Last session drew the see-saw. This one looks underneath it, at the reason the rules feel so non-negotiable in the first place: where your sense of your own worth has been coming from.
Everyone carries a private scorecard: the things that quietly decide whether we feel we are doing okay as a person. For most people it is a mix. Relationships, work, values, the things they make or care for, how they show up for people. Many slices, so no single bad day sinks the whole ship.
When eating becomes a struggle, that scorecard changes shape. One slice, the one holding shape, weight, and control over food, swells until it crowds out the rest. A day of "good" eating, and you feel okay as a person. A day of "blown" eating, and the whole self feels diminished, not just the meal.
That is the worth trap, and it explains the intensity. If your worth rides on controlling food, a broken rule cannot be a small thing. One idea here is worth holding onto: the rules are not the illness. They are a reasonable response to a slice that has been asked to carry an impossible weight.
The more your worth leans on this one slice, the more you check it, guard it, and judge it. That makes it loom larger, which makes you lean on it more. It feeds itself, the same way the see-saw does, and the two loops turn together.
The slice shrinks when the rest of the pie grows back, not when it is attacked. The crowded-out slices get restored, one at a time, until food and shape are one thing you care about among many instead of the only thing that counts. A wider base wobbles less.
That is slow, gentle work, and it is the back half of this program. For now, seeing the shape of the trap is the work. When tonight's verdict starts to form, "I was bad today," there is a name for it: the trap, weighing a whole person on one slice.
There is no pie to redraw yet. This week, just notice how often your worth for the day gets decided at the plate. Naming it is the first loosening.