Watching a car chase on the news or in a film can thrill you. Your heart pounds. Your breath comes short. You are mesmerized and fascinated. But your inner spirit is untouched.

When you live with an eating disorder, you remove yourself from your authentic emotional experience as you live your life. You can trick yourself very nicely with high-speed experiences.

One way to sidestep your feelings is to binge or purge or starve or simply graze yourself into a dull numbness. Another is to go the other way and engage in activities that are highly sensational and flood your capacity to feel.

Both ways, leave your center alone and ignored. An adrenaline rush can create so much drama in your physical being that you trick yourself into believing you are living fully. But then the cravings come or the fear comes or the anxiety comes. You want the dullness or the rush, and you believe that your eating disorder actions will ease your suffering.

When you live with an eating disorder, your genuine feelings that come from your authentic soul are unknown. When they tremble or stir in the slightest way, a rush for a flooding experience will drown them down and out.  A high-speed car chase, especially around sharp curves, like an elaborate and dangerous roller coaster, will take you away into adrenaline land, leaving your soul neglected and alone.

With no awareness, this tragic scenario will repeat in many forms.

(Thoughts while writing my eating disorder recovery book.)