When we eat to distract ourselves from whatever is bothering us, we are practicing denial, pure and simple. We do not want to deal with the problem. If a fire alarm wakes us up, what should we do? Find the fire or silence the alarm and go back to sleep? The answer is obvious to me. Find the fire and put it out before it kills us. With emotional eating, acknowledging the source of the upset, even if we can’t do anything about it, will help us at least stop the automatic behavior, and perhaps this acknowledgment will help us make that first step in changing the situation.
Sometime back in the 70’s, separation therapy become popular. The foundation of this therapy was to separate ourselves into our adult self, our feeling self and our acting out self. The adult self’s role is to monitor the feeling self and the acting out self, so that feelings could be fully felt, but not acted upon, except in cases where it was appropriate. All feelings are appropriate, but not all feelings should be acted out. What gets most of us stuck in immature behaviors is that we act out feelings before even understanding those feelings. That is, our feeling self never really gets to fully feel, because we act on stuffing those feelings before we’ve had a chance to allow our feelings their due process. It’s like taking a cake out of the oven before it’s done. It’s going to be messy. When we act out our feelings before allowing ourselves time to process them, it gets equally as messy, only psychologically so.
Here’s an example of a separation therapy dialogue with respect to acting out behaviors with food. Adult is the adult self, Feeling is the feeling self, and Actor is the acting out self. Keep the following in mind: Adult only moderates. Feeling only feels and Actor only acts out.
Here is the event: I have been invited to a party at work, and I am a new employee. I am 40 pounds overweight, and everyone else is slender (or at least that’s what my brain tells me).
Adult: I’m going to try to meet as many new people as I can. I’m going to make this new job fun.
Feeling: I feel really uncomfortable. I feel like everyone is looking at me. I feel very afraid that no one will like me.
Actor: Whoa, I see the food! Let’s go eat. I can take care of those feelings. Let’s just stuff them right now!
Adult: Actor, what Feeling needs to do is simply process these feelings until she realizes that they’re just feelings and are in no way based on fact. If you always try to sooth her feelings, she will never be able to mature. She will never be able to gain confidence in her ability to meet new people and to feel comfortable around them. Stop trying to protect her. You’re only making it worse.
Feeling: I feel so awkward. I feel like nobody likes me. Can you let Actor make it better? I don’t want to grow up! It hurts to feel this way.
Adult: Feeling, I realize that, but emotional growth sometimes comes with pain. If I allow Actor to stop these feelings, you will never be mature enough to be with other people without over eating. Just feel the feelings. I will, however, allow Actor to go to the bathroom so we can sit and process these feelings, but I will not allow Actor to do anything that will sabotage our progress.
After a few moments of just feeling and recognizing that the feelings are not based on fact, Feeling begins to relax. Her anxiety begins to lessen, and she feels stronger. I go back to the party, I stay away from the food, but I do drink water! Simply having a glass of water in my hand really helps.
Acting out behaviors, also known as reactions, can be thought of as knee-jerk behaviors that result from emotional unawareness. The key is to allow your feelings to get fully processed BEFORE initiating responsive behavior, and to know the difference between feelings and acting out behavior. Awareness is the FIRST step.
What feelings are you suppressing?
No comments:
Post a Comment