“I Can’t Have Joy, But I Can Have Chocolate”

“I can’t have love, I can’t have joy, I can’t have comfort. But at least I can have chocolate.”

Have you ever felt like this? I certainly did, for most of my life. And even now, when I'm faced with really challenging emotions, I still have days like this.

Ultimately, it's not the actual truth of the situation; in the sense that you are good enough for love, you can heal the reasons you don't have comfort, and you can find joy again.

But it doesn't feel like that, when we're in this space. It's a hopeless, angry, terrified, sad place that is based on a lack of faith in change and good.

And when we feel like this, it's easy to start feeling, "At least I have chocolate, if I can't have any of the rest of it." (Or whatever foods and drinks you are attached to)

This can be why it can feel SO hard to heal food addictions; because we feel like food is our just compensation for a crappy life with no love, comfort or joy.

How can we be expected to go through life without love, comfort and joy, AND not have the foods and drinks we want?

"F*** YOU, GOD!"... is how I used to feel about that. You too, maybe? It's okay if you do feel that way. It's nothing to judge, and it doesn't make you a bad person.

To get out of this spot, we have to feel these emotions that we feel about life and food and the lack of love and joy and comfort.

We need to scream and shout about how it's not fair we have to give up compulsive eating when there is no joy in our lives. We need to cry about how dismal and gray life feels without overeating. We need to feel our fear that it will never get better.

It is only by feeling our false beliefs, fears, anger, feelings of injustice and our sadness that we can move from this place. You can do it!

Photo by Amirali Mirhashemian via Unsplash