Hello love,
I wanted to talk about emotions and the emotional eating pattern because it can get a little bit not confusing.
The way we view emotions in society can impact our emotional eating. Emotional Eating is a coping mechanism. That means that we use food to cope with our emotions, to cope with any discomfort that comes up, to cope with life, with stressors.
This is a pattern and what I find with clients is that it forms in childhood. The reason for this is that when we’re young, when we are developing, we need our parents and caregivers to model to us, to hold space for us and to help us move through our emotions, our discomfort.
We’re not born just knowing how to do this. We need this modelled to us. But what happens in our society is that most of our parents wouldn’t have done this.
So we’re given the message that something’s wrong with us for having emotions. We’re too sensitive, we might have been shamed or ignored. We think something’s wrong with us. This is just the psychology of a young child.
Those emotions still remain in us and we have to find a way to deal with that discomfort. So we start looking for things. Food is really readily available. It tastes good, it’s connected to love, to our mother.
Processed foods
Of course, with processed foods, it’s amped up because they’re designed to give you more of a dopamine rush. So food becomes an obvious choice to cope. And to be honest, if we look around at our society, most of us are emotional eaters. We use food not just as nourishment, but we use it to make us feel good, to shift our mood. “Food” does have that place, food has that power, but we want to use it in a way that is in connection to our body.
But when we have this coping mechanism, everything is kind of swirled and mixed in and it’s not as simple as “feel your emotions”. When we get to the stage of having this coping mechanism, there are so many layers that are connected in our relationship to food, our body, our emotions.
There’s many layers, so someone selling you sort of a one off magic trick is not going to actually resolve this pattern sustainably. And I can sit here and tell you exactly how it’s formed, but me telling you how it’s formed is not giving you the tangible tools and processes, guidance and space to actually move through this.
That’s what we need.
That’s what we would have needed at this younger age. We’re put in a position right now where we need to give that to ourselves. We need to kind of cut our losses and realize we weren’t given these tools, we weren’t given this guidance, we weren’t given this space. And we can relearn it.
And we need to do things in a different way because what’s been given to us is not helping us move through this pattern.
Check out the video below for more on:
- Willpower vs. a Coping Mechanism – which has more power?
- What are emotions?
- Emotional eating keeps us stuck
- Learning a new way forward to meet our true emotional needs.
- There are layers to this, you are not broken.
Invitation:
If you’re resonating with what I’m saying and this feels like the right container and program, I’d love to invite you to find out more about The Emotional Eating Evolution Program HERE. This is a step by step process, a 12 week container full of support, accountability, coaching, in depth somatic meditations and a space where you can move through this pattern layer by layer to get to ease + confidence around food and in your body.
To resolution and moving forward,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist Specializing in Emotional Eating
