Growing Human(kind)ness by Karly Randolph Pitman

Foster a change of heart

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The road that fosters change with food

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Here it is the heat of the afternoon, a time of being cooked and stewed by the sun in August, the hottest month of the year where I live.

The heat has me thinking of a quote by Viktor Frankl – “What is to give light must endure burning” – and all the ways we get cooked and stewed in the healing journey.

I wanted to take some time to share more about this idea and how it relates to your journey with food. It dovetails off last week’s post where I wrote about walking through the gate of vulnerability – a necessary step (and a catalyst) to heal food compulsions like overeating, sugar obsessing, or binge eating.

The myth of “I should’ve known better”

A very common and painful myth that can arise with any struggle – particularly a chronic one – is the idea that ‘I should’ve known better:’ that your food pain was something you ‘should’ve controlled better.’

This past week, I’ve been reflecting upon forgiveness, and I wonder – perhaps one part of forgiveness is releasing this idea that we should’ve known or done or coped better. For holding onto the idea that we ‘should’ve known better’ is a subtle but powerful way we try to hold onto control – for we want to believe that everything is within our power, and our hands.

In a paradoxical way, blaming ourselves for not doing better is how we try to protect ourselves from feeling the deeper pain of powerlessness, grief or loss. Even though it hurts, it’s a subtle way we try to regain control when things don’t go the way we hoped.

The still point of forgiveness

Forgiveness, by contrast, asks us to let go of both control, and our desire to avoid pain.

It’s a subtle but powerful shift where we turn away from blame (of self and others), assigning responsibility, and all our expectations of how we should’ve done – even though it’s incredibly difficult to do so – and move into a place of deep acceptance:

“I did the best I could with the knowledge, skills, and capacity that I had at the time. If I could have known or done better, I would have.”

It’s a still point of inaction, where we stop trying to figure things out, stop trying to make things different, and stop trying ‘to create a better past,’ to quote Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield.

This still point is a place of vulnerability, humility and exquisite tenderness.

For as we move out of guilt, blame, shame and judgment – and even the very well intentioned desire to understand and make sense of our experiences – we move into a space of presence, of pure feeling, where we simply feel the pain of loss itself, the grief for that which we wish were different.

‘The Well of Grief’

David Whyte captures this experience eloquently and simply in his poem, The Well of Grief:

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief

turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe

will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,

nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.

Oh, to forgive. It is to grieve, and it is to love. It is to be expanded – not contracted – when things don’t go the way we had hoped.

The grand belonging

When we directly touch our grief – all the ways we ‘wished for something else’ – we not only touch our own grief, but we also touch each other’s. We touch our ancestor’s grief, what Jung calls ‘the lament of the dead.’ We see all the coins of our collected heartache, present, past and future. In this space of shared vulnerability, our individual pain transforms into our collective human pain.

In this opening, we come home to a grander belonging. What an irony – that it is through failure, tenderness, and limitation – and not the fulfillment of our ideals – that we open our hearts to ourselves, to the human experience, and to each other.

How grieving brings rest

I suspect that until we touch and face our grief, we will continue to ‘work’ to feel a sense of worthiness and loveability. We will try really, really hard. We will work to fix our pain, we will work to control our compulsive behavior, we will work to control our weight and binges, and we will work to feel loved and loveable.

It is exhausting, all this trying.

When we face our grief – especially the grief of limit, all the ways we’ve fallen short of our own expectations – we stop trying. It feels like humiliation, because at first we see all the ways we don’t meet our own ideals, all the ways we haven’t ‘measured up.’

But this space of grief – opening to our own limits and imperfection – is actually a place of deep rest. We can set down our blame, our guilt, our frustration, our endless trying, all our strategies and ‘hustles for worthiness’ and rest in the sense of, “I am flawed and imperfect and full of mistakes, and I am deeply loved.”

What a relief! So little to prove, so little to have measure up to, so little to ‘get’ or achieve or have – for we are already loved.

As poet Danna Faulds says, “I and you and all of us are more than enough.”

How forgiveness leads to change with food

It is another irony that once we accept our limits, our typical behavior, and our patterns around our pain, the way we respond to them changes, too.

I see this happening with food in concrete ways like:

  • You ask for help instead of hiding – rather than trying hard to control binges on your own, you’re open with others and ask for help when you’re feeling overwhelmed
  • You experience less spirals of bingeing – you forgive yourself when you make mistakes much more quickly, easing the post binge guilt and shame that feeds more overeating
  • You learn from your mistakes – mistakes are included as part of the journey and become less of a ‘big deal’ – you feel much less perfectionism about getting it ‘right’
  • You give yourself what you need – you feel less resentful and less rebellious towards limits. You can no to yourself when you need to say no.

So today, here I think of all our limits and losses, all the ways we have not loved well or been loved in the ways we’d like.

All the countless binges and overeating and hatred and vitriol sent out towards our bodies. All the shame and sense of brokenness.

To know, to know in the marrow of our bones, that all the stories of our unworthiness are not true, that our ideals are not achievements we need to strive to attain, that we are loved, beloved, home.

How odd and how beautiful that it is grief – and yes, the heart – that takes us there.

Like the endearing Hobbits in the Lord of the Rings, and like the small children who climbed into Jesus’ lap, it is the ‘least of these’ within ourselves that lead us home, and into love.

The gate of vulnerability

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There are a few key ‘gates of healing’ that are necessary to walk through in order to grow out of food compulsions like overeating, sugar obsessing, or binge eating.

I wrote about two of these gates – healing your relationship to vulnerability and healing your relationship to power and sovereignty – here.

Today I’d like to share more about healing your relationship to your vulnerability – for it’s something that’s coming up for a lot of folks right now.

Feeling like a ‘broken self’

Whenever we struggle with something – like food – it can alter our sense of self. Struggling with food can create an impression in our hearts that we’re inherently ‘broken’ – a sense of being damaged and ‘unfixable.’

This impression filters how we see ourselves. It’s as if we become fused with the struggle itself – and that struggle becomes our very identity. Our relationship with food becomes the lens through which we view our entire being.

I remember when I first became conscious of feeling ‘damaged.’ I was a sophomore in college, lonely, struggling to fit it, and coping with the wake of a major episode of depression. I was also caught in bulimia, torn between two opposing needs: my desire for belonging – which meant controlling my food so I could obtain the thinner body I thought I needed to be loved – and my desire for care and nurturing – which I found in binge eating.

So much vulnerability. So tender.

Over time, this impression of being a ‘damaged self’ can lead to other feelings – frustration, fear, overwhelm, and anger. We may blame ourselves for not doing better. Our thoughts may tell us things like – “You should be able to control this. You should be able to get this together. This is all your fault.”

Or, we may feel caught in a ‘freeze’ state where we feel powerless, helpless, and hopeless.

Ouch, so painful.

Moving into the heart

When we move through the gate of vulnerability, we move from the mind – the place of judgment and shoulds – and into the heart. We turn towards our pain to offer it tenderness, compassion and understanding.

There are many ways to do this. Any contemplative, expressive, mindfulness or ‘body based’ practice can help – like yoga, meditation, spiritual practices, movement, art, and creativity – because they move us out of the head and into our bodies, where our experience lies.

We can physically move our energy and attention into the area around the heart. When you feel into your heart, how does your perception of your journey with food change? Do you feel or see yourself differently?

Where everything belongs

When we move into the heart, there’s a warm space for our experience, and our emotions. I think of it as the archetype of the Divine Feminine – a cradle for our being, where we are deeply invited to exist.

This shift fosters several key shifts:

  • There’s more ease and less anxiety. We move out of a space of overcontrolling – trying to control our food, our pain and the situation – and into a place of surrendered care. Our energy shifts from frustration, anger and shoulds to an embrace of, “Ouch. This really hurts.”
  • There’s room for all aspects of ourselves, an invitation for our wholeness. Rather than feeling like our struggles with food are an outcast – something we need to control, contain, or fix – they become something we move to care for, with tenderness, compassion and wisdom. Our vulnerability and struggles are included in the great web of our life and can even be a part of our health, not outside it.
  • There’s a restfulness, a quieting of the internal arguing of all the ways our mind can tell us that we should be different – all the ways we argue with our experience and try to make it better.

The counterintuitive turn towards pain

It sounds counterintuitive, but the place where we feel most vulnerable – the place where we feel like we’ve most screwed up with food – is the very ground of our healing.

It may feel too vulnerable to touch this grief directly at first, especially if there’s been trauma. (Having the help of a therapist, healer, or support group can be crucial when there’s so much vulnerability.)

But with support, presence, and patience these ‘soft spots’ are gently, tenderly faced and felt.

