Today, I want to talk about something that might sound like a wonderful problem to have, but if you've experienced it, you know it can feel surprisingly unsettling. What happens when things are actually going well in your recovery from binge eating? As always, I'm Georgie from the Breaking Up with Binge Eating podcast, and it's a pleasure to be with you this week.

So what do we do when things are going well? We talk about brutal moments a lot because they matter. But today, I want to talk about the other kind of vulnerable moment when life starts to get better. Your body feels better, food feels easier, and instead of relaxing into it. Your brain quietly whispers. Uh oh. Something is going to go wrong. That was the theme of one of my recent sessions with a client. I'll call Heather. Heather came into our call glowing. She said she'd had maybe the best week she'd had in years. She had gotten a promotion at work. Not just any promotion, but the exact job she had wanted. The job she had asked for, hoped for, and prayed for. It came with better title, better pay, and getting out of a project she was not enjoying. This was really good news. And on top of that, she said her body was feeling good, food was feeling good. She used this phrase that I loved. She said she was in the pocket. And then her brain went to scarcity. She said, uh oh, what's going to happen? I'm going to screw it up. Something's going to go wrong. I'm going to wake up. And this is all going to be a dream. I want to pause here because this is important. A lot of people assume that when things get better, feeling better will be easy. But sometimes feeling better is a skill. Enjoying peace is a skill. Letting yourself have something good without immediately scanning the horizon for disaster might be something you need to learn. If your nervous system has had a lot of practice with disappointment, chaos, loss, or sudden reversals, happiness may not feel like safety at first. It may feel like exposure. When Heather said her mind went to scarcity. I told her, that's protective. It doesn't mean that that feeling is accurate or helpful. It's just your brain trying to keep you from getting blindsided. It's trying to guard against disappointment. It's trying to say, don't get too excited, because if this all falls apart, I don't want us to be caught unprepared. That protective move makes sense. After all, your brain's job is to keep you alive. But it's also a little bit of a scam. Because here's the thing we landed on in that conversation. You can't inoculate yourself against future disappointment by experiencing it now. Heather told me immediately, oh, you need to put that on the podcast. And it's a good thought that many people might need to hear. You can't inoculate yourself against future disappointment by making yourself experience it now. If something goes wrong next week, worrying about it this week won't make next week hurt any less if the job gets complicated, if the scale fluctuates, if somebody disappoints you pre feeling the dread doesn't give you immunity. It only steals from the good that is here right now. And this matters so much in binge eating recovery, because many of the patterns that keep people stuck are attempts to control pain before it happens. I'm going to eat more now so I don't feel deprived. Later. I'm going to keep my life small and predictable so I don't get dysregulated. I'm going to stay braced so disappointment won't knock me over. But bracing is not the same as being safe. Heather made a connection to something we had talked about before. More food doesn't equal more love. Food can feel like an insurance policy of sorts. More and more. And some more, just in case. Just to make sure there's enough comfort, pleasure, safety. But food can't guarantee that you won't feel lonely. food can't guarantee that nobody will disappoint you. Food can't guarantee that you won't get bad news. And that was another big theme in our session. Stasis. Heather said she wants things simple. She likes things flat and drama free. She does not want crisis. She does not want to be dysregulated. And honestly, who among us can't understand that? I'm never sitting here saying, you know what people need more of emotional whiplash really keeps the complexion fresh. No. Wanting peace makes sense. And I can completely relate to that feeling of just wanting to be  on stable ground. But there's a difference between peace and stasis. Peace feels like things can move and change. And I will stay connected to myself. Stasis says nothing can move. Nothing can change. And only then will I be okay. Stasis can feel like safety. Because if nothing ever changes, maybe nothing will ever hurt. But the problem is that stasis is anti-nature because everything changes. Bodies change, appetite changes, jobs change, weather changes, relationships change. The number on the scale changes. Your available energy changes. Your needs change. Plans change. reality is basically one long improv exercise. So if our safety depends on nothing ever changing. We're in trouble. Not because we're weak, but because we have attached our peace to something life can't offer. A better question than how can I make sure nothing changes would be can I trust myself to handle variation? That word variation is important in recovery. We're not just learning to handle crisis. We're learning to handle normal human variation. A bigger appetite day or a smaller appetite day. A celebration meal, a week with lighter commitments. A week with more pressure. A body that feels comfortable today and bloated tomorrow. a really good thing happening, and the weird vulnerability of enjoying it. Heather started to see this during the call. Instead of using her energy to predict everything that could go wrong, she said, it seemed like the