"Sleep that knits the raveled sleeve of care." William Shakespeare

A person with an eating disorder often misinterprets body signals. You may tend to avoid sleep when you are tired. When feelings of tiredness turn into food cravings, rather than getting the rest you need, trouble is brewing.

When you suffer from an eating disorder, you've made an unconscious contract that involves your mind, spirit and body. Your contract states that any thoughts or feelings that are painful or disruptive must be blocked. Your body must process its energy so you can remain unaware of your authentic responses.

So you eat or starve or binge and purge or compulsively or mindlessly eat to block your feelings and thoughts. Over time, the contract gets refined so you can feel almost anything and register the feeling as hunger.

When you feel tired, you may experience fatigue as a trigger to eat. This situation develops into a pattern where you may avoid sleep by eating instead of sleeping.

An OMG panic attack experience gives you more information about what's happening to you than the numbness an eating disorder provides.

 "The Panic Attack Symptoms Nobody Talks About" by Rachel Gearinger is a short, well-written and candid article that may have powerful significance if you have or had an eating disorder. Eating disorders can create a psychological numbness that dulls your senses and, for a short time, relieves panic.

But you don't feel relief. You feel nothing. That dullness or numbness could be a form of depersonalization and/or derealization, a little-discussed aspect of panic.

Do you recognize the two main influences that propel you to the slippery slope and undermine your eating disorder recovery?

1. Anyone who supports your symptoms rather than your recovery. Be wary and alert when someone encourages you to starve or invites you to join them in a binge.
2. Eating disorders distort your thinking and your perceptions. Under the influence of that distortion, you can rationalize and justify eating disorder behaviors. That justification puts you well on the slippery slope to relapse.

"Do I have an eating disorder if I only binge on healthy foods?

Desperate Hope

This question speaks of a desperate hope to find a way to be safe and healthy. You want to give yourself good nourishment. You want to take care of yourself. You want to live. Yet you know that a binge, even quality food, harms your body and your life.

Compulsion to Binge Eat

At the same time, you can't stop bingeing. Since you are helpless to stop, you try to make your binge and yourself as safe from negative consequences as possible.