In many ways, moving into the heart is a grieving process. For when we grieve, we’re turning towards our heartache without adding on a layer of self blame, guilt, anger, or shame.

As we grieve, a natural compassion arises towards ourselves. Food transforms into something we’re relating to, rather than stuck in or identified with.

How compassion leads to changes in how you eat

This holy grieving is what helps us unhook from the belief of being a ‘broken self’ and touch the ground of our wholeness. Out of this wholeness arises new ways of seeing ourselves, a greater compassion and tenderness towards our vulnerability, growth, and new life.

This lays the foundation for outward behavioral change – differences in what and how you eat, in how you use food to self soothe or to care for stress, in how you respond to cravings and impulses, and in how you relate to your emotional, physical and spiritual needs. You feel more resilient and capable, and less stuck in the ‘freeze’ state of helplessness or despair.

And in this place, new ideas arise. We can ask for help. We can embrace ourselves and others. And we can face our humaniy with honesty, compassion, and deep, abiding love.

The ‘marvel of what you carry’

In my own life, I’ve traveled through many rounds of grieving, of facing the pain that lay underneath my eating disorders and depression. The more I grieve, the more tender I feel towards myself, and towards others.

Grieving softens my defenses:  my overresponsibility, my trying to be good, my trying to do everything ‘right,’ my trying to be better than others, my anger and righteousness – all the ways I’ve tried to protect the soft shell of my heart, all the ways I’ve tried to hold love close.

Grieving asks me to let go of these strategies and simply feel the vulnerability that lies underneath. It asks me to see – truly see – the love and tenderness that lies in my own heart, and in others’.

In grieving, we embrace our wholeness and imperfection. Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who works alongside gang members in Los Angeles, put it this way: ‘rather than criticizing ourselves for how we carry our pain, we can simply marvel at what we carry.’

I’ll close with a poem from Jeanie Greensfelder.

A Love Story

Gather your selves:
critical and kind,
scared and brave,
thoughtless and hurt.

Mistakes and failures
meet accomplishments.
Like loss and love,
they are a package.

Embrace it all.
Such a coming together
is what we came for.

Softening the shame of overeating with the inner protector

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The inner protector, like a mother bear, makes room for our pain and makes room for our human experience.

In my last post, I spoke about a powerful but subtle shift when facing cravings or a binge:  to stop ”trying harder” and ask for help instead.

This orientation – to acknowledge that we’re at our limit and to step in with help and support, rather than trying to make ourselves or the situation better, ‘stronger,’ or different – is an act of compassion, acceptance, and love. It’s a relief to the mind and heart to honor those times when we’re overwhelmed and need help!

Today I want to share another practice that can help in the face of a binge – particularly, the feelings of self blame, judgment, and shame that can arise after bingeing, overeating, or ‘giving in’ to food.

The emotions that arise with a binge

Underneath overeating or binge eating lies something so precious, and something deserving of deep respect and reverence:  our human tenderness and vulnerability. You’ll often find undigested, unprocessed emotion – the wounds and losses, both big and small, that hold stored up anger, grief, fear and more. It’s these emotions that often well and overflow and give rise to overeating or a binge. (I explain this idea in further detail on this page here.)

In the wake of a binge, feelings of guilt, shame, dislike, disgust, anxiety, fear, loathing and frustration can swirl – both about the binge itself, and about the original feelings or pain that drove the binge. Ouch, it’s so painful.

The inner controller

We can feel shame compounded upon shame, or guilt compounded upon guilt:  like we ‘failed’ in how we handled our pain, or ourselves. When we’re inside this feeling of failure, we can so easily go to war against our hearts.

It’s a feeling of, “I should be able to do better” or “I should be different:”  a strong inner sensation of “I should be able to be more in control.”

This is the voice of the inner controller – a very small, very scared part of ourselves. This part of us feels responsible for everything, feels like it has to do everything right, do everything right the first time, believes there is no mercy or margin for error, and feels very alarmed when anything goes awry.

It believes everything is its fault.

The inner controller is not personal – it is collective, and speaks to everyone this way.

Bringing in your inner protector

This is when I invite you to call in your inner protector. (I want to give a nod of recognition to writer, social activist, and coach Tad Hargrave, where I first heard this inner part described as the protector. You can learn more about Tad’s good work here and here.)

