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welcome to night eating!
Please read the following as it contains important information for optimal site
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  If you haven't visited the homepage, you're missing out on some important info, so I'll just give you a "heads up" here!
You've reached "night eating," part of the emotional feelings network of sites. If you scroll
down to the footer on this page, you'll see the complete listing of all the sites in the network!
All of the sites
in the emotional feelings network of sites are linked together thru a very complete network of underlined link words. Anytime you see an underlined link word, if you should be
interested in more information concerning that word, simply click on it & a new browser window will appear. The page that
opens up will give you an entire page filled with information concerning the word of
your interest.
the emotional feelings network
of sites was designed like this because as an ex-night eater, I was also faced with many other life dysfunctions,
mental illness I was unaware of, domestic violence, a lack of any positive self esteem & so much more....
As I began my recovery,
I began to slowly discover how all of the subjects contained within the emotional feelings network
of sites are connected to each other. Soon I also discovered that there's power in educating yourself about it
all.
As you gain power thru your newly acquired knowledge, you begin to regain a
sense of control. As you begin to feel better, you become stronger & you're more able to begin your own journey
thru recovery & personal growth. Once you begin, you will see how the subjects contained within this network of sites
really is... all pertinent information for you - as a night eater!
visit the homepage for a better understanding of what's contained within the emotional feelings network of
sites!
thanks for stopping by.... i hope that something
within the network will be of use to you today....
kathleen
 my own story...
It wasn't until I was beginning to feel like I had a hangover
in the morning that I realized that I was doing this "night eating" thing almost every night & it was making me sick.
I had been doing it off & on for years & then suddenly it became an every night thing.
Suddenly I was acting like a crazy woman in the night, leaving my bed several times instead of just once, to get food from
the kitchen. I'd get a whole bag of cookies, or a whole loaf of bread & sit in the dark, stuffing it all down my throat
without tasting it, without chewing it when possible, just stuffing my mouth full.
Then like a zombie, I'd trudge back to my bed, throw back
the covers & lie back down. I'd sleep, immediately falling into a dream, for just an hour, maybe less & then start
the cycle all over again.
I began asking people if
they had ever heard of anything like, "night eating." No one had ever heard of it and they all looked at me like I was crazy
for asking about it. Maybe I could find something in the library about it. This was before the internet came about or before
I had any access to it. The closest thing I could find was a book, titled, Chaotic Eating. This was almost like what I was
experiencing, but it gave me a clue about something.
It hit an unpleasant
chord somewhere within me concerning the foods I was jamming down my throat. It made a link between the chemical make
up of white flour, white sugar foods that people tend to purge on and the same chemical make up of alcohol! Imagine that!
It seemed that when I wasn't drinking,
maybe to be pregnant, have kids, quit smoking as well, and needed something to lean on for comfort, it was the night eating
habit that seemed to make me look for those same white flour, white sugar foods. Aha... I was seeing a similarity. But still
I couldn't find anything about night eating and neither did my doctor.
While I hadn't been particularly smart in my lifetime, I knew that I wasn't stupid
either. I began to put things together in my mind, but as time went by, finding someone who knew something about night eating
was impossible. I just couldn't figure it all out myself. I didn't know how to keep myself from going to the kitchen every
night. I was going crazy trying to stop. The more failure I experienced at stopping the habit, the more I ended up going to
the kitchen for more food each night.
Many hours, many days I'd
be obsessively thinking about my problem of eating at night. I couldn't be the only one in the world who did this.
In hindsight,
I can tell you why I didn't know why I was doing this night eating thing. I was totally engulfed in a combination of destructive
behaviors, symptoms of mental illness, in pain from many unresolved emotions & feelings left over from being traumatized
too many times beginning in childhood, and many more reasons.
I had no support, no one
I could trust, and my life was as dysfunctional as they come. But many times throughout even the toughest of times, I felt
as though I was coping adequately, things weren't that bad and I was probably living a normal existence.
