Do you always feel hungry? Put down the food. Your inner child is starving!
Take a moment to listen to yourself. That’s not hunger you are experiencing, its your inner child who wants you to listen to her. You are not paying attention to her. She doesn’t want you to shove food down her throat. What she wants and needs is for you to binge on words.
Breathtaking, juicy, big fat dripping, wonderful, salivating, well done, binge words to feed your inner child of love. Binge on words that will fill up that empty pit of hunger in her stomach with warm fuzzy feelings that you have been searching for your entire life. Binge eating people so often spend most of their lives hating the way their bodies look and refusing to be kind to themselves because of the hatred they have for their bodies. That self-loathing is not just about your body, its also a statement about yourself.
If you had a small child standing in front of you looking up at you with an innocent face, would you tell her how much you hate her because she is fat? Never, so why is it OK to tell yourself that? It’s not. So think of your inner child (give her an age) standing in front of you, starving for your (parents) attention. You can ignore her, verbally abuse her, or soothe her. Think about what your parents did to you. Today, you have a choice, don’t continue to verbally abuse yourself with harsh words and criticisms that only make you the cycle of self-hatred continue.
You can heal those wounds, Think of it this way: Adopt your inner child, she’s STARVING, she’s been neglected, criticized and emotionally abandoned. If you saw a five year old on the street, your heart would go out to her, well that’s what your inner child feels, too. It’s not hunger pains you feel, it’s the child who never heard those words of love from the parents who raised you.
At a recent retreat I gave, when the women talked about how much they hated themselves and what they looked like, and told me that they refused to be kind and say nice things to themselves until they lost weight, I gave them this picture of their inner child. I told them to sit quietly and think of themselves at that young age, and think of who said those mean and cruel words to them and how it felt. Look at this innocent child who did nothing wrong. The tears came pouring down their faces as they realized that little girl was still inside of them, and how hurtful those words still feel today. If you want to stop binge eating food, start bingeing on words. Words of love and praise go a long way in helping build self-esteem. Even if you think yours is broken, it can be repaired. Not by continuing the hatred, but by nurturing the wounds. Binge on your kind words, they are non caloric and they don’t cost anything!
Make a copy of this picture, and start feeding yourself with the following words:
You are special
I will always love you
I will protect you
You are wonderful
I love you because you are my child
You are the best
You are soooooo beautiful