Remember rope, held tight in your hands? Instead of being only thing keeping your head above water, it may be thing keeping ONLY your head above water. Is it holding you up or dragging you down? Let go of it and float on your back for a while. Close your eyes and drift with gentle tide as it carries you onto beach, safe and well.

Let go.

"Yeah, I think it do it all time. After I judged myself for not knowing answer, then I judged myself for eating too much and having desert. And then I felt even worse."

"So what did you hope for by judging yourself?

"I guess I hoped that I could control my eating and also get myself to work harder so I wouldn’t forget things."

"It doesn’t seem to be working."

"No, it just makes me feel terrible. In fact, I can see that judging myself for not knowing answer made me feel so badly that then I wanted to eat more. Instead of giving me more control, it gave me less!"

"So you are trying to have control over yourself through your self-judgments, but what actually happens is that you feel awful and behave in addictive ways to avoid pain. I think what also happens is that some part of you goes into resistance to being judged and told what to do, so you end up doing opposite of what you tell yourself you should do."

"Right. As soon as I tell myself not to eat so much and judge myself for eating, that’s when I really want to eat. So I’m eating to not be controlled and also because in judging myself I’m abandoning myself, which makes me feel sad and empty, and I’ve always used food to fill up that emptiness. Whew! How do I stop this cycle?"

"You can’t stop it until you are conscious of it. As long as you are doing it unconsciously - on automatic pilot - you have no choice over it. So first thing you can do is not try to change it but just notice it. As you become very aware of this pattern, you will have choice to change it. You will have choice to be loving and caring toward yourself instead of judgmental once you become aware of what you are doing. You can start by noticing every time you feel that empty sad feeling, and then exploring what you were telling yourself that led to painful feeling."

Karl did start to notice and over time was able to stop judging himself. Not only did sad empty feeling that he had experienced so often in his life go away, but he was able to keep to his medical nutrition plan for his heart. When his Inner Child felt loved instead of judged, he didn’t need to eat to take away pain.