How PSYCH-K®Helped Me Heal From a 30-Year Struggle With Disordered Eating

by Andrea Pacini July 25, 2021 1 Comment

After experiencing trauma at the ages of 9 and 10, I developed an insatiable drive to understand myself and the world around me. In those pre-internet, pre-smart phone years, I spent my weekends at the library poring over information. This unquenchable desire for knowledge led me to read every psychology, astrology, religion and wellness book I could get my hands on. Being exposed to darkness at such a young age, I became fascinated by the shadow side of human nature and the deeper question of why.

With the perspective I have now three decades+ later, I know that this insatiable quest for knowledge and hypervigilance was a trauma response born from needing to understand and deeply know so that I didn’t get hurt or surprised again. I developed the need to see everything and everyone coming a mile away. As painful and difficult as this was to navigate by myself at that tender age, it set me on a definitive course to gain allllll the knowledge about why people do what they do and are who they are.

As a result, over the past 30+ years I’ve studied psychology, the Bible, Kabbalah, quantum physics, shamanism, soul journeying and retrieval, astrology, yoga, philosophy, energy healing, breathwork, meditation, the chakra system, sound healing, crystal healing, herbalism, flower remedies, Native Medicine, Emotional Freedom Tapping, homeopathy, reiki, essential oil therapy, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese medicine, Myers-Briggs personality typing, shadow work, the enneagram, creative writing, NLP, Akashic record reading, Human Design, somatic therapy, and ancestral healing ritual – all in the name of more deeply understanding myself and others.

I’ve spent years as a patient of talk therapy, craniosacral therapy, EMDR, naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, bioenergetics, colon hydrotherapy, yoga, meditation, breathwork, reiki, shadow work, writing therapy, somatic therapy and countless other programs and modalities. All were helpful to help shine light and help break up density but none of them were THE ONE.

My wound manifests primarily as body image issues and disordered eating. For the past 30+ years, I’ve used food as a source of comfort and pleasure as that was the only substance readily available to me at the age of 9. I leaned on it hard and have ridden the roller coaster that goes along with any kind of addiction for most of my childhood and all of my teen and adult life.

As a pre-teen, as soon as my parents left the house, I’d run for the only sweet I could find – chocolate frosting right out of the tub. This rush of serotonin felt so good in my brain that I quickly overcoupled the experience of eating sugar and “forbidden” food with extreme pleasure and comfort. I became stuck in this pattern and have struggled with it for all of my adult life. 

Experiencing trauma at a young age and then numbing the extreme discomfort with sugar and sweets, I've always felt very disconnected from my body. I was an athlete and competitively played sports growing up, but I've never not known an internal struggle with my weight and body image. I just lived completely emotionally and mentally checked out from my physical body. 

 A glimpse into some of the programs I've tried over the years & these were just the books I rounded up in 10 minutes of looking! 

When I was in the 5th grade, I paid a classmate to bring me nutter butters and star crunches from his house, at 14 I restricted myself to eating 4 grams of fat a day. In college, I limited my intake of carbs to 20 a day. I’ve done intermittent fasting ignoring natural hunger cues since 2005, regularly going a full 24 hours without food, only to binge on fried chicken in the grocery store parking lot when I finally let myself eat. I’ve put my body (not to mention my mind and spirit) through the ringer over the years – abusing it so harshly that I stopped getting my menstrual cycle because I didn’t have enough body fat, to the opposite end of the spectrum - injuring my hip and knee because excess weight put too much pressure on those joints.

When I was 37, I spent $135 for a hypnotherapy session focused on controlling my cravings then immediately ate an ENTIRE family-size package of fig newtons that didn’t even taste good to me – the emotions that surfaced in session were just so uncomfortable I had to numb out and stuff them down the way I had done for so many years before.

At this point, I had several other coping skills available, but my belief that sugar was the best and fastest way to feel better was so strong that it overtook all of the other tools I had in my toolkit. This scenario has played out for me in multiple kitchens, cars, drive throughs and grocery store parking lots across the country – always the same way. Feel an uncomfortable feeling, numb out with food, hate myself, start a strict diet and exercise routine, lose willpower, binge, hate myself even more, restrict, find a new program or modality to save me. Rinse. Repeat. For over 30 years. What’s that saying about insanity?

The actual definition of insanity is “subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior” and “extreme foolishness and irrationality,” both of which applied to me and my relationship with food.

Trying to heal subconscious issues with conscious tools: A Recipe for Failure & Frustration

Like so many of us, I dutifully put in years of work throwing conscious tools at a subconscious problem - going to talk therapy, creating affirmations, writing and repeating affirmations 100 times a day, getting into deep meditative states, visualizing, journaling, doing breathwork, dynamic movement, trying to manifest the body I wanted, and enacting enough willpower and discipline to kill a horse, but all of this was very time-consuming and quite honestly – after so much time and money invested, started to feel like something I had to do out of obligation rather than joyful, inspired, intuitive healing. Putting so much energy, time and effort in for slow, subtle and limited results was frustrating to say the least. At this point, I knew why I kept repeating the same self-sabotaging patterns, thoughts and behaviors – I just wanted something that would actually work to STOP the painful cycle of insanity.

Enter PSYCH-K®.

