What a recovery journey of Emotional Eating looks like
When you start your journey of healing your relationship with food, we often start with a huge motivation.
A ‘NO MORE’', a ‘Now or NEVER‘, a ‘I am SO DONE!‘.
This moment where you know that you are ready to change something big in your life.
I believe that the reason why you want to shift your habits and transform your behaviors is a very important buoy to keep yourself going. Yet, we are starting a journey. This means, we pack the bags and we feel ready to go, but we still need to transport ourselves from A to B. And just like a travel journey in life is not always perfectly following a schedule, nor does a healing journey. Healing doesn’'t come in a straight line of improvement most of the time. There are stairs, slides and sometimes catapults along the way. At the end you may look back and see the road of chaos that you have walked behind you. A healing journey is messy.
‘Healing doesn’'t come in a straight line of improvement most of the time’
But beautiful things are to be find in life’s messiness. Because this eventually is how life works. Beauty is in the things we don’t plan, but that still happen. In a way we have to trust that we are starting a journey and therefore we are going somewhere, yet we can’t plan out the exact route.
I would love to share with you something that I have learned so far about the journey of recovery from Emotional Eating. These things I have learned from my own journey and it is what I keep seeing in my clients as well.
3 important steps of a recovery journey of Emotional Eating
A healing journey is a beautiful process of growing awareness.
Emotional Eating happens when we are triggered in a certain situation. A part of us is reminded of something traumatic or we are experiencing tough emotions (anger, sadness, insecurity, fear, jealousy, exhaustion etc). Because it doesn’t feel good, we distract/reject/numb ourselves so be don’t feel the thing rising inside of us.
After a while, after behaving this way over and over again, we condition ourselves to behave in this way to the trigger, that it feels harder and harder to choose something else.
A first step is to become intimate with our patterns. Being curious about what is happening.
Why do I go to food?
When does it happen?
What need am I trying to fill with this food?
This curiosity doesn’t mean we let everything jus be the way it is. But suffering happens when we resist what is true for us right now. So part of observing where are ‘right now‘, is accepting that this is the current place we are at.
‘Suffering happens when we resist what is true for us right now’
Spaciousness between desire and behavior
By having this growing awareness, we create spaciousness between the desire to eat and the actual action we take in response. This is how we eventually bring back this sense of choice.
Clarity on what we DO WANT
At the same time as becoming very familiar with our patterns, we want to ask ourselves how we would like to respond in these situations? Did you ever sit with that? Actually asking yourself for details about what it is that you DO want? Not what you don’'t want.
Getting very clear about our intentions for more beneficial ways of acting, of getting our needs met in a way that is actually meeting it more sustainably, is most important.
‘Recovery is not a 1-day-event. It is a journey’
Recovery is not a 1-day-event. It is a journey, a process, a exploration of getting to know yourself more everyday. I found that it actually never really stops.
I guess I am still on it. I don’'t necessarily feel like I am still recovering, but I am still learning more about myself. About my patterns. About my ways of distracting and rejecting parts of myself (even going to food sometimes).
‘I guess I am still on that journey myself‘
We don’t have to come to a place of perfection. A few days ago I heard someone say: ‘We were never meant to be perfect, because we came to this world to learn. And learning happens in the imperfections, in making mistakes, in the messiness.‘.
I agree with this so much. We never need to come to this place where we NEVER use food for our emotions anymore. Yet, we get to be more mindful about our ways and to not feel lost in these patterns anymore. In a way, we can even mindfully decide sometimes to use food for the purpose of distraction. And doesn’'t that feel very different? Where it is us, being empowered in our choice, making the choice to do with food whatever feels right for us.
I wish you to start your journey of recovery. You are ready and I promise you, you will look back at the messy road of healing, with a heart full of love for the path you have already walked and a deep sense of trust in yourself!
I love you,
you are not alone.
X Iza
