We have all heard the term “emotional eating.” Many people tend to gain weight or struggle with loosing unwanted pounds through emotional eating. Emotional eating occurs when you eat to cope with certain emotions. Well, now that we know what it is, why is it so difficult to stop? Often times people have a very complex and deep seeded emotional interplay that occurs when they eat out of emotion. This can be confusing for the most intelligent of people, therefore they struggle gaining control over this maladaptive way of coping.
So, how can we “fix” this? We all know that eating does not cure negative emotions. I have been using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) to treat my clients who struggle with emotional eating. EMDR has proven to be an effective therapeutic modality used with my clients who eat to cope with emotions.
How does EMDR therapy work? This approach utilizes an image and the negative cognition (thought), body sensations, and emotions that are linked to it. You then follow a light with your eyes and/or use pulsers in your hands or ears to bilaterally stimulate your brain as you reprocess the image.
Perhaps a woman eats when she feel she is not good enough. The earliest image she can recall of “not feeling good enough” occurred when she attempted to earn the affections of her father through performing well in sports. She always felt that she fell short of his expectations, and would cope with not feeling good enough by eating. This behavior had been in place nearly her entire life and often times feels “not good enough” around her husband. Through reprocessing the painful image of her father’s discontent, by bilaterally stimulating the brain through the EMDR process, those images of “not feeling good enough” will have less of an emotional charge. Therefore, when her “not feeling good enough” button gets triggered, she will not experience an emotional charge that seems so overwhelming she can only handle it through eating. At this time, she will be able to face and handle her emotions when she is triggered in a more skillful manner.
To learn more about EMDR visit www.thecoloradocounselor.com/emdr, www.emdria.com, or www.emdr.com.