“Life feels hard at times. Sometimes I just want to go away.”
I hear this from coaching clients all the time . I heard it from two people this afternoon, alone.
Most people, when they first begin to work with me, believe their problem is mostly about food. Some poeple ask, “Is it possible I have a food addiction?”. I explain that [private_membership circle] the jury is still out on that. Yes, we do see some people who have sensitivities to particular foods and if you know that’s the case for you, it’s worth noting that when it comes to eating in a way that supports less bingeing.
Many people ask, “Is it possible I just really like food?” Sure, that’s possible. But if eating large quantities of food is causing great distress, either emotional or physical, you’d think the degree to which one likes food and binges would be measured against how much pain bingeing actually causes. It’s just too simplistic an explanation for why people continue to binge despite significant distress over doing so.
Most of the people I coach become aware that they often use food to create a state of “mindlessness”, or distraction from times of the day, or thoughts, or feelings that they’d rather not tolerate. You can’t have a “food thought” and focus on an uncomfortable thought or feeling in the very same second in time. Most emotional eaters shift attention to “mindless eating” because it helps us be “mindless”. It helps us escape, at least for a little while…
Today, after a client told me that she binges because she just wants to “go away”, she immediately said this, “On some level, though, that feels false to me. Bingeing to go away from my life feels like when I was a kid and the braces on my teeth hurt. To stop the pain I would clench my teeth really hard for a few minutes and the pain would go away while I was biting down hard. But then as soon as I stopped clenching my teeth, the pain would come back and be even worse. Bingeing is like that. It hurts more after I stop and the feelings come back.”
Ellen Shuman is a Life Coach who specializes in working with people who struggle with emotional and binge eating issues. She is the founder of A Weigh Out & Acoria Eating Disorder Treatment, Vice President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), and Co-Chair of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”, ellen@aweighout.com
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