How I’m Learning Emotional Messiness

To heal compulsive eating, I’ve had to open up to being emotionally messy. This is something I’m still working on.

I grew up, as many of us did, in a family that valued keeping it all together, where being emotional was reserved maybe for when someone died.

Sadness was looked down upon, seen as an indicator you were pathetic and immature, and couldn’t handle life very well.

Anger, especially expressed by a woman, was considered shocking, unbecoming and another indicator of instability.

Fear and anxiety were emotions we pretended weren’t even there at all, or if they were acknowledged, they were always justified and never challenged in a healthy way.

I was completely emotionally shut down and had been taught that we must always appear “together”.

Growing up, I never raised my voice at my parents, not even once. I never got really angry. I never showed upset. I never cried.

What was my prime way of “keeping it together” to appear “respectable” and “mature”?

Food.

Drinks.

Sometimes, restriction.

Mostly, extreme binge eating.

And yet over the years, the more I allow myself to be emotionally messy and completely not “together”, the more healthy and stable I’ve become.

The more I’ve allowed emotional experience and expression to be overwhelming and childlike, my overeating has healed.

I no longer binge eat and I don’t have severe depression and suicidal feelings like I did. This has all healed by allowing unbridled states of emotion.

Again, this is an ongoing process for me as I still have internalized shame about emotional messiness.

I still at times judge my “totally not holding it together” states as pathetic and disgusting.

I still often want to hide those states from others as well.

But when I reflect on what I’ve deconstructed so far and the immense healing and it’s brought my heart and my food addiction, I can see that there is no merit in upholding our family and society’s reverence for stoicism and intellectual dominance and appearing together.

All it takes is a few experiments: let the dam break, let the messy emotions overwhelm you and afterwards you’ll see the light shining through cracks that didn’t before. It’s worth the try.