It was a dead end. The woman binged and didn’t know why. Oh, yes. She had her regrets, and they were awful. It took two days for her to get over the hangover of regrets, of self-loathing, of defeatist thinking, of feeling guilty. But she had no idea what made her binge.

Was there some precipitating event? Not that she knew. Was there a chain of events? She couldn’t think of any. Did she remember any thoughts that went with her binging? No. What about feelings? Was she in a certain mood? Was there some particular feeling that prompted her to eat like that? No to both. Could she have stopped herself? Did she remember any point in time when she thought of stopping herself from binging? No, definitely not.

There were no handholds, nothing to hang on to that would give this woman something to look for, something to do next time so the outcome wouldn’t be so disastrous. She had binged before, many times, and she had no awareness of why she resorted to binging any of those times. More dead ends.

Nevertheless, the woman, while she had no answers, heard the questions. They made an impact on her. If she went to binge again right now, she would be primed and ready to answer those questions. So that was the advice. “Keep the questions in mind. Write them down if need be and keep them somewhere handy. Next time you binge, see if you can answer at least some of these questions.”