If you are still wondering what issues you should be working on in therapy this list was made for you. Of course not everyone faces the same difficulties, but those are the ones that I have found as the most common among people struggling with binge eating and emotional eating. Try to see which of these are apply to you and to what extent and read how we try to tackle them in therapy. Ready?
Setting boundaries
Probably one of the most common ones. People with overeating, binge eating or any other eating disorder have to face this aspect at some point in their therapeutic process. Let’s face it. Even eating has to do with setting boundaries to ourselves. So, through therapy we learn how to recognise our boundaries, respect them, and finally set them in a polite, but firm way. Some people once they realise the pattern are able to start changing it, but for most people it takes some time.
Allowing flexibility
The exact opposite of boundaries is flexibility. Here comes the tricky part, because many people confuse boundaries with a rigid way of being, meaning having to strict and inflexible boundaries. What we will try to achieve is the balance between the two. Why is flexibility important? Life is way too unpredictable, especially when it comes to food. If I’m not able to adjust, I will be faced with fear and stress when things go out of my control.
Control
Too much or too little of anything can be harmful. The basic thought behind wanting to be in control of everything is usually that it cannot be done or will not be done the right way if you don’t actually have control of the situation. Control is usually what helps you be organised and good at what you do and we want to keep this part of yourself. However, when it comes to relationships, everyday life or food it’s usually very hard to have constant control, without harming your mental health. So, we need to help this part, let go of the control and start feeling safe and secure without it.
Emotions
One of the hardest parts is dealing with emotions. There are two main reasons. The first one is that emotions can become messy, hard, unpleasant and unpredictable. However, if we try to block them they will either find a way to express themselves (through food, emotional outbursts etc) or they will numb all emotions, including the fun ones, like joy, excitement, happiness, love, passion. The second reason emotions are so hard to deal with, is that people with eating related problems are usually intellectual beings. Trying to understand an emotion through logic though will not get you far. In many cases, what I hear is ‘but I’m the emotional one in the family’ and it might be true. Compared to the rest of your family you might be more emotional, which would also explain why you are the one with the eating symptoms. Being in a family that has not learnt how to deal with emotions, might have left you with limited understanding of your own and of course with no appropriate coping mechanisms.
Trauma or neglect
This part is highly related to the emotional part. In case of trauma we are talking about unprocessed emotions, in which food might act as confort some of the times and as punishment some others. In the case of neglect, the person has not learnt how to cope with any difficult emotion, has a hard time staying with the emotion and food is usually an easy and usually pleasurable distraction from those emotions. This is a more complicated case, that needs a deeper understanding and care in therapy.
These are just the most common ones. Some people have trouble with all of them, some people just a couple of them and some have these areas figured out. These don’t define your struggle with food, they are just topics that might come up in our session, to evaluate and if there is a need, work on.
Let’s connect and try to understand which characteristics might need a bit more attention and improvement.
