coping skill — a healthy behavioral tool used by the individual to overcome adversity.

It helps to create a personalized list. It should include things that help you relieve the discomfort of whatever feeling your feeling in a healthy, non-binge or purge oriented way.

I read that the compulsion to eat and the bulimic coping mechanism is so strong that often times there may be two or more new coping skills used to address the emotion or incident at hand. I have often found that to be true. There have been many times I have needed to journal and take a shower. Or meditate and then call a friend.

This is my list:

• JOURNAL.
• Calling a friend to talk.
• Take a walk.
• Take a long, hot bath.
• Exercise.
• Meditate.
• Breathe deeply.
• Clean.
• Anything that isn't a coping mechanism…

coping mechanism - a group closely related to coping skills but usually with a negative or harmful effect.

The overuse of coping mechanisms can exacerbate the problem. Below are some examples I found in my reading:

• Aim inhibition: lowering sights to what seems more achievable.
• Avoidance: mentally or physically avoiding something that causes distress.
• Compensation: making up for a weakness in one area by gain strength in another.
• Denial: refusing to acknowledge that an event has occurred.
• Displacement: shifting of intended action to a safer target.
• Dissociation: separating oneself from parts of your life.
• Fantasy: escaping reality into a world of possibility.
• Intellectualization: avoiding emotion by focusing on facts and logic.
• Rationalization: creating logical reasons for bad behavior.
• Repression: subconsciously hiding uncomfortable thoughts.
• Trivializing: Making small what is really something big.
• Undoing: actions that psychologically 'undo' wrongdoings for the wrongdoer.

Binging, purging or any combination thereof is a coping mechanism. It is a way of burying, denying and basically running from whatever the emotion, feeling or trigger you are experiencing. At some point during development we learned to short circuit the coping process by projecting and associating every feeling with food because it was easier to deal with food than our feelings.

"While other adolescents were developing coping skills for rejection, stress and anxiety, we were developing eating disorders."
(I would love to credit this…I cannot seem to relocate the author)

This is a practice make perfect situation, plain and simple. When something hurt or made me feel uncomfortable I would look at my list of coping skills. Sometimes I was able to replace the binge purge cycle, sometimes I was not. When it wasn't enough to replace the cycle then I had a chance to practice forgiveness of myself. Either way, I was practicing and healing.