---
title: Bulimia: Recognizing Triggers Level One
description: Level one of six to recognize and move beyond bulimia triggers.
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       Details    Category: [Help Yourself](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/eating-disorder-help/help-yourself/)  In eating disorder recovery you can explore your triggering situations by looking at six levels of trigger responses.   
 **Explore Your Situation**

Please pay attention to what is going on in your life, including your internal life, just prior to a binge or

purge activity. When you feel the urge and then need and then out of control compulsion to binge or throw up or do some other ritualized behavior familiar to you and which numbs you out or which you think relaxes you, explore your situation. Even if you can’t explore in the moment, be ready to look

at that moment later.

  
**Level 1**

Look at possible triggers after the fact. You’ve binged and purged. You are in the familiar aftermath of mess or sorrow or sense of failure. Or perhaps you are relieved and feel ready to take on the next event in your day. because you've gotten the binge/purge out of the way.

 Before you move on into despair or into a numbed automatic functioning machine, look at what was going on for you earlier in the day. Look at what was going on in your mind and emotional world as well as tangibles in your life.

 You may notice something that triggered your binge. Even if you don’t see any reason for your bulimic episode, give yourself a moment to attend to your situation after every binge purge episode. You may discover clues or patterns.   
You may discover that certain events or people or feelings always precede an episode, and perhaps they are triggers.

 If you attend to your life in this way you give yourself an opportunity to see what events, relationships, activities, thoughts or feelings seem intolerable. These are the triggers that set off your eating disorder actions so you can feel relieved, relaxed or numb.

As you practice paying attention with curiosity you increase your self esteem and internal strength. You grow and become ready for level two.



[Levels 2 and 3](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/index.php/joannas-blog/918-self-help/730-bulimia-recognizing-triggers-level-two-and-three)

[Level 4](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/index.php/joannas-blog/918-self-help/731-bulimia-recognizing-triggers-level-four#yvComment731)

[Level 5 and 6](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/index.php/joannas-blog/918-self-help/732-bulimia-recognizing-triggers-levels-five-and-six-plus-raising-the-stakes#yvComment732)

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

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