smarter path would be to appreciate that she could manage whatever would show up. That is emotional confidence, not emotional perfection or rigid control over her emotions. Just confidence in the belief that she can handle what life dishes up. And that translates into I can feel excitement without needing to squash it. I can feel disappointment without needing to numb it. I can feel uncertainty without needing to eat over it. And this is where eating recovery becomes so much bigger than eating. Because if the reason I binge eat is that I don't trust myself to survive my feelings, then the work is not only about changing what's in my pantry, it's about building the confidence that feelings will come and go. And I don't have to abandon myself when they arrive. Heather said something like, for the first sixty eight years, I've handled everything so far, and that was funny, but also profound because it's true. She had handled every event in her life so far, and some of those were really big. Many of them were not the way she wanted things to be. Maybe sometimes she did handle them with food, maybe sometimes with numbing or bracing or overcontrolling. But regardless of how she survived them, she made it through every emotional weather system that had ever moved through her. That matters. We can build confidence from evidence. I bet you have that evidence, too. A lot of people think confidence has to be a feeling that magically appears before they do a thing. But confidence is often a memory bank. It comes from noticing I've done hard things before. I've had disappointment before. I've felt heartache before. I've been embarrassed before. I didn't love it, but I lived through it. And if you are in the middle of recovery, I want you to hear this. You may have more emotional evidence than you think. Your brain likely remembers the fear more loudly than it remembers the survival. But here you are. You've made it through every one of your worst days. That doesn't mean you should have had to. It doesn't mean those days were fair or good or character building. Some things are just painful and unfortunate. But it does mean the part of you that says I won't be able to handle it may not be telling the whole truth. Another part of our session that I loved was how Heather talked about the scale. She had stopped using my fitness pal several weeks earlier, and with that she had stopped writing down her weight. It just sort of happened. She still knew the number generally, but it wasn't pinned to her in the same way. I gave her a blood pressure analogy. I said, imagine somebody handed you this giant phone book, thick record of your blood pressure recorded every hour for your entire life. Would that be interesting? Kind of. You might look through it and think, oh, wow, look what happened when I was stressed. Or oh, it changed when I was on vacation. Data can be useful when it shows us patterns, but without context, it doesn't mean much. This would not be riveting reading. Weight can be just the same. A weight record can be handy if we're using it to notice patterns over time, but by itself, a single number doesn't tell us much of a story. It doesn't tell us whether we are okay or successful. It doesn't tell us whether we should be proud of ourselves. It's a data point. For Heather, her weight was becoming more like, oh look, a number, a flower, a point of interest. Just something to notice without making a big deal of it. That's a big shift when your number feels like an emotionally weighted verdict. Any fluctuation can feel like danger when the numbers. Just information. You can stay curious. Curiosity and shame don't occupy the same space very well. Shame wants you to believe this means something bad about me. But curiosity says, huh? I wonder what contributed to that. So curiosity gives you options. Shame just usually traps you in an emotional punishment. Heather and I also talked about the next few months. The next three months looked lighter in terms of her commitments. Summer also tends to be a time when she doesn't want to eat as much heavy food because she just doesn't like how it feels. So she expected to be more successful with weight reduction during that period. And this is where we made an important distinction that there's a difference between recognizing a tailwind and announcing a famine. A tailwind is when circumstances make your desired behavior easier, lighter commitments, more routine, more energy, better weather, foods that naturally feel appealing and supportive. Great. Use the tailwind when it comes along. There's nothing wrong with noticing. This might be an easier time for me to do the habits I want to. A famine mindset is different. This is essentially if you decided to go on a diet and try to lose weight in an extra unsustainable sprint. That might sound like after my birthday I am really cracking down. Or after this trip, no more starting Monday. Lettuce and water. And you know what that does to most human brains. It makes us want to eat more now because your brain hears restriction is coming. Get it while you can. Eat the thing now. We've been through this so much this season. I'm sure you're familiar with this concept, so I want to offer this distinction to you too. There's nothing wrong with saying I have a calmer season coming, and I'd like to use it well. That can be grounded, respectful, and realistic. But if the plan makes your current self feel like a prisoner awaiting sentencing, it's probably not going to create peace with food. So whether your good time is now or you feel like there is an easier time on the horizon, there's nothing wrong with saying, wow, this is really nice, or that's going to be nice and let it be as simple as that. Heather noticed how much her thinking had changed in this way. There had been a time