Emotional Eating?
I came across a story I was reading in a book recently, that sounded eerily familiar to a majority of the situations my clients describe to me.
The story spoke of a woman (we will call her Sarah), who was trying to overcome compulsive overeating. She described a daily routine in which she would come home after a long day of work, have dinner, and plop on the couch to read a book and unwind. Only to have a thought bubble up in her head, containing an image of the ice cream sitting in the freezer. She would manage to push it to the back of her mind, but only to be presented with it a few minutes later. She would continue to push it away, only to have it more insistently come back to her, until she would finally give in and grab a spoon. Sarah would find herself standing at the kitchen counter, staring in somewhat of a trance while spooning out the ice cream. And before she knew it, the spoon would reach the bottom of the container. Feeling disappointed, guilty, and extremely bloated she would make her way back to the couch vowing to never do that again.
Sound Familiar?
The book, The One Thing Holding You Back, Unleashing the Power of Emotional Connection, presents the idea that emotional disconnection is why we fail to reach many of our goals.
The human brain is wired to avoid painful/unpleasant things and seek out pleasureable/happy things (Maslow Motivational Theory). Regardless of whether or not the stimulus that is being presented to your brain is external (like a hot stove), or internal (like low blood sugar), your brain will interpret the stimulus and try to provide the body with a way to react… One in which we avoid pain and experience pleasure. With an external stimulus of a hot stove our brains would tell us to avoid it because… well, that would be down right painful. And an internal stimulus of low blood sugar, would prompt us to eat something so that we don’t get a headache or feel hunger pains. Here’s where emotions come into play…
Emotions are physical responses to internal/external stimulus. An external input, like an insult for example, will convey an emotional response of hurt. An internal input, like missing a friend, will convey an emotional response of sadness. These emotions cause us to FEEL! Sometimes, because we are wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain, we will avoid certain emotions because they are unpleasureable to us. When we avoid emotions, analyze emotions, assess emotions, bargain with emotions, and even judge emotions we avoid feeling.
My point is… emotions are meant to be felt! When we avoid emotions we are teaching ourselves that they aren’t pleasureable. When situations arise where those emotions come to the surface the brain recognizes them as negative, causing us to instill a behavior (like eating mindlessly) that overwhelms us, confuses us, and downright stalls us in our pursuit. Emotions provide us with information that thoughts alone can’t.
We must embrace our emotions to succeed! We must actually experience what the emotion is telling us, move through it, and recognize that its okay to feel it.
So bringing it back to frustrated Sarah; after working to experience her emotions, she discovered that in her nagging thought process of eating ice cream, came a feeling in her stomach reminding her of being a young girl jumping up and down. That young girl loved ice cream, and anxiously wanted to get into the freezer. In her emotional thought process Sarah, felt the anxiousness of the little girl, reminding her of the attention she wanted to so badly as a child. And the anxiousness quickly turned to sadness… Sadness that she would typically avoid feeling, by giving in and eating the ice cream. The sadness stemmed from the divorce of her parents at a young age, and the lack of attention that came after it. With Sarah’s new resolve to experience the sadness, to process it, and to allow her body to no longer feel threatened by the ‘sadness’, she was able to finally put down the spoon and begin to lose the weight.
Whether your compulsive eating is ice cream or chips, candy or pizza… before you go blaming your eating habits on a lack of willpower. Brave an emotional gut check, you might be surprised at what you find. Emotions are our friends, feel them, and you will prosper.
Move More!
Hayley Hollander
To learn more about emotional connection, and the 2×2 process behind connecting emotionally, check out the book.
Cushnir, R (2008) The One Thing Holding You Back, Unleashing the Power of Emotional Connection, Harper Collins, New York, NY
