It is late in the evening and you had a long and stressful day. Finally you have some time to yourself. You earlier resolved not to not eat anything at night, and yet thoughts about the chips in the pantry are invitingly taunting you. You decide to eat only a small handful, but once you start eating the salty, greasy, crispy flavor is so good that you end up eating the entire bag. You deserve a treat after all.
If you struggle with emotional eating, you are not alone. You may feel frustration, powerlessness and shame about your eating. You can gain control over this challenging cycle and heal.
Emotional eating occurs when we eat in response to stress or other negative emotions rather than hunger. You may find yourself engaging in dieting and restrictive eating, swearing you will stop emotional eating, only to have the frustrating cycle repeat all over again. Emotional eating does not reach the severity of Binge Eating Disorder, but it is an exhausting pattern that causes self-blame and a sense of powerlessness.
Emotional eating often coincides with feelings of anxiety, shame and depression. Frequently, stress and intolerable negative feelings serve as a trigger for the binge. Food is used for comfort, emotional regulation and stress relief and it also becomes associated with positive emotions and hence very hard to resist. Unhealed traumatic events from the past are often the drivers of such patterns. There often was tension around food in the family of origin; also unhelpful beliefs about eating, body image, and thinness that may have been passed down to you.
I can help you identify triggers and teach you how to overcome emotional eating. I use a variety of tools such as cognitive behavioral therapy, body-focused therapy and EMDR to give you the power back over emotional eating. I help my clients identify and eliminate triggers that drive emotional eating.