Overeating and Judgement of Our Emotions

Emotional eating will naturally fall away when we stop judging our emotions and are willing to feel them.

Our overeating shows us a truth: that we judge and are afraid of our emotions.

Every one of us that has any level of compulsive eating can benefit from looking at the issues of judgment of our emotions and also fear of them.

The truth is, if we did not fear or judge our feelings, we would be feeling all of them, no matter what they are.

If we were willing to feel all of our emotions no matter what they are, we would have no reason to overeat whatsoever.

We would naturally and effortlessly eat in a way that was balanced and healthy for our body's health and our mental acuity.

When I was in my worst binge eating disorder days, and prior to that a year of anorexia, I did not allow any emotions within myself.

I hadn't cried for years and I had never in my life at that point expressed anger or allowed myself to feel fear. I was completely emotionally shut down.

I had to start examining why I found it hard to cry and why it seemed impossible to express anger and fear.

What I found was significant blocks to feeling emotions, which included extreme judgment of painful emotions.

I thought crying was weak, anger made you a horrible person, and I felt it was totally unreasonable to ever have to feel afraid.

I was also afraid of emotions: I thought if I felt anger I'd end up hurting people like my dad did, I was afraid I couldn't survive fear and I thought too much grief would somehow literally break my heart and possibly kill me. I was VERY afraid that feeling intense, painful emotions would result in a psychological snap and I would end up more mentally ill.

But the opposite happened. I became less mentally ill and my binge eating healed.

It's been years since I binged and I've never regained the weight I lost.

However, my relationship with food is still not fully healed and so I am still working on my layers of the onion of emotional healing.

So even if I just eat one extra cookie and am aware it's emotional eating, I still am examining the questions,

"How am I still judging the next layer of my emotions?"

"What am I still afraid of?"

Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash