To Overcome Emotional Eating, Make Peace With Your Past

JUST FOR TODAY:  Think back over your past year, and notice which emotion you had most frequently.  Trace this emotion back in time to its origin, and make peace with your past.

Perhaps you felt lonely more often than any other emotion this past year.  You may have also felt angry, or worried, or guilty – but loneliness really stands out.  Why?  Because of your past experiences related to feeling lonely.  Any emotion that has been a pattern in your life will continue to show up with intensity, and potentially trigger an emotional eating response, until you make peace with your past.  To do this, trace the emotion back in time, to the earliest memory that you have with that feeling.  Using the example of loneliness, maybe you remember being left at home alone while your parents were both working.  You knew your parents would be coming home later, but deep down you felt a longing for their presence right away.  You would eat a big bowl of ice cream and several cookies, and this helped you feel better for a while.  Now, fast-forward to this year.  Does it make sense why you reached for ice cream and cookies when you felt lonely?  The loneliness you feel today is actually a compounding of years of loneliness, beginning with that first time you felt lonely as a child.  Make peace with your past by acknowledging the origin of your emotion, and recognizing that you are in a different place and time now.  Sever the link from the past to the present.  This will reduce the intensity of that emotion the next time it occurs.  This in turn can eliminate triggers for emotional eating.  

©2009 by "Dr. Dorie" McCubbrey, M.S.Ed., Ph.D. – Eating Disorder & Obesity Treatment Specialist – Denver, Colorado