Why Do I Want to Restrict AND Binge When I’m Angry?

The other day I posted about my stressful day, and how that spiraled into thoughts of restriction followed by thoughts of bingeing.

A lot of you resonated with that, so I put up a poll in stories and 65% of you agreed that yes, emotions have the capacity to incite a desire to restrict AND a desire to binge, rather than one or the other.

As one follower put it: "I thought I was the only one who did that! Why does my body feel drawn to both??"

Which is a great question, and here are my thoughts:

The first and more obvious answer is that restriction breeds bingeing, so a desire to restrict food is eventually going to lead to a backlash of wanting to binge on it. If you've been restricting and bingeing for a long time, this response may happen so swiftly and imperceptibly that you perceive the desire to do both at the same time.

The more interesting answer, though, is that I believe that restrictionspeaks to our desire to control and "get in line," which in times of high stress or anger can feel appropriate. For me, anger has always incited a sense of fiery independence, like I want to prove that I don't need anything or anyone, food included.

Bingeing takes the emotion and uplevels it. Instead of feeling satisfied with controlling and pushing away the emotions, bingeing wakes up the inner rebel and asks: you want in?

At which point the inner rebel decides that the whole emotional experience is TOO MUCH and now it's pushed us into a corner where we now have to deny that we actually FEEL and NEED and FUCK THAT!! I cannot be contained! I'm having lots of emotions here and don't try to stop me!

And so the desire to binge as an expression of the emotion we just asked ourselves to contain is set up, and we end up with conflicting emotions of wanting to be rigid and controlling and small, versus destructive and loud and big.

It may come down to communication style, where people who tend to restrict are more comfortable keeping feelings contained and close the vest, whereas people who restrict and binge have a need to express and get things out. This, of course, is only a working theory and does not pertain to everyone.

It is also possible that restriction started out as an inner rebel (ie. I'll show you, I don't need anything!) but because this is actually socially applauded, bingeing has to step in and become Rebel 2.0, because certainly no one is condoning that and we have to get our point across.

As always, I welcome your thoughts. Does any of this resonate with you?