Who is the protector? The protector is a part of our interior landscape, the one who holds mercy and compassion for our human fallibility, neediness, and frailty. This part of ourselves is like an older sibling caring for a younger sister or brother with compassion and care.

The inner protector fosters these kinds of feelings – compassion, love, warmth, tenderness, and strength. It also fosters beautiful capacities in us: like the capacity to ask for help, to lean on others, to be vulnerable, to set and honor limits, to soften our impulses, and to ask difficult things of ourselves.

Soul activist Francis Weller writes that one way of looking at self compassion is as the ‘internalized village.’ I think the protector is a part of this internalized village – an inner mother and inner father who protects your dignity and humanity with strength, mercy and compassion.

When our critic arises to flagellate us for our mistakes, the inner protector rises up like a mother bear and says, “Nobody hurts my babies,” shielding our vulnerabilities from criticism and disgust.

It’s a stance of fierce kindness – a soft, sad tenderness that wraps around our wounds. It sees the big, bigger picture, and all the various threads that have shaped our being, and the limits of that control we imagine we should have had.

The inner protector makes room for our pain and makes room for our human experience. It cares for our tenderness rather than blaming ourselves for it – or shaming ourselves because we aren’t handling it better.

An example of the inner protector

Poet May Sarton offers a beautiful example of the inner protector in her poem, Friend of Enemy, from her collection Coming into Eighty. While she writes about befriending her body’s vulnerability as it ages, her words remind me that we can follow this same approach of kindness towards all our vulnerabilities.

Friend of Enemy by May Sarton, from Coming into Eighty

I can look
At my body
As an old friend
Who needs my help,
Or an enemy
Who frustrates me
In every way
With its frailty
And inability to cope.

Old friend,
I shall try
To be of comfort to you
To the end.

Meeting your inner protector

Have you ever felt the inner protector arise?

I can share what its presence feels like for me. Many of you know that I wrestle with winter depression. In November, when the time changes and darkness falls, I often struggle to adjust to the changing weather and the changing of the light.

I remember one day last December when I was feeling particularly alarmed and prickly, and ashamed of these feelings and my emotional reactions. I felt embarrassed, as if I should’ve known better, and discouraged that I wasn’t ‘coping better.’

In a nutshell, I was being too hard on myself.

Suddenly, I felt this inner protector rise, welling up. It said, “No more. I will not chastize myself for being human, for having wounds and vulnerabilities. It is cruel and inhumane to ask the impossible of myself and then to criticize myself for not being able to meet these expectations. I refuse to treat myself this way.”

In response to this voice, I felt a flood of relief. I could feel my heartbeat slow down, and the expectation that I should be able to do more or be more or be better, soften. I felt wrapped in something firm, strong, and protective, like a river being held in a riverbank.

Leaning into the inner protector

We all have both of these parts – the inner controller and the inner protector – as a part of our inner ecosystem and landscape. The fact that they arise is not always something that we can control or demand, and it is not our fault.

But I’ve found that we can lean into this inner protector, and do it with a reverent, compassionate approach towards ourselves.

I’ve found that the best way to access the inner protector is to move into the arena and area of the heart – to view ourselves with soft eyes and a tender hand. It helps to literally bring your physical energy down into your heart and belly, away from your head.
As you move into this space, you may feel the urgent voice of alarm and sharp edge of criticism start to soften a bit.

Through the eyes of the heart, overeating moves from an enemy to fight to a friend in need – something vulnerable to protect and care for.

How the inner protector softens indulgence and supports growth

This change in insight brings out your ‘soft eyes,’ tenderness, and self compassion. Approaching your overeating from your heart feels very different than approaching it from your head and its mental constructs –  all the emotions of contempt, frustration, anger and thoughts about how you’re falling short and “should be doing better.”

People ask me often – “I’m afraid that if I soften towards my mistakes that I will indulge them more.” This fear makes sense, and has enough of a grain of truth in it that we can believe it.

But the inner protector is not an indulger:  it brings in both kindness and shielding. It doesn’t advocate or have the energy of avoidance or permissiveness. It often says no and set limits.

Rather, it is a fierce acknowledgement of the truth of our experience – how we are actually feeling versus how we want to portray ourselves or want to seem or how we think that we should be feeling. This fierce kindness wraps itself around our truth in the moment, softening the shame about falling short so that we can move towards what helps.

This fosters a subtle shift where we move away from our typical responses to our human pain – hiding, trying harder, minimizing, suppressing, perfecting – and into a more honest and compassionate response. This often involves connecting with others in an authentic, healing way.