Lo & behold, I would learn later on, in my recovery period that I wasn't able to live a normal life because I didn't know what normal was!
i was a hand-me-down victim of
domestic violence as was my
mother, my grandmother, my aunts & my cousins....
it was simply an accepted way of life.
my grandmother told me she stopped the physical abuse by telling an attorney friend of my grandfather's at the country club
that if he didn't stop hitting her, she would tell everyone at the club that he was abusing her. she black-mailed him into
submission which only made him abuse her verbally & mentally instead.
my grandmother wasn't "physically" struck anymore, but
she was verbally & mentally abused for the rest of my grandfather's life. i don't know if he abused my mother & her
sisters or anyone else. he certainly didn't ever abuse me, so i just couldn't understand it all....
but i didn't ever like the way he treated my grandmother.
she lived on valium that she hid very well. she called her medication her nerve pills. she was stoned much of the time, now
that i think of it all. my grandfather said humiliating & belittling things to her in front of us all and she would just
smile & shrug it off, but inside she was a broken angel.
my mother? - not until my recovery did i determine the possibility of my mother
being abused physically throughout her marriage.
when i was almost ready to move out of the house - i was either seventeen or eighteen,
my dad beat my mother within an inch of her life. she was unrecognizable.
she divorced him over that incident, but she still got up every morning and cooked
his breakfast, ironed his clothes, she got him an apartment, furnished it for him, opened him a checking account and dealt
with selling our house on her own.
we were never allowed in my parents bedroom when we were kids - ever - after
reliving as much of my life that i can remember, i came up with the conclusion that something was going on in there. they
never fought in front of us - never even calling the other one a bad name - but at night when i was in bed i could hear them
in their bedroom fighting in muffled angry voices...
my mother has three sisters - two of which i know were abused by their husbands.
one suffers from major depression and anxiety disorders and i am not sure what
other disorders she has experienced. she married two abusive men.
the other sister's husband was my father's brother....
he used to hit, kick and scream at my cousins in front of everyone...
he had a drinking problem - too much beer - but he was always so nice to me...
it was confusing to say the least - he could be so loving and yet so cruel and abusive to his own children. no one would ever
say anything to him about it. it was just accepted.
i was a nice girl from a nice family - a family that looked well off to all that
observed us all at our family functions.... at church..... and always from a distance... we always had everything we
wanted. we had nice clothes and ate steak for dinner. who would have thought that we were all in so much pain?
i have been married four times, the first three times to abusive men.
i have five children of my own and two step children.
i am presently married to a wonderful man who is not abusive. after all, i deserve
some happiness, peace of mind and well being...
after all, i was a good girl from a good family....
i was continually
traumatized as a child
as a child i was exposed to a sniper in my front yard exchanging
machine gun fire with police, shooting out car windows and also a situation when some teenagers set fire to every leaf pile
on our street - there were maples lining both sides of the street about twenty feet apart from each other and it was fall.
there was a pile of leaves underneath each tree, which is what the teens set fire to as they walked down the street. it was
chaotic and incredibly frightening.
i was terrified once as my parents made me sleep in the car
when we were camping and there was a thunder storm casting huge bolts of lightning close to the car, the wind blowing hard
and rain pelting the car. i was terrified and never forgot the intensity of the fear.
we were involved in a car accident with a semi truck. it was
such an extremely terrifying experience that i still cringe as i drive by semis.
we continually moved
at least 6-7 times by age eleven
moving is traumatic to kids. it's hard on adults
as well....
i believe that my continual moving throughout my
childhood, early adult years and finally throughout the later years of my life left me unable to establish long lasting friendships....
in my early teen years:
my mother was diagnosed with an unusual
disease, trigeminal neuralgia, that there was no treatment for ....
she also was in several severe car accidents
my family was falling apart....
my father was traveling all over the world for
his work...
my mother was drinking to help the pain she was
experiencing....
i began to drink excessively & experimented
with drugs
in my early teen years, we were still eating dinner together
at the table from time to time... my mother made this wonderful
cubed steak dinner that was actually one of my favorite things she made. she floured the cubed steaks and fried them so they
would brown on the outside. then she would scrape the pan to get the flavorful drippings from the pan and make a gravy with
Lipton's onion soup mix.
she would add some water of course, and then she would put them into this yellow
rectangular pyrex baking dish that had a clear glass cover that sat inside the dish almost. she would bake this meat for a
few hours until it was so tender you could just cut it with a fork.
at dinner one night, my father told me to give him my plate so he could serve me
the meat. as he lifted the cubed steak up out of the boiling hot gravy, he dropped the steak on my forearm somehow. it had
been an awkward move to do this on his part and the pain was intolerable. the gravy had stuck to my skin, burning it... i
began to cry.
he screamed at me to "shut up" and sit down to eat. i couldn't do that. i couldn't
sit still, i was burning. i ran, crying to my room. i held my arm and cried. i had second degree burns on my forearm and still
to this day show the scars from that incident.
