Suppressed Anger Can Create Food Addiction

Suppressed anger can create food addiction. Let it out!

When I first faced the notion that some of my food addiction could be created by suppressed anger, I blanked.

“Me? I'm not angry. I've never been angry. I'm not sure if this applies to me.”

I was in so much denial, and was perpetually numbed out with overeating that I wasn't even aware that I had anger in me.

But as I explored what was under my compulsive eating, I discovered not only anger, but burning rage that made me feel like I was going to go insane.

But I thought if I was angry I was a bad person, I wasn't a spiritual person, wasn't grateful, wasn't mature.

Angry women were looked at with condescension and disgust in my family, and my dad was super angry and I never wanted to be like him.

And yet I, like everyone who struggles with food addictions and eating disorders, have many things we are understandably angry about.

Looking back, I can see that one of the single most important things that helped me heal binge eating was acknowledging, connecting to and expressing my denied anger.

Responsibly feeling anger in a healing way will be done mainly alone, and will not be about dumping it on others, taking it out on them, or punishing them with it.

While confrontation is sometimes necessary, and during those confrontations the anger may come out, our overall intention must be to heal ourselves and to get these emotions out of us.

We must want to feel the anger and get to the fear, grief and pain underneath it.

This was the difference between what my dad did and what I realized I could do.

My dad lived in his anger and hurt everyone around him with it, whereas I had the option to feel it with the intention to heal myself and work through the anger and the pain under it, which could not be a more different motivation.

Buy a punching bag and put it in your basement or garage, use your car as an anger release chamber, and scream into and beat the crap out of pillows.

Give your anger a voice and expression! You will not need to eat your anger anymore if you let yourself feel it.

For helpful resources, please check out the Divine Truth YouTube channel and the book When Food is Love by Geneen Roth.

Photo by Birger Strahl via Unsplash