“I can’t believe I binged and purged today. I feel so stupid. I’m such a failure. I can’t even do recovery right.”
When I asked her to tell me more about the binge, she squirmed in her seat and looked at the floor. “It’s so embarrassing.”
This is not an unusual conversation when dealing with compulsive behaviors. Like any addictive behavior, whether it be gambling, compulsive shopping, substance use, or self-harm, the feeling of shame quickly follows the the behavior.
Self-hatred is usually the way we cope with shame. We can quickly swing from the high of the behavior to the low of regret and the desire to punish ourselves.
In this article for Eating Disorder Hope I discuss the affects of shame, the hiddenness of shame and how to begin the process of being vulnerable with another in order to begin healing from shame.
