"How did you do that?"

Jason turned back to his lunch mate and stabbed another forkful of salad into his mouth.

"Dew vhut?", he asked around the crunching mass as he tried to resist the urge to turn back around and see what the man seated a few tables behind them was doing.

His lunch mate gestured (well ... gesticulated) behind Jason in the direction of the man with barely contained exasperation. "You just talked to him!

"No I didn't, I was talking to you - and stop pointing! Jesus Tez'uk, it's been 15 years since you guys discovered us and y'all still suck at remembering that pointing is rude.", Jason griped as he lightly smacked the aliens tentacle down.

The alien mass of undulating waves of cilia on a round egg-like surface broken up by four tentacles spaced seemingly at random somehow conveyed bashful embarrassment as it drew back its smacked tentacle.

"Sorry. I just don't know how you do it. I've studied your language, culture, and social norms for over a decade - and yet somehow you and a few humans like you seem to communicate without any speech or antecedent correspondence."

"Oooo, antecedent! That's a good one!", Jason praised while trying to catch the waiters eye for a refill on his diet coke.

"Thank you. It was in this mornings crossword.", Tez'uk tersely replied before barrelling on - "I don't understand it! We can't seem to find a rhyme or reason to it. There's just something some of you do with each other where yo- YOU DID IT AGAIN! THERE!"

Te'zuk knocked their own drink over as their tentacles writhed in either excitement or anger. Jason honestly had a hard time reading tentacle or cilia expressions. He sheepishly recalled his many failed duolingo attempts to improve and mentally promised he'd open the app later tonight.

Jason tried to ignore the now plentiful eyes staring at them after Tez'uk's outburst. Glancing back to the waiter whose eye he'd caught he indicated they'd need napkins.

"AGAIN! YOU DID IT AGAIN! JUST NOW!"

At this Jason paused.

"Wait...do you mean what I did with the waiter just now?"

"YES!", Tez'uk practically shouted - their sea of cilia now joining in with their tentacles in displaying waves of heightened agitation. "You did it just now with the waiter! Just like you did with the man behind you!"

Jason blinked slowly at his alien friend. Sometimes he forgot that even though these alien creatures had assimilated so well into human life, they had blind spots. Their obsession with all things language and communication had made exchanging information as easy as breathing, but some things did not translate.

"Tez - they're gay."

The waves of cilia increased their frenetic writhing as Tez'uk processed that information. After a moments pause they responded with a slowness they'd observed in humans talking to a mentally slow creature such as a human baby.

Or a chihuahua.

"Thaaatttt issssss goooooddddd. Doessss notttttt explainnnnnn."

Jason rolled his eyes and looked to make sure the waiter was on his way.

"I can't explain it. It's just a thing we do. I guess I thought you knew. The look I told the waiter earlier was that I needed a refill."

The cilia and tentacles slowed to a standstill. Jason was bemused as he watched the errant twitch of one or two cilia as his friend processed this new information.

"...and the man behind you?"

"Oh! That? He just told me he's in med school, single, and he'd be happy to get drinks with me on Saturday."

The cilia gently waived in a crosshatch pattern that Jason thought he remembered was an expression of puzzlement.

"You...you said all that? With that one look?"

Jason chuckled softly as he let his friend grapple with his newfound knowledge for a moment before he gave an affirmative grunt around his next mouthful of salad.

With a sharp swallow and a sheepish shrug he gestured around at the full dining area. "We've all been doing it. Jerry over there invited me to his kickball tournament. Hector just got engaged but he confessed he's not sure if it's going to work out. Daniel says the straight busboy has cocaine and will give you a bump if you compliment his arms."

Jason put his fork down and dabbed at his mouth.

"We all do it. All the time. It's just a gay thing. Kinda like brunch."

Tez'uk's cilia became a complex roiling sea of mixed messages that Jason doubted he'd find anywhere in tonight's duolingo lesson.

"Wait...brunch is a gay thing??"

I highly recommend therapy - especially seeing a therapist that is certified to perform EMDR therapy. While a lot of different therapy modalities can help, if you feel that your BED may be caused by trauma EMDR therapy is really the gold standard treatment.

I still struggle day to day, but I'm nearly 3 years in to treatment and it's been night and day. My therapist got me to a place where I was comfortable with food again, and he actually encouraged me to do some things that seemed incredibly counterintuitive at the time from what I had read online.

One example would be he helped me see that the unknown was causing me to binge. I'd eat something and ignore the calories because I was scared and didn't want to know, which would cause me to binge more. Now I calorie count and keep track and it really helps me. Almost like shining the light on the boogey man and realizing the small handful of chips isn't 4000 calories. For others that could be terrible advice because they would obsess over it, but for me it was what I needed to feel stable.

A lot of the advice works for some and not others, so having a professional help me figure out the emotional side so I could tackle the day to day side was massive.

I'd "handled" my BED on my own for nearly my entire life. Huge swings in weight, a lot of self hate, and many moments of lost happiness were the results for me. It took finally sitting down and admitting I needed outside help before I saw lasting improvement.

You can do it!

I have Binge Eating Disorder (BED) - the standard diagnostic criteria is laid out in the DSM-5 which is the major diagnostic manual for psychiatric disorders. Stress eating alone isn't a full qualification, but may be one symptom in conjunction with other things like hiding your food, distress about eating, etc..

Here is a link to the current reference guide for the DSM entry on BED including diagnostic characteristics.

Be careful with self-diagnosis, as my experience is people who blindly go in self-diagnosing without a plan of care can find they start triggering their disorder more because you become hyper aware of it. If you feel like the characteristics described here are particularly applicable it would be a good idea to set up an appointment with a psychiatrist, therapist, and/or medical doctor.

It took me a few years of consistent work but I was able to get control over my BED through the use of medication and EMDR therapy to identify the root triggers from childhood (friends in 2nd grade suddenly hated me but the lunch lady was nice to me and would hug me if I ate all my food).

Knowing what you have is truly just the first step, so be sure to have a plan in place and get professional care if you can.