What is Emotional Eating?
Many people know that diets don’t work… or at least they don’t usually last. That’s why we know we need to make a lifestyle change, but that is extremely hard and you might not know where to start. Even if you do know where to start you seem to get stuck or experience failure after failure thinking that you just can’t do it.
The thing is, you can do it.
The problem that people run into is that if the emotional issues are not addressed, maladaptive behaviors will likely resurface again, even after years of having success with your weight. When emotional traumas have not been healed, and able to move forward, triggers can set you right back to where you started. And that can be defeating. So why not get to the core of the issue and stop struggling with overeating and emotional eating, once and for all?
Negative Emotional Connections with Food & Body
Often times our unhealthy relationships with food and with our body start when we are young. Sometimes we experience pressure from our parents to be a certain size. Or maybe we are bullied for being the wrong size by our peers. Unfortunately, a lot of us have experienced negative events and have led to negative beliefs about ourselves when it comes to our body and our relationship with food.
Treating this relationship that was formed early on by healing from the traumas that is caused, can help to set you up for success with changing your relationship with food, your relationship with your body, and therefore allowing you to make the lifestyle changes that you desire. You no longer feel stuck, but are able to move forward.
Food Addiction and Compulsive Eating
Compulsive Eating can sometimes be treated as a food addiction. Although “Food Addiction” is not in the DSM-V, many people feel they are addicted to food and we know certain kinds of food have addictive qualities to them, like sugar and caffeine. Therefore I also take this approach in treating people who overeat and who are not eating for the right reasons (the reason of hunger and nourishment) and instead are eating because the feel compelled to do so.
How do you treat this as a Counselor?
It’s important to know that I won’t tell you what to eat, what is healthy for you, and what your body needs. You do that part. There is no nutritional plan or calorie counting. This is therapy.
I use EMDR to treat these issues. Yes, I use EMDR for things like trauma, but as you read earlier there is often trauma related to your experience with food and your body. It might not be the same trauma as going to war, or experience a near death situation, or a traumatic loss, but it’s still trauma… and it’s ingrained.
EMDR also has a special protocol that specifically treats addictions as well. So using both the “standard” protocol to treat the traumas, paired with the “feeling-state addiction” protocol to treat the addiction, EMDR is the main methodology I use to treat the emotional and addictive qualities of eating.
Body Image
In therapy we will also address body image issues that are often a big part of this whole process. You will learn how to practice loving kindness to yourself and your body and be able to be healthy from the inside out.
We often get fixated about a number on a scale or a certain size to wear or the “look” of our bodies, but self-compassion is so much deeper than that.
EMDR psychotherapy will help heal the psychological roadblocks that are stopping you from your weight goals.
Any questions about this? Feel free to send me an e-mail or call for a free 20-minute phone consultation.