We all have heard of emotional eating but what does it really mean and what good is it for you to blanket everything as emotional eating? Not much good in my opinion as it is probably something you are aware of already. Emotional eating leads to a lot of consequences including weight gain and extreme irritability and also depression.
One aspect of emotional eating is emotional suppression. You feel something you don't like then you suppress this feeling with food. Not only does emotional suppression not work it actually makes things worse. The continual battle to suppress means you eat copious amounts of food and it is massively draining.
Depending on the severity of your emotional problems you might need counselling to help you to deal with the past and present as sometimes it is next to impossible to see the woods from the trees when it comes to your past.
Last thing you might want to hear. You don't have the money or time. There might be truth in this but if you find the money you will save on your food bill and possibly alcohol bill in no time. This is Ireland after all!
A common emotion that people try and suppress is social anxiety. This is very de-habilitating and causes people to eat more in a social setting to try and dampen those feelings. Does the food intake work? Momentarily it might work as the pleasure of eating takes your mind off the situation but that relief will not last long.
One technique or tool that will help you is called distancing. You imagine that you are above yourself looking down or you imagine taking a step back or to the side and again are viewing yourself. This is almost like a form of meditation. This will help to remove yourself from the situation and to just observe what's happening rather than getting bogged down on "what will I do, or what will I say" type thoughts. This should help you to just feel the anxiety which will not last that long then as you are not trying to get rid of it.This tool can give you confidence that there is at least something you can do. Perhaps when you are removed from the situation you can also observe your thoughts a little and see if there are any erroneous of faulty ones that you could change.
Stay tuned for an upcoming article on emotions which deals with the problem of blanket emotions. This is where a person says" I feel very bad all day" This can be the case for someone who is clinically depressed but for the average person it's just not true!