i remember my mother coming to my room and listening to my father in the background
screaming at her to get back to the table and leave me alone. he kept saying, i had nothing to be crying about. if i wanted
something to cry about - he would really give it to me.
in my teen years i got pregnant & my mom
forced me to have an abortion...
this was a devastating trauma in my life. i think i have worked it all
out in my mind now, at age forty-six. that's a good thing....
then it was the end of my world as i knew it. you would think that i
should have known the consequences of my actions, but by the time i was sixteen, when this occurred, i was already so out
of touch with reality, drinking alcohol heavily & only held hostage by a crushing realization that no matter how terribly
i acted out, my parents would never admit that they loved me.
then when i found myself pregnant, confused with my thoughts that sex
was the love i so desperately longed for, i just could not believe that my mother was forcing me to kill a baby.
my mom was extremely stoic when i was this age already, so when she
made the statement that she would not allow me to ruin my life by having a child, i was further devestated. the abortion experience
was both mentally and physically traumatic for me and forced me to take much that i experienced from an adult world that day
- totally out of context.
i began to experiment with "cutting" & contemplated
suicide
when i asked my father to help me apply to college, he laughed
in my face & told me, "girls are supposed to get married & have kids, not go to college!" so
i did exactly what he told me to do. i married my first husband after knowing him for less than six months. i moved to florida
from new hampshire - away from him, my mother and brother and sister and every person i had ever known....
i have been continually abused & traumatized
throughout my adult life....little did i know that when i arrived in palm beach, florida with my
new husband, pregnant and far away from my family that it was his intention to get me to the abortion clinic within days of
our arrival to our new home...
i refused the abortion - three times, until the last time he took me
back, when someone administered a shot of something to me that made me woozy & sleepy... i gave in to them after that...
i felt each pain, listened to an eternity of suction, my insides being ripped out of me, my baby gone again.... don't let
anyone ever tell you that abortion is a "choice"....
it's the slow death of your true self..... it's an ocean of shame, betrayal
and bitterness... it's a grief that you never quite recover from...
i spent almost one year in my bedroom....
i also have and am recovering from post traumatic
stress disorder
i have experienced ptsd for most of my life as well. in my
recovery process - i have experienced reoccurring bouts of extreme anxiety, panic attacks, dissociation, nightmares, loss
of self esteem and still struggle with binge eating in the daytime.
i take medication prescribed by the doctor i see at my counseling center. i have
been seeing my present counselor for almost two complete years. it took me several years to find a qualified and experienced
counselor to treat me. i take effexor xr - 3 - 75mg. capsules a day. i've taken other drugs throughout my present
recovery period - especially at the beginning when i was experiencing severe symptoms.
i have been working on mental health websites for about one and a half
years trying to help others who are experiencing the same problems with mental health.
i also have experienced extreme major depressive disorder
taking your own personal inventory....
about one year into my recovery from post traumatic stress
disorder and depression, & after i had educated myself about anxiety disorders and lifestyle factors, i began to think
about the traumas i had experienced in my lifetime.
i have never blamed anyone in my life for my experiences &
still i take full responsibility for everything that has happened in my lifetime. but... i wanted to "understand" & "ponder"
on the reasons for those horrible things that happened to me throughout my life.
this is important for you also. as you may have observed,
those with eating disorders have a high probability of having experienced some kind of sexual abuse or abuse in their lives.
i had to look at that and above you can read about my beliefs about the abuse in my lifetime.
yes, i believe that you have to go back and review what has
happened to you. i don't think the reason is to blame anyone though. the reason you have to go back and examine your traumas,
negative learned behaviors and other important experiences is to process the emotions & feelings that those incidents
caused you to feel.
at the time of the incident, you were not able to process
or resolve those feelings, thus.... they have continued to churn inside you for the rest of your life. The chain reaction
of those unresolved emotions & feelings that have escalated throughout your life, continue to cause you pain in one way
or another... perhaps by "night eating."
i have to admit again that these are my personal beliefs about
recovering from trauma, unresolved emotions & feelings, anxiety and night eating, but i have been successful at ending
the night eating. i have also been successful at partially recovering from my post traumatic stress disorder and depression.
as time went by, the night eating escalated. i began to go
to the kitchen without realizing i was going there.
more times than not that i didn't remember going to the
kitchen to get food. i believe that the more frustrated i was with the night eating, not being able to find any help to stop
the night eating that it became a different syndrome - nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder.
searching in all the eating disorder websites and articles
to find night eating was futile. i had no idea that there was a "sleep disorder" called nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder.