In a word, we accept our humanity in the moment rather than how we think we should feel or how we wish we felt. In this space of acknowledgment, honesty, and invitation, we find rest, greater ease and support – both with ourselves, and in connection with others.

Needing hands on help?

If you’re needing hands on help with food, here are ways I’m offering support:

The Heart of Food: this is a new course to soften anxiety, shame and self judgment with food. If you’ve been interested in my work, but were unsure where to start, this course may be a great fit for you. It will help you in 3 key areas: softening shame, self judgment and blame around your food struggles; gaining understanding and practice in caring for the key emotions and needs that drive you to food, and growing resilience, where you feel more capable and less victimized by food.

What’s new about this course is that it comes with monthly, group Q&A calls for 5 months. These regular calls give you a chance to ask questions, connect with others, and get support. This is often the ‘missing piece’ that do at home courses don’t offer, and I’m glad to make regular connection a part of your journey. You can learn more and see exactly what’s included here.

The next Q&A is Wednesday, Septembr 19th.

 

 

Why the answer to cravings is asking for help – and not trying harder

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Here on this good Saturday I just finished eating soup I’d made with some vegetables I bought at the Farmer’s Market.

I love making soup – I enjoy the chopping of vegetables, the simmering pot of warmth on the stove, and the emotional cradle that comes from creating something nourishing.

When I’m feeling sad or low, soup making is one of the primary ways I care for myself or others, one way I honor the truth of life’s pain or a difficult time. It’s a tangible way of offering kindness and acceptance:  “I see that this is hard for you right now. Here, let me help you.”

I hear from many, many people that December and January can be hard months, especially if you live in the Northern Hemisphere and this is your season of winter. This extra, added difficulty can make your relationship with food that much harder.

I understand how a hard time makes food feel so much harder!

In today’s blog post, I want to talk about how you can honor difficult times with food with kindness, empathy and allowing – giving your hearts a space to be exactly where they’re at. This includes the most helpful tool I’ve found for food cravings:  asking for help.

There are certainly other tools or practices you can use when you feel a craving arising – things like befriending cravings, riding the craving like a wave, or EBT’s Damage Control tool.

But sometimes, instead of trying harder, or trying to use a tool to soften a craving, you need something much, much simpler:  to acknowledge your limits and ask for help.

Let me give you an example of how this might work.

It was Christmas day. It was late – past 11 p.m. – and I was hungry, tired and weary, and all of a sudden, the piles of holiday goodies at our holiday gathering place started to call my name.

I had thoroughly enjoyed a few holiday treats earlier that day – a brownie and a chocolate truffle – and knew I didn’t need any more sugar. I knew that if I had more my body would cross the line from feeling pleasured to feeling sick. So I knew my limits.

And I knew that in that moment, I did not have the strength or capacity to honor them. I did not need to try harder. I needed help.

So I shared my dilemma with my husband. I took him aside and said, “Hey, can you help me over the next hour or so until we leave for the hotel? I’m feeling a lot of cravings for sugar and know I’ll feel sick if I eat any more sweets. Can you help me?”

He agreed, and asked what that help would look like. I told him if I started heading for the treats to gently pull me aside. He nodded and we parted.

It was a simple thing, and yet I felt tremendous relief. For my sharing my need with him, and my admitting that I was feeling overwhelmed, immediately did two things – I relaxed, knowing I didn’t have to figure it out or do it on my own. I knew I didn’t have to rely on my own inner strength, which was lacking at the moment.

And I felt safe and protected, knowing I wasn’t going to end up eating too many sweets that would make me feel sick the next day. I now had the support I needed to avoid walking into harm – and it felt good.

This is the subtle but powerful shift that happens when we ask for help. It’s a two step dance of recognizing the limit – “ah, I’m feeling overwhelmed and need some support here!” – and then asking for the support that you need.

Here’s why this approach to cravings is helpful, healing and powerful:

This past week, I was attending a new parent support group. We were talking about the importance of the parent-child connection, and how to help our children feel more comfortable leaning on us and in asking for our help. I was nodding along, and then the leader of the group made this statement:  “Addiction can come from a lack of connection and a discomfort with asking for help.”

I felt the hairs on my arms stand up, because she was speaking directly to what I’m writing about here, and what we talk about in the blog, in the courses and classes.

