - that feeling, that irrational, inexplicable drive to eat was too difficult to ignore, very distracting. But I think the habit to eat without hunger - yeah, that's still there. I think that will be more manageable, I hope. This is where I think what I've read might help - but I think in addition to emotional reasons, I think I also am just compulsive and a bit weird about having to have things complete - leftovers, unfinished boxes of things, they bother me the same way partially empty bookshelves really bother me until I find a way to fill them. I also wonder if the feeling of being neither hungry nor full bothers me, tempting me towards always feeling full. At least so far I am eating less, but no idea if that will get harder again.

 

[Ambi]

There is something called Sensory Gating. Schizophrenics use tobacco for this and it works very well. I often wonder if food is sensory gating for me. The senses stop, revert, go down when I eat, but I have to eat alone for it to happen. No one can talk to me when I eat and people know that. BUt I think , actually, you might be onto something. It's not emotional. It's about sensory overload.

Sensory gating - Wikipedia

Interesting! I don't know if this is related....but I am very surprised to realize how much I hate it when someone touches me while I am eating. I completely tense up, I can't stand it, and I have to force myself to keep chewing. My natural impulse is close to slapping the person off of me, I almost feel like some kind of wild animal guarding it's food. But I only feel that way when they touch me (a hug, a touch during conversation, etc.), otherwise I wouldn't know.

 

[zeroninja]

Sometimes I do binge eat while emotional to "fill the void" as it were. But mostly, I smoke for circumstances like that. It's like a mini-meditation for me: the physical act of bringing the cigarette to my lips and back down, the feel of inhaling the smoke and focusing on that alone, the nicotine high, and so on relieve tension, stress and anxiety and help me to let go of trauma in the moment.