it was a surprise to find out after i had finally overcome the night eating - that there was a "name" for what i was experiencing.
it is somehow a relief to realize that you are not alone in finding food in the middle of the night - almost ever night...
therefore, i can understand how frustrating,
shameful & disgusting night eating can be for those who are not educated about anxiety disorders, depression, the effects of trauma, unresolved feelings & emotions
& other mental illnesses.
i was in that position for many years. i did begin
night eating in my last years in elementary school and in my early teens on a very occassional basis, i began to hide food
under my bed to eat so that no one would know that i was eating.
my family was increasingly becoming more &
more dysfunctional through these years. my mother & father became distant with each other & soon became distant with
us, (my brother & sister as well as myself). i needed desperately to be told that i was loved and it never happened. i
needed to be hugged. i needed someone to tell me that i was important to them. it just never happened.
in my early teen years and throughout my teen years, i continually acted
out using alcohol, drugs and sex to force my parents into recognizing something was wrong with me, but they wouldn't. they
were too far into their own agenda, their own problems, both mental & physical and my father, of course, his career.
i honestly believe with all my heart, that if i had received the needed
encouragement, validation & sense of worth that i yearned for, i would have been spared the abuse of alcohol and an abortion
at the age of 16.
the more trauma and emotional distress that
occured on an escalating scale, the more the night eating became a factor in my life. night eating became totally out of control
during the years i was experiencing domestic violence in my marriage.
for those of you who are experiencing
"night eating" or nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder, you may want to consider the possibility of a mental disorder factoring
into your situation. seeing your doctor for a physical examination to rule out any physical explanation for your symptoms
would be the place to start.
after voicing your concerns
to your primary care physician, you can ask for a referral for a mental health professional or a sleep study professional if
your sleep habits have truly been affected, you are experiencing sleep apnea or insomnia. it's important to seek help and
not ignore what is happening to you. you can live a happy and healthy life if you seek help. be sure to look for an experienced
professional who has treated night eating or nocturnal sleep related eating disorder.
my initial consultation with a sleep clinic doctor,
here in Dayton, Ohio, concluded that most of my sleep problems stemmed from my post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and
depression. the doctor felt that once i had those disorders under control, my sleep disorders would also be resolved. the
other most important factor was losing weight. although i am actively trying to lose weight, because of my nonunion fracture
in my right leg, exercise is almost totally out of the picture for me right now.
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it's a fervent belief of mine, although it's just my
opinion....
that those who experience an extremely escalated state
of an anxiety disorder, depression or both are at an extemely high risk for developing "night eating" behaviors,
especially if there's been years & years of untreated or recognized symptoms....
add in the factor of living in a dysfunctional
family an entire lifetime:
as another relevant precursor to eating disorders....
consider the long term effects of the: generational domestic violence,
serious chronic illnesses, alcohol abuse & the ultimate despair of using every self medicating behavior possible &
still not feeling better.....
even exposing yourself to promiscuous sexual behavior, confusing
sex with love, before you realize, that it's not true....
sex is sex.... another form of gratification for the moment...
it really - really - really hurts when you realize that nothing will make you feel better...
not marriage, not having children, not an extra-marital affair - not even god...
i tried god...
after my second husband left me to marry my friend - left me losing my
first three children - losing my home - losing my sanity actually, what was left of it any way... i tried god...
- i gave up wearing pants for god...
- i gave up my friends for god
- i gave up my ability to know right from wrong anymore
- i gave up my freedom of choice for god
- i gave up everything left in my life for god...
then the preacher ganged up w/my ex-husband in our custody battle to lie
about me. i wouldn't do what he insisted for me to do & he waged spiritual war on me.... it was time for me to experience
spiritual abuse as well....
several months later that preacher lost his church because it was discoverd
that he was forcing divorced women, who he had labeled, "widows" to have sex w/him - despite the fact that he was married
& had several children... yeah, i had tried god... i know it wasn't god that let me down really, but spiritual abuse is another devastating factor to include in the abusiveness factor in my life...
i was raised episcopalian, part of my family was catholic though so i went to the catholicchurch enough time to memorize the mass....
my mother's mother was baptist.
fundamental baptist was the religion that offered
me my first dose of spiritual abuse & as if i didn't have enough of that i later joined another baptist church that i
thought was truly legitimate, instead of the cult featured fundamental bible thumpin group i had been a part of before, and
i found myself reconciled w/ my physically abusive husband only to get pregnant & more physically abused & tired of
the baptist religion...
