Is emotional eating silencing your voice?
I know this may seem odd.
A way of silencing my voice? you may ask—how come?
Bear with me for a moment—I truly think, for some of us, that is what happens. It is not that we eat intentionally to silence our voice, no. I don’t think it works that way.
However, I have seen time and time again that once we eat quantities that are significantly larger than what our bodies need, we tend to slow down for a little bit, both physically and emotionally.
It is as if emotional eating takes energy and once we start eating we start to experience a feeling of relief or satisfaction (at least at the beginning) but also towards the end we feel somewhat tired, we have less energy, we want to rest for a bit.
And whatever feelings we were experiencing before, the ones that actually triggered our emotional eating, start to fall to the background. Our bodies are now working to digest the food we ate and emotionally we may be having other feelings that resulted from the emotional eating, such as guilt, remorse, regret, confusion, irritation or even self-hatred.
Emotional eating takes the edge off in the moment
So, this is a bit how it goes for many of us—
Whatever feelings or emotional states triggered the emotional eating start to lose force or diminish in power — temporarily.
Let’s say I was angry with my sister because of something that she said or did. I may have been experiencing the built up of tension, my desire to express myself, to say what had bothered me, or hurt me, or angered me. My feelings of how unfair it seems, how I don’t feel my feelings matter or have been taken into account. So on and so forth.
You get the picture. There is a situation, a trigger, that evokes strong feelings. Yet the feelings feel so overwhelming, so uncomfortable, so “too much” that we feel we cannot contain them on our own and no one is there for us to help us contain them (or if someone is there they are not helping with this.) The emotional pain reaches a peak and instinctively we look for something —a coping mechanism—that would take the edge off, help us forget for a moment the struggle, and food seems like a good candidate.
Food looks like an ideal candidate
First of all, it is so readily available (and please know I am so aware that food being available is such a huge privilege).
And “it is only food” we say to ourselves, right?.. And we are right if we look at it from one side—it is “only” food. It’s not that we are consuming a “substance” that could hurt our health.. After all, none other than Hippocrates had said: “Let food by thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
Would you like a mini-structured path for your work in this area?
Download my free workbook! In this workbook, you’ll have the opportunity to:
Become more aware of your triggers and their sources
Feel more clarity about your inner world in what respects to food
Be less on automatic pilot
Be more intentional in all what relates to decisions about food
So of course food has positive connotations attached to it—food is life-sustaining when we rely on it for our bodily/ energy needs. This makes food such an appealing target—the positive associations we have (or in the past had), how readily available it is, how socially acceptable it eat (after all, we all need to eat!)
And often others do not know or notice our emotional eating. And if all these reasons were not enough, eating triggers the release of dopamine in our brains which makes us feel a sense of pleasure or satisfaction.
The turning point: what felt good starts to feel icky
I get it. How did this happen we may ask ourselves? What initially rendered relief and even some pleasure quickly can turn out to be a painful emotional experience, as we may have strong feelings, such as shame or disgust at our own behavior. Yet I find it SO interesting that those initial sensations of relief or relaxation makes us less prone to pay attention to whatever triggered initially the emotional eating. We feel less prone to voice to others or to articulate for ourselves what we feel or think about the trigger (that is, the situation) that prompted us to emotionally eat.
Some of my clients have shared with me that sometimes there is no specific trigger—but more a general feeling of discontent, or a void which the food helps fill, a “nothingness.”
Does this sequence of events resonate?
I know our experiences related to emotional eating may vary— and you may see your experience reflected to a greater or lesser degree in what I have just described. Regardless of how exactly the experience plays out for you, I invite you to think for a moment about what would happen in those moments that you tend to emotionally eat if you were not to emotionally eat. Would the overwhelm become unbearable? Would the painful feeling or emotional state intensify? Would the level of tension increase a lot? Do you have the (very natural) concern that you may not be able to manage it without our trusted companion (food)?
I want clarify that more often than not this is not deliberate. It is not that you intentionally go to food to manage your emotions. Oftentimes it just happens. It seems that almost by default we gravitate toward food to help us navigate some the challenges of life. And sometimes an unintended consequence of that emotional eating is that it makes our “voice” fade away. We may disconnect a bit from what we are truly feeling and thinking and other feelings start to occupy more space (first the relief, or the comfort that food provides, then later, the pain it brings that we engaged in a behavior that we want so much to not engage in. We may feel somewhat numb.
My invitation to you
If you are feeling any of this—please know it is very natural. Nothing to beat yourself up for. My invitation to you is to deepen your awareness of the role emotional eating is having in your life—the function that it plays. The more we understand the root causes for this behavior the better equipped we can be to navigate the triggers that inevitably come up from time to time.
I have absolute trust and confidence in your abilities and wisdom to find a path that feels more freeing & right for you.
To exploring new paths and new heights in terms of awareness and peace!
Claudia