If You’re an Emotional Person But Still Overeat

What if you cry a lot, or feel angry a lot, and yet still overeat? Suppressing emotions is what creates food addiction, so what's going on when you feel like you're connected with your emotions, but you are still overeating?

This is a common experience. Not everyone that I work with would consider themselves distanced from their own emotions, where it might have been years since they cried or felt anger.

Others feel they are very emotionally reactive or connected to their feelings. They might cry frequently or get angry often.

If you feel like you’re an emotional person but you still overeat, this is will be because of one of two reasons:

1) You’re still controlling the intensity of your emotions and trying to keep them comfortable

2) You’re still avoiding other emotions that are actually the true root cause of your food addiction, and the emotions you’re connected to are not the cause

In the first scenario, you may be connecting to some amount of emotions, but you are still trying to control and contain how much of that feeling you feel.

When you are triggered into an emotion, you are allowing some of that emotion but you are not allowing the full experience of it. You might be afraid of the full intensity of that emotion or you might judge it.

We are often afraid that if we connect with the full intensity of our emotions, we will be swallowed by them and never come out, we won't survive them.

This is not actually true but it is our fear.

We may also be judging the emotion and so we don't let it fully out. We don't let it rip with our rage (privately when you are alone!) and we don't let ourselves heave with grief.

Challenge the comfort zone you currently have with the emotions you are connected to, allow their fullness and intensity even more.

In the second scenario, you may still be overeating because while you are connected to some emotions, there are other emotions you are entirely and completely suppressing.

Often, we allow certain emotions, but we don't allow other emotions. If we are still binge eating even though we feel like we're feeling emotions, it may be because the true root causes are related to emotions that we are totally cutting ourselves off from.

We may have preferences towards certain emotions based on judgement, fear, guilt, belief systems and other factors.

For example, maybe root causes of your overeating are to do with emotional disregard from your parents, but you don't go there because you feel guilty even questioning your childhood.

Or perhaps your overeating is to suppress a lot of rage, but you judge rage as making you a bad person, and so you are only willing to feel sadness, but never anger. Or it could be the opposite: maybe you are only willing to feel anger but you never let yourself cry.

These are some factors to consider. All the best with your explorations!

I recommend the Divine Truth material for more understanding on how to feel emotions. You can click here to view that info.

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