Hello love,
When we are coming from the diets, exercise plan, surgeries, etc route to resolving emotional eating we think something is wrong with us. We tend to lack compassion for ourselves + bully ourselves because we are trying to fit into a certain box.
We are treating ourselves the way we were once treated that contributed to creating this emotional eating pattern.
Emotional Eating
Emotional eating is a coping mechanism/pattern that we use to cope with life. We soothe ourselves from any discomfort or uncomfortable emotions with food.
For most of my clients this pattern stems from childhood where they were not able to regulate themselves or their parents and caregivers couldn’t regulate them or model to how to be with discomfort. The caregivers couldn’t see, hear or validate them and thus have compassion for them.
So this leaves them thinking something was wrong with them, their emotions, and how they were being. They weren’t accepted. That discomfort lives in the body. Maybe they were even told they were too sensitive when they were experiencing emotions.
When we are so young and we don’t get this acceptance and validation from our parents or caregivers or those close to us we internally turn away from ourselves and feel a lot of shame.
We develop this shame and then develop coping strategies to deal with it. Emotional eating is one of those coping strategies.
Do you have compassion for yourself?
So ask yourself – do you feel like you were accepted or seen, or heard when you were younger? Most likely you weren’t or it was lacking.
This is the pattern I see with my clients. Because you feel like you have to constrain yourself or be a different way, you don’t have compassion for yourself.
You don’t have compassion for how you are and what’s happened to you.
When I do the deeper work with clients around their emotional eating it’s hard for them at first to see that this is why they developed this pattern. Not realizing that these are critical core needs of any child or person to be seen, heard, validated and accepted. To be loved for who you are.
To truly have compassion for themselves but as we dive deeper it becomes clearer.
The role compassion plays
When those needs are not met we develop these coping mechanisms and patterns to shield ourselves from this discomfort. To soothe ourselves and then this becomes the way we deal with any discomfort and uncomfortable emotions in our life.
And so by having compassion for ourselves we don’t keep bulldozing ourselves every time this pattern comes up. We become more curious and we want to understand why we have this pattern.
Because having compassion and understanding is the doorway to opening up this pattern. It’s the doorway to seeing how it was really created. This is a softening and a critical need that will help us resolve and dissolve this emotional eating pattern.
I’m simplifying here but I want you to reconsider how compassion is important.
Bees with honey or vinegar?
If you know someone in your life, if you start bullying them into doing something certain way or forcing them, are they receptive to that?
Or when you have compassion and understanding and really hear them out, they soften? And then you can create a new way forward.
Compassion is key for transformation and change in a genuine way. When we are able to do this it helps us with our patterns.
Overall when I work with clients inside of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program this is something I want them to cultivate.
In our society we are set up to push, bulldoze and criticize ourselves and think something is wrong with us.
I don’t believe that – I think at our core we are born pure and when our needs are met our natural way of being is very loving and compassionate. But when our needs are not met like when we are not accepted or criticized we take in those beliefs and create it internally and start doing it to ourselves over and over again.
This is where we get stuck in these coping mechanisms and patterns. And the way out is to start developing compassion.
Inside of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program we are cultivating this in every way – with our emotional eating pattern, with food, our body and our emotions because this is how we are going to dissolve this pattern and move forward in a loving way.
I’m not sure about you but if you push and bully yourself to a goal how will reaching that goal make you love yourself? It won’t.
You need compassion + kindness along the way. We all desire this.
If this is resonating with what I’ve shared I’d love to invite you to check out more about The Emotional Eating Evolution Program here and if you’re ready to resolve your emotional eating from the root in a compassion way I’d also love to invite you to apply + book in an Emotional Eating Assessment call here where we find out more about you, your goals and how we can support you in reaching them.
To compassion,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert
