Food Addiction: Was Your Childhood Really That Great?

I have come to view it as formulaic and mathematical: it is not possible to have food addiction and yet also to have had a great childhood.

There is no such thing. It doesn't exist as a possibility.

Many people feel (and often their families agree) that their issues with food and/or weight are anomalies and are not connected to their upbringing. They view it as a fluke or a personality flaw.

None of this is ever true.

Overeating indicates that there were major issues of love in your childhood.

No child develops overeating, and no adult lives in it, without denial of truth and emotions about what really happened to them.

My heart always breaks for people I talk with who beat themselves up over their eating but insist that their parents are wonderful and treated them well. I have so much compassion for the self-blame and the fear we have of questioning our parents and the caretakers from our childhood.

But the truth is, the intensity with which you struggle with food addiction, overeating or disordered eating, is always proportional to the harm towards you from your childhood.

Have the courage to look at the true "why" of your compulsive eating. The "why" is not that you have poor discipline or willpower. It's not a personality issue.

It's a trauma issue.

If you didn't have overt abuse in your childhood, begin to research and learn about how emotional dynamics in families affect children.

There does not need to be what most of society considers “trauma” or “abuse” in order to create eating issues in a person.

Reject the guilt that is placed on you from your own family and from society to never question your mother, your father, your grandparents. Don't buy into the taboo, instead recognize that this is work you must do to heal your soul and to free yourself from the prison of binge eating cycles.

No matter what you find to be the truth about your childhood, and no matter what emotions that brings up, you can survive them. And you will thrive more as you do.

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