Stoicism Creates Food Addiction

Stoicism is not strong and admirable. It creates food addiction.

In our society, stoicism and emotional control is often praised as being strong, admirable, and impressive.

We comment positively about those who seem to make it through hard times -- or through their entire lives -- showing little to no emotion.

But if you look closely at those who we tend to admire for their seeming lack of emotion, you can always find cracks.

There are always areas in their lives that aren't working as well as they might like to think.

They might not be emotionally close to those around them, lacking emotional warmth or empathy. They may have a need to control people, situations, and events.

And... they may need to use other addictions to actually control and suppress their emotions enough to appear stoic.

They may use workaholism, or alcohol, or TV, or gambling.

Or, overeating.

The aspiration to be stoic is a common cause of food addiction. It's truly a recipe for developing eating compulsions.

Emotional control is not strong or admirable. In many cases it's driven by fear, or superiority, arrogance and other unhealthy feelings or false beliefs.

Feeling emotions in a responsible way with the intention to be vulnerable and heal is what's admirable.

A person who is willing to be humble to their feelings and to be messy despite the world's pressure to not be that way, is impressive.

Don't put people who are stoic and controlled on a pedestal. They don't know something you don't know, they're not more together than you are.

Allow your feelings to flow so you can heal your overeating!

Photo by Jane Palash via Unsplash