In December 2020, I inadvertently came across an Instagram post that mentioned PSYCH-K®, a sort of therapy session that promised fast and effective change by working with the subconscious mind. I clicked on the official PSYCH-K® website and started to read. My entire body became magnetized as I scrolled the page - I had that hair standing up, this-is-it feeling and immediately searched for basic workshops near me. I attended the PSYCH-K® basic workshop in March 2021 and what I experienced over the course of those 3 days was lifechanging. I felt like I had made more progress in those 3 days than in all of my years of talk therapy. (Note: Talk therapy is excellent for awareness and clarity, but I had enough conscious understanding of my issues, I needed to take the next step and actually CHANGE).

What is it exactly? PSYCH-K® is a simple process that helps identify and update outdated patterns and limiting beliefs. It was developed by Rob Williams, a psychotherapist, about 30 years ago. It's pronounced 'sike-kay' and stands for mental (pysche) keys (K).

Through a process of inquiry, kinesiology (muscle testing) and whole brain integration, PSYCH-K® unifies the cerebral cortex with the left and right hemispheres of the brain to create a Whole Brain State or balance. This allows for fast and easy access to the subconscious mind so thoughts, patterns and beliefs can be updated for true and lasting change. You can read more about the process here.

Over the next few months, using what I learned in the basic workshop to address my food addiction, I felt both subtle and significant shifts - from being able to really listen to my body and only eat when hungry (and stop when full – something that I had chronically struggled with) to finally quitting my sugar-every-day-for-the-past-25-years habit cold turkey, big shifts were happening and were impossible to ignore.

And all of this was unfolding without a lot of effort on my part! I was seeing real changes without hours of meditation, visualization, affirmations, journaling and hard WORK. Could this be true? I resisted. A part of me still clung to that widely-held limiting belief that things need to be hard to be effective - the pesky old 'no pain, no gain' mentality rearing its head again. But yep, it's true! PSYCH-K® is actually fun, fast, easy and enjoyable and best of all - EFFECTIVE. It finally delivered the real change I've been searching for all of these years.

The subconscious drives 95-99% of human behavior. We absolutely have to involve it if we want to experience a change in habits, patterns and beliefs.

The subconscious is a supercomputer that’s 1 million times faster and more powerful than the conscious mind and is the home of patterns, habits and beliefs. Sure, we can experience some aspects of change with only conscious awareness, but as I can attest, that is a very slow, arduous process as the conscious mind is only responsible for 5% of our thoughts and behaviors. Any change from this 5% stems mainly from sheer willpower and discipline. After more than 30 years chained to this pattern, I had willpower and discipline fatigue. I was “good” during the day (most days) and went completely off the rails at night when hunger, deprivation, my inner critic and my own limiting beliefs just became too loud and overpowering for my conscious mind to fight off.

It’s now August 2021 and I’ve since also completed the PSYCH-K® Master Facilitator and Advanced Integration workshops. I continue to work with myself to fully heal this cycle. I no longer stress over what I will or won’t put in my mouth which has freed up more brain space for me to be in the present moment, explore my creativity, enjoy my children and husband and get clear about my future visions and goals.

I'm still working through layers of this complex and nuanced issue but the rate of progression and success is incomparable. In less than 6 months, I've observed tangible behavioral change and more visceral positive results than 25+ years of all other modalities combined. Every other program and system I tried helped bring awareness to limiting beliefs and fears, but PSYCH-K®  is the ONLY one that takes the next step to quickly and effectively change those beliefs. I love that it gets to the actual root of the issue, something I've been searching for as long as I can remember.

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar? If so, you could benefit from PSYCH-K!

And of course, this modality isn't limited to weight loss and food issues. I've worked with people to help heal relationships with money, abandonment wounds, anxiety, self-worth and self-esteem issues and even athletic, work and academic performance! The subconscious controls 95% of our thoughts and behavior so this modality can quite literally be used to help any and every issue under the sun.

What also resonates with me about PSYCH-K® is that the partner (client) is actively involved in the process. So many other modalities have a shaman or "healer" or therapist doing something to you while you sit or lay there in a very passive, disempowered role. In PSYCH-K®, the facilitator works with the client in a true partnership. The client holds the keys to their own healing and the facilitator helps them uncover their inner wisdom that may feel too far away or blocked - it's a truly equal and empowering process for both parties.

I'm a certified holistic life coach and have post-graduate certificates in Positive Psychology, NeuroAffective Touch® somatic therapy, The Science of Wellbeing, Client Psychology and Social Psychology, but I decided to specialize in PSYCH-K® because of its capacity to PRODUCE RESULTS. It is the missing piece (peace) that I've been searching for all of these years and I am so excited to share this transformational process and be able to offer it as a service!

I’ve linked some Frequently Asked Questions about PSYCH-K® here and if you’re interested in learning more about how to update limiting beliefs so that you can live your most vibrant, free and empowered life, feel free to email salt.starlight@gmail.com.

Have you ever heard of PSYCH-K® or worked with the subconscious  through other modalities? Is there a recurring pattern or belief in your life that you'd like to change?

---

---

1 Response

Leave a comment

Name *

Email *

Comment *

---

Also in Self-Care Sunday Blog Posts