when she would get excited planning her next diet. She would shop for the right foods, get the chart, and feel virtuous. Many people know this feeling. The new notebook. The new app. The new rules. It can feel like you've already repaired the problem just by making such a nice plan. And sometimes planning the diet feels like making amends. Maybe you ate more than you wanted recently, but now you have a plan. So the internal court of food morality can adjourn. Don't worry, everyone, she's going to make up for it. But we don't live on moral bookkeeping. You don't actually undo yesterday by restricting your eating tomorrow. And you don't have to make up for being a human who, whoops, ate a little extra once. Heather said it beautifully. There's no making up. There's only right now. She brought in a saying she had learned in a twelve step program. You can't live today on yesterday's shower. I liked that one. And I added, you also can't feel clean today because you promised you'd shower tomorrow. That's exactly how eating works. You can't nourish yourself today with yesterday's meal. You can't punish yourself today into undoing yesterday. You can't soothe your body with a promise that tomorrow you will become perfect. You only ever get to feed the body you have right now. So much of recovery comes back to this. What is true right now? What does my body need right now? And I think that's where emotional confidence is so powerful, because our goal is not to make your life flat. The goal is not to make your feelings flat or appetite flat, or everyone around you perfectly predictable. The goal is to trust yourself with motion, to trust yourself with variation, to trust that good news can be good news. To trust that disappointment can be disappointing without destroying you, and to trust that food can be part of your life without becoming an emergency response system for every feeling you'd rather not have. Sometimes my clients have clear patterns linking particular feelings to binges. They may have one really stinging feeling that they are least confident they can handle. For one person, that might be sadness. For somebody else, it'll be anger for somebody else, loneliness for another person, embarrassment yet someone else disappointment. The food becomes a way of saying, I don't want this one. Take this one away. Recovery asks us to look at a different question. What if I can handle this and still take care of myself? I know that can be scary, but you can feel disappointment and still do your job. You can feel embarrassed and not binge. You can feel happy and not brace for disaster. You can have a birthday and have it neither turn into a food free for all or a pre-diet farewell tour. You could see your body weight as just data, not destiny. You can live life with all of its variability and motion, and trust yourself that you're going to be okay. So here is the practice I want to offer you this week to cultivate your own emotional confidence. I want you to think, which emotions do I already trust myself to handle pretty well. Let's say you can handle work pressure. Or maybe you're really good at handling sadness. Maybe you can handle anger better than you used to. Maybe you've gotten good at handling loneliness by reaching out instead of isolating. Give yourself credit for those. Seriously, your brain needs the evidence. Then ask which emotions still make me want to numb, eat, restrict, binge, or disappear? Is it embarrassment, uncertainty, joy being wrong, wanting something? Pick one. Just one. And this week, when that emotion shows up, try saying this is a feeling I'm building confidence with. Not I should be over this or this is my trigger feeling or I can't handle this. Just This is a feeling I'm building confidence with. This admits that you are a work in progress, that you're not where you want to be, but you're not staying still either. You are building confidence with this feeling. Then come back to now. What's true in this moment. What do you need in this moment? Maybe you need a meal. Maybe you need a pause. Maybe you need to say something out loud. Maybe you need to just let yourself enjoy the good feeling for five minutes before looking for the catch. You don't need to inoculate yourself against future pain by feeling it early. You don't need to eat more now because you're afraid there won't be enough later. And you don't need to plan tomorrow's restriction to pay for yesterday's food. As you see, We can boil all of this down to living and meeting your needs in the current moment. Before we wrap up, I also want to let you know that this is the last episode of season three. I'm going to take a few weeks to work on content for the next season, gather my thoughts and get some really good episodes ready for you. But I'll be back with season four before you know it. And honestly, I love ending this season here with the topic of emotional confidence because so much of recovery comes back to this. We can't create a life where nothing hard ever happens, but we can build deep trust that whatever life dishes up, you can stay with yourself and survive those feelings. If this episode hit home for you and you want help building that kind of confidence for yourself, I'd love to support you. You can learn more about coaching at confidence dot com, and you can always email me at Georgie at gmail dot com And if you want to support the show, check out the All Access membership for lots of bonus episodes. Or you could consider leaving a five star rating, perhaps. Or even a written review. I would appreciate all of them. for this week. Let your experiment be simple. Notice a feeling you usually try to outrun, and practice staying with yourself for just a little longer than usual. Just long enough to learn. Oh, I can be here. I can still take care of me.