when i moved away, all alone, pregnant & toting a two year old as well, to where i knew no one, i was trying to decide
what to do with my spiritual life. i started a bible study in my apartment once i moved out of the domestic violence shelter
& found a church of the brethren preacher who lived next door to come over and lead the bible study.
i went to his church, too, to find out if this was where i belonged, but nope... i didn't feel comfortable there either...
then when i met my current husband, he was a mormon.
he had converted from being a methodist to mormonism. i couldn't go with that, although
i did visit his church with him. we decided that we could be methodists together tho, when we decided to get married, so we
went to the methodist church for awhile....
i was appalled with the hypocrisy.
we continued to feed the missionaries tho, of the mormon
church, because i got great personal satisfaction out of feeding those kids because i wanted to believe that someone out there
treated my kids who weren't with me, nicely & offered them a home cooked meal and a family to socialize with.
in a last ditch effort for religious redemption, after 6 years
of feeding mormon missionaries, i was baptized in the mormon church. it was the precursor to my falling into a very deep depresion,
extreme symptoms of ptsd, such as dissociation, derealization & panic attacks. my night eating escalated to the worst
level yet.
i had no control over anything in my life & i began to
isolate myself. i spent one year in my bedroom. i had suicidal thoughts daily.
the thing that saved me - i finally found a counselor who
was experienced in anxiety disorders, depression & was reputable.
i never gave up
looking for the right counselor... never... i finally found someone who could diagnose me.
there was no doubt in her mind when she told me that i had post traumatic stress disorder & depression. she just knew
it with everything in her. i believed her & i felt validated. for the first time in my life - i felt validated.
i had been
thinking suicidal thoughts daily...
i was dissociating constantly...
i'd be driving down the road & be seeing myself being thrown across the room, or hearing the rabid
voice i remember so well, as my eyes & some subliminal navigational system took me home in the van.
i fought daily to go to work....
i woke up so depressed, trying to decide which car to drive that would offer me the better chance to
be killed if i should suddenly veer off the road....
i no longer grocery shopped because of my
night eating... just looking at food made me sick, i'd always been a cook, always loved it, then of course, the weight
i had gained from night eating, made me believe that everyone in the store was looking at me saying, "why
is she shopping for food, she should have her jaw wired shut!"
i could no longer attend social functions i
believed that everyone was looking at me and talking about me behind my back.... i had gained upwards of 60 pounds from night
eating....
being extremely hyper-vigilent, i believed that i saw my ex-husband
lurking around every corner. i was in the habit of always keeping one eye on the passing cars just as i had been in the days
of running for my life, from domestic violence shelter to domestic violence shelter throughout the state of Michigan....
the counselor that i had seen previously to my present counselor
had told me that i was an alcoholic although i hadn't consumed alcohol only at christmas time for the past several years,
with the exception of an occasional bottle of wine, but i would say, less than 5 in several years as well. my husband being
a recovered alcoholic, we never kept alcohol in the house.
the counselor had sent me to AA meetings. when i saw the doctor
at their facility, she prescribed 4 prescriptions for me, all being narcotic. her answer was obviously to become a zombie.
after researching the medications on the internet.... i quit going to that counselor and the AA meetings.
my present counselor had honored my request for
no medications, but after fighting my intense symptoms &
seeing me extremely sleep deprived, she suggested that we try something, some kind of medication to alleviate my symptoms,
which honestly, made sense to me.
i was an exhausted piece of person. that's all i was... a
piece of a person....
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comments about sleep & night eating:
in my particular situation,
i believe that my night eating began as a "night eating syndrome." i say that because i
do remember getting up to eat. i was drowsy & zombie like, but i remember sitting up in my bed from what i thought was
a deep sleep, automatically pulling back the covers, setting my feet down on the floor & like a programmed robot - went
to the kitchen to find the sugary / or white flour bread type foods to eat. sometimes my combinations of food were crazy as
i have seen reported.
but, unlike the nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder, i remembered eating & going back to bed to go back
to sleep. this would occur several times a night. so if there was a whole loaf of say, banana bread, in my kitchen; i would
wake up enough times to eat the whole loaf in one night.
i've
always had poor sleep habits though, since childhood. i have been one of those night people who like staying up late
at night & an early riser.
i have survived on 3-4 hours of sleep a night for as long
as i can remember. as soon as i would go to bed & put my head down on that pillow, i would be dreaming instantly.
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