Has anyone who has binge eating disorder here learned to change it to a different coping strategy with any success?

[Glassofwater8]

Please allow me to vent:I was adopted at birth. My adopted parents had their own children and rejected me. I grew up feeling unloved and unwanted and suffered from a low self esteem my whole life and became a loser magnet later as an adult. I didn't know how to choose someone of quality characteristics, successful and stable and unselfish. I became a victim of men who took advantage of my emotional vulnerability since I felt I needed someone to give me a feeling that I belong, and family I always yearned for. They used me for sex and abandoned me when they moved on to new pasture. I would get into co-dependent relationship patterns where I would lose my individuality and my sense of self, becoming like a child in the relationship and a servant to the man I was with, thinking it was my love that made them want me. I would eventually feel like I was not loved or appreciated, feeling used and I would get angry and resentful and fight and argue when I realized they didn't respect me. I would turn to food to cope with my feelings of rejection and gain weight. I was athletic as a young person. It was later that I would battle my weight and do binge eating to soothe my emotional episodes after dieing and exercising to loose it. I've been through this cycle so many times. Now I'm a type 2 diabetic and obese and sick. My health is so bad. I wish I knew how to love me enough to be independent and not be emotionally needy. I wish I had a better sense of self esteem and learn to put my foot down and stand up for myself. I am so tired of sabotaging myself to people who don't really love me. My life has been wasted on losers and users. I feel like the fruit is gone and the husk is all that's left. I'm angry and bitter because I just couldn't find a good man who is accountable for his actions. Even if I had found him, my low self worth, esteem, self loathing, misery and depression would sabotage a relationship as soon as I get suspicious that he's like all the others. I don't know how to break the cycle, heal the hurt from my childhood rejection, set the healthy boundaries and grow into a secure adult. Any advice?

[sotired67]

First of all I'd like to say that taking the time to express the uncaring, unloving, negative things you faced from your childhood/ the most important formative time of your life, (according to experts) i.e. your birth until the average child is eight years old, generally means that if your experiences weren't conducive to a person growing and developing into a reasonably healthy person, physically, mentally and I guess emotionally, the likelihood is that you'll find the general things in life such as, friendships, succeeding in school and finding and maintaining a family difficult, and (though it surely seems difficult to believe) all because the time between birth and up to the age of eight, was spoiled and overpowered by a number of negative experiences.

Further to that, when you take into account that as a child, you had no say over the way your birth parents treated you, and when you finally learnt that you were adopted by people who ended up treating you unlike the way you should have been , i.e. with lots of care, love, compassion, gentleness coupled with a fair measure of things that are necessary to aid a child into becoming a young lady with a fair measure of good self esteem and confidence in yourself and other people, according to research and experts in the field of childhood experiences, unfortunately made it inevitable that you would find life in general difficult to deal with and in your case, develop a habit of eating more food than is generally needed to keep your body going, which as time has proven can develop into obesity, leading to other health threatening thing such as type 2 diabetes and other serious health problems.

I think also that it may be helpful to give yourself time to accept that you were vulnerable and was deprived of the things that are fundamentally important to ensure that you would grow up feeling better about yourself, your adopted parents, future friendships and even relationships as you became of age.

Noone is able to turn back time and undo hurtful and unhelpful experiences, and also it's not easy to progress positively when your formative years were negative and generally shape who you are and become as you grow up and start going through the general things that most kids do.

Also, regarding future relationships with men, it may be helpful to you, to try and bear in mind that depending on their childhood experiences, will also shape who they are and eventually become, sometimes without any actual knowledge of the effect that negative treatment towards them from their parents, or people who adopt them, is likely to have on how they later treat fellow people from school friendships into relationships and even marriage.

You also mentioned that you have low self esteem,coupled with feelings of self dislike, and depression.

Again, I hold the opinion that those feelings, though they serve as additional burdens that weigh you down in a sense, nevertheless, I try to draw you back to the point about the formative years and the fact that they shape each person depending on the experiences, positive or negative.

It is evident to me that your childhood experiences have had a damaging impact on you and you didn't deserve any of that but because you were young, impressionable and vulnerable, there was little you could have done to prevent it from happening because the responsibility was with the people that served as your adoptive parents and siblings.

I don't know your age and I respect your right to choose to disclose or withhold it, but no matter what, you have found life in general difficult and things things you said in your post, suggests to me that you need the type of assistance, patience, trust, love and kindness that you were deprived of in during your childhood.

It's possible that you may never come to terms with your childhood experiences, and they way they left you feeling about yourself and other people throughout time.

All I suggest is that you try to give yourself time to do what you can to change what is possible to change and give yourself more time to try and come to terms with what you were not able to prevent when you were young, vulnerable and naturally inexperienced.

I'll leave that with you to consider and please feel free to write back if you feel you need more time to say how you feel and whether you feel able to cope with your life and the challenges at this point in time,

I'll be only to glad and willing to spare some of my time to read, ponder, and try to assist you to the best of my ability.

I hope I have provided some comfort and reassurance for you.

Best wishes from Trevor.