---
title: Bulimia: Recognizing Triggers Level Four
description: Level four of six: bulimia triggers.
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    # Bulimia: Recognizing Triggers Level Four

   Details    Category: [Self-Help](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/blog/self-help/)  Level four of six to recognize and move beyond bulimia triggers.

**Level 4**

You restrain yourself from acting out your binge or purge. Now you have more options than calling a particular person as you did in level three. At level four you feel the binge urge feelings coming on. You

 have an idea, if only a vague idea, of what is triggering you. Now you can call a person or go for a walk or read poetry, or wash the dishes or clean your room or closets or do laundry instead of living through another binge purge episode.

The key word is “instead.” You grab hold of your energy along with your awareness of what is triggering you and you use your energy in a constructive way. At level four you begin to experience more fully the fact that feelings are temporary.

Even the enormous and powerful urge to binge and purge is a feeling that will pass. At level four you discover the wonderful feeling of living through the urge. Instead of seeing food wrappers and feeling groggy from the eating disorder binge purge episode you see something positive. The dishes are done. Or the closet is more orderly. Or your mind holds a moving image from a poem you read. Or simply and profoundly, you don’t see the aftermath of a binge purge in your home or reflected on your face in the mirror.

The presence of the absence of the binge or purge episode seems like a miracle.

[Level 1](https://eatingdisorderrecovery.net/index.php/help-yourself/34-coping-strategies/255-bulimia-how-to-recognize-triggers-for-a)

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

[Levels 5 & 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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