Q&A 28 – Overeating: Is there such a thing as relapse?

What’s really going on when we ‘fall off the wagon’? When we revert to the behaviour associated with an unwanted habit like overeating should we refer to that as a relapse? Or is it something else? Something less scary, less serious, and more natural.Listen to Part 2 of this episode here.You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes* How we are only ever more or less caught up in our thinking * What happens when we innocently pile a bunch of thinking onto what’s already there? * How our thinking is like a river, always moving, always changingResources Mentioned in this Episode* Q&A ep 27 where I reference the snowball metaphor * Amanda Jones’ book, UncoveryTranscript of EpisodeHello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 28 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.Today I want to talk about why there is no such thing as relapse when it comes to overeating or any other kind of unwanted habit. This came to mind for me, because recently I had…I’ll go back a little bit and say that since I discovered this understanding, and especially in the last, I don’t know, six or eight months, maybe a little more than that, I’ve been eating really well. Eating really differently, not feeling caught up in my unwanted over eating habit because of the exploration of this understanding, which has been really, really nice. And not getting too rigid with myself about the rules of what that looks like. So then recently, I had a period of time where there was a bunch of different things going on. One was, I was away with a girlfriend, we went on a little road trip. And then almost immediately after that I came home and I had some guests here for several days. And then almost immediately after that, it was my birthday, at which you know, requires chocolate cake. Through all of those circumstances, I wasn’t necessarily eating as well as I normally have been lately. That’s what led me to this subject about whether or not I had had a “relapse”. I absolutely wasn’t thinking about it that way. So I want to share with you what I see about what happens when we’re eating one way, and then we shift to eating a different way and why that isn’t really a relapse. The first thing I want to say about that is that we need to remember that whatever’s going on, we are either more or less caught up in our thinking. And that’s really what it boils down to. In the case of the events that were going on with me for a month or so, all that was happening was I was a little bit more caught up in my thinking than I normally am. And the reason is that those circumstances like having guests and having a birthday, and being on a road trip with my friend, made my thinking sound like that the rules were different or that I should treat myself because of these things that were going on that kind of thing.  I saw it as it was happening. And I decided that that was okay, that that was that was what was going on in that moment and I wasn’t going to add a whole bunch more thinking onto what was already happening by beating myself up and being kind of down on myself about what was going on and holding really tightly to any kind of rules that I had set up for myself. So then,