He kicks the couch. She hears the wooden legs scrape against the floor. Her body tight and unmoving, she tries to be as hard and still as the floor. The colors on the TV screen seem to become more vivid to her. She tries to pour her entire being into the screen, making the pictures and sounds her whole world.

He roars at the walls. "Nothing gets done around here. What kind of mess is this?" Mary's eyes glaze. Her heart beats faster. Her mind is totally absorbed in a soap commercial. Her body attempts to retreat into a numb calm. She ignores the pounding of her heart.

From the coffee table her father picks up a small box of crayons and throws it across the room. She breathes deeply and stares at the Bugs Bunny cartoon now playing. She is oblivious to all but the cartoon. She has achieved invisibility and nonexistence.

He bellows, "Nobody does a damn thing around here!" and sweeps an end table with his hand, sending a lamp and ashtray flying. She has lost awareness of her body, the floor, the room, sounds, sights, smells. To Mary now, only Bugs Bunny exists. Her father lurches around the room, mumbling unintelligibly. In the cartoon Bugs Bunny steals a carrot. Mary laughs.

Her father whirls at her. "What's so funny, you lazy good-for-nothing brat, making a mess everywhere and laughing at me!" She looks up, dazed. She doesn't know what he is talking about. She is so removed she doesn't know who or what he is.

"Answer me, you worthless, no-good!"

He picks her up and throws her across the room. She crashes into the wall. She may feel terror and pain. She may cry out, "No, Daddy, please," or, "I'll be good," or "I didn't do anything," or "I'm sorry."

She may say and feel nothing. She may remain dazed and feel body pain later. She may not remember this happened. She may remember the events but not the feelings. She may remember body and emotional feelings, but not the event. Lack of memory or partial memory shields her from the unendurable knowledge that she lives with a dangerous person. This person can explode at any time, frighten her, hurt her for no understandable reason, and she can do nothing to stop him or protect herself.

All she can do is blank her felt existence out of existence. For a while, Mary does not exist to herself.

Secrets go beyond food behavior. Overeaters often try to give themselves a sense of power, thrills or feelings of superiority. They may buy things beyond their resources. They may have secret sexual relationships. They may flee a relationship if they suspect the person sees through their eating pretenses or is aware of their buying or sexual binges.

If any of these secrets apply to you then you know about the darker side of secret keeping. You get scared. You cry or shake in the dark. You occasionally isolate yourself until you feel there is not a soul who cares about you. You feel helpless and angry regularly.

You make private, wild promises about changing, but can't. You binge on food or other activities until you feel drugged. You may be hung over for days.

You won't tell anyone about this secret personal hell you're living. You make complaints of being ill. You may accept or expect caretaking and feel profoundly sad when it is not enough.

Now we are entering the vast areas of secrets you do not know about yourself. Here are major signals that you are entering a secret territory within yourself. You yell, cry, plead or become stone silent with someone while feeling self righteous.

This may be a familiar and recurring scene, yet you may not wish to know how you contribute to create it. You may not wish to know how your troubled- eating practices and binge behaviors cause many problems in your life.

You can succeed in not knowing. You have for a long time.

To explore how you create some of your troubles would bring you uncomfortably close to your unknown inner secrets.

What are these secrets? What is the darkness from which they arise? Letting your curiosity come forth will help you tolerate your feelings as you explore the possible roots of your inner secrets.

When a child's identity, worth in body, mind, soul and imagination, are disregarded or trampled, the bewildering emotional pain is too much for most children to bear. Because they are children, they have no criteria for behavior, no comparison, no frame of reference. They believe that this is the way the world is. And, of course, this is the way their world is. They will accept as true and valid the destructive messages pouring into them and struggle to find a way to survive their pain.

Some methods of destroying a child's worth are:

• To belittle a child's thinking.
• To disparage a child's natural desires and behaviors.
• To neglect or isolate a child.
• To break promises.
• To tell fantasies as if they were true.
• To tease unrelentingly.
• To not believe a child who says friends, teachers, neighbors or strangers are harassing her or him.
• To punish a child for telling his or her experience and/or telling the child his or her experience did not happen.

Today sensational, exaggerated language is often used in advertising, news and conversation to make an emotional point.

In the context of an assaulted child's experience, the roots of inner secrets are genuinely intolerable. Intolerable means truly unendurable. The child cannot stay alive and sane and experience what is intolerable.

When stress, pain, horror, confusion, bewilderment and fear are both intolerable and inescapable there are usually two choices. The situation must end or the child must die or go insane.

The creative child finds a third choice. The child who will survive blocks awareness. Intolerable information becomes a well-guarded secret.

The secret is guarded until the child is strong enough, mature enough, has enough support and information, to retrieve his lost experience and live a more full life.

If you are an overeater, the darkness and compulsive behaviors around your inner secrets are the devices that have saved your life. It takes a lot of trust and courage to know that you can survive without them. When you rally your trust and courage to begin to explore your own darkness you embark on the next phase of your triumphant journey.

In each appointment with yourself, go through these exercises the same way, beginning with reading the introductory preparatory exercises. With each appointment with yourself you may choose the same or a different question. You will find that you avoid some and return to others. You are choosing what is right for you at the time.

Understanding Your Triumphant Journey Process

By beginning to go through these exercises, even for a moment, you are slowing down your escape behavior. You are journeying toward what has been dark inside you. This is your gentle but firm search through your protective system. You are on your way to the truth, innocence and solidity of your identity.

By moving slowly and without judgment through these carefully planned and respectful processes, you will begin to hear and understand your own well guarded secrets. Your protective system will present obstacles. You will be extraordinarily creative in the range of obstacles you present to yourself. It is a challenge to meet them. It can also be a very reinforcing time as you appreciate your own powers of unconscious creativity. Once your secrets are resolved you will be able to use your creativity for much more positive purposes.

When you know these obstacles are unnecessary defenses your protective system is putting up, you can more firmly stay present and on task. Here are a few example of self created obstacles. Learn to recognize them for what they are.

1. You will get anxious, bored, irritated or distracted.
2. You will forget to do the exercises.
3. You will only be able to do them for a few minutes.
4. You will not image or experience a brief and little image.
5. You will say to yourself, "This is nonsense." "This isn't getting me anywhere." "I can't do this right." "I want _______(fill in your favorite binge food)."

These are the actions and the voice of your old self protective system. Remember, you developed this system when you were a young, frightened and powerless child. Living by such rules now that you are more mature and have more personal resources is a tremendous waste of your life energy.

It takes time to let go of a system that has worked well for you for so long. After all, that part of you was designed to save your life. Maybe it actually did help to save your life or your sanity.

If you meet these obstacles with the patience and kindness they deserve, gradually you will begin to hear your true voice, a voice hidden for years by overeating and other barriers.

Over time you will discover and develop more strength and courage. You will greet yourself as an undivided person capable of positive action and profound joy.

This will take time. You will cry. You will get mad. You will protest. Use your support systems. Be gentle with yourself. Stick with it. These are the guideposts for your triumphant journey.