The Fear of Hunger and How to Change

The fear — or even terror — of feeling hungry is a common experience for people with food addictions.

I've shared before about how I sought out a definition for hunger as a teenager because I realized I never allowed myself to get hungry before eating again. I hoped the definition would contain a description for what hunger felt like, so I could see if I did ever get hungry.

As it turns out, I didn't. Author Geneen Roth often says, "If you aren't sure whether you're hungry, you're probably not." I totally agree with this.

A fear of feeling hungry is nothing to judge. Rather, let us explore the reasons that this can exist.

One situation, which is likely the most obvious connection, is when people grow up with true food insecurity. Understandably, they may then grow up with fear of being hungry even when they have food security, because as a child, not getting enough to eat was a real danger.

Another possible link is not food insecurity wherein a child was in danger of not getting enough calories, but rather a situation where food that was supposed to be theirs, was taken.

For example, a person whose parent would give them a special treat for them, but then later eat it themselves or give it to the sibling. This can create a deprivation or lack fear as well.

But I feel that most commonly, the fear of hunger has to do with other associations, since most people in western countries were not in danger of starvation or inadequate calories.

It can be about what hunger represents to us emotionally because of certain emotional damage we have.

We often associate painful emotional states with a physical feeling of hunger, such as feeling unloved, controlled, uncared for, invisible, neglected or ignored.

And a fear of hunger can also be because we just know that staying full is how we avoid our other emotions that we don't want to deal with.

We are afraid to get hungry because then we might be more aware of our sadness, fear, anger or other feelings.

An essential component of healing food addiction is facing our fear of hunger.

Photo by Irina Iriser via Pexels