Not Feeling It

When I eat emotionally, I no longer actually FEEL the emotion that is triggering me the urges that make me eat emotionally.  It seems I have disconnected myself from my emotions.  I’m on autopilot.  I completely skip the feeling of the emotion (whether it’s stress, anger, anxiety, fear, or even happiness) and go straight to the binge eating.

Somehow, I need to learn to feel my emotions again.  Something that is key to the process of stopping the detrimental habit of emotional eating is identifying the emotions that cause the behavior to begin with and feeling them.  But if I’m completely skipping the part where I even know I’m experiencing an emotion, then how am I supposed to recognize that I’m having an emotion, let alone force myself to feel it instead of feed it?  Therein lies my challenge.  Somehow I’ve got to slow myself down when I feel the urge to eat when I’m not hungry, and then to discover what emotion may be occurring within me that is triggering it all.

This is all something I hope to hash out with Dr. H.  I hope I can remember to mention this whole skipping the emotion thing to her when I see her next and see what she has to say about it.  I know that for therapy to be completely successful I have to be as open and honest with her as much as I possibly can be.  And that is exactly what I plan to do.  Maybe I should start a little notebook that I carry around with me at all times and write in it things to bring up at my therapy sessions.  Also in that I can write down what, if anything, I’m feeling when I get my urges to eat and what, if anything, I did to distract myself from the urges.

The book Are You Ready! by Bob Harper is really inspiring me to make the changes I need to make within myself.  I haven’t read a book that has truly made an impact on me in quite some time.  Of course, I don’t usually read self-help books of any kind, so maybe that’s why.  Another book I want to read is also by Bob Harper.  It’s his new book called The Skinny Rules.  I have a few friends that have read it or are reading it and they love it.  So that’s the next book I’m going to buy.