There are many reasons why we might feel uncomfortable asking for help, including help with craving or bingeing. For starters, it’s vulnerable to admit our fallibility or neediness. We may wonder – will I be judged? Shamed? Blamed? Pitied? (You can read a letter here that I wrote to my alma mater on this topic, and why it’s important to create cultures that support human vulnerability.) In Western culture, where individualism, idealism, and self reliance are so prized, admitting need or weakness takes tremendous courage!

Sensitivity can also impact our comfort in asking for help. Many people who wrestle with overeating are sensitive, empathic and intuitive. And many times, sensitives and intuitives carry unconscious shame about their sensitive nature. This shame arises from our greater culture and can also arise from our own personal experiences within it, particularly as children.

This shame co-arises with our intense emotions, including food cravings. Anytime we feel ‘too much’ of something, or anytime we feel strongly craving, triggered, reactive, or overwhelmed, we also feel this shame of, “I shouldn’t be feeling this way” or “I shouldn’t have such strong reactions.”

These feelings of “should” and “know better” are the voice of shame talking. Because of this shame, we often feel like we should be able to be more present, mindful, integrated, or mature when cravings arise, capable of being with these intense feelings with greater and greater equanimity.

We feel this as an inner drive of, “I should be able to do this on my own.”

Because of this shame and this drive, we tend to try harder – trying to prove our strength in the face of this emotional wave – trying to not give into the craving on our own – rather than admittting the truth:  “This feels too much for me right now, and I need help.”

So honoring our limits is uncomfortable and is an act of courage – for it means facing and feeling this shame, and facing and feeling our limits. It means asking for help.

And it also brings rest and ease – for our willingness to ask for help is what heals the shame of “I should be different or know better.” Asking for help brings the feelings of safety and connection that we’re needing.

When we pause and ask for help, we’re moving in to protect our vulnerability rather than shame or criticize it. We’re saying, in so many words:  “I don’t have to prove how strong I am, or put myself into situations that are overwhelmingly alarming or frightening. I can ask for help and it’s ok.”

We’re saying, “I will not make war against my own humanity, against my own vulnerability.” We come alongside in support rather than in shaming shoulds.

For there are other kinds of strength than the strength of pushing through overwhelm. There’s the strength to look honestly at ourselves, the strength to know, understand and honor our limits, and the strength to care for our human vulnerability with compassion, wisdom, and respect.

Needing hands on help?

If you’re needing hands on help with food, here are ways I’m offering support:

The Heart of Food: this is a new course to soften anxiety, shame and self judgment with food. If you’ve been interested in my work, but were unsure where to start, this course may be a great fit for you. It will help you in 3 key areas: softening shame, self judgment and blame around your food struggles; gaining understanding and practice in caring for the key emotions and needs that drive you to food, and growing resilience, where you feel more capable and less victimized by food.

What’s new about this course is that it comes with monthly, group Q&A calls for 5 months. These regular calls give you a chance to ask questions, connect with others, and get support. This is often the ‘missing piece’ that do at home courses don’t offer, and I’m glad to make regular connection a part of your journey. You can learn more and see exactly what’s included here.

The next Q&A is Wednesday, Septembr 19th.

Holiday sugar support – how to move emotions so that they don’t come out in sugar

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Learn how to soften the emotions underneath sugar cravings, where they can flow like water.

If you wrestle with sugar, the holidays can be a challenging time of year.

Sugar is seemingly everywhere, ingrained into many of the parties, get togethers and celebrations of the season. If you care for your emotions with sugar, and you have a hard time setting limits around it, you may be feeling overwhelmed or panicked about how to say no.

You may fear the next 10 days and wonder how you’ll cope!

I’ve created a resource page for you here with links to helpful articles, a link to a heart centered support program, and a new blog post on ways of understanding and diffusing the emotions that lie underneath sugar cravings. You can find this all below.

Making room for the emotions underneath cravings and impulses

To begin, I’d like to share a story about my son.

This morning I was stewing, having an internal debate on whether or not to buy my 11 year old son something from Santa. He no longer believes in Santa Claus, and yet I felt propelled to have something for him under the tree from Santa on Christmas morning.

So I found myself online, harried, rushed, alarmed, and anxiously scrambling to find something he’d like. Ah, it felt awful!

When I sat back and paused, I realized that my scrambling to find a gift was not about Santa, or about my son – I was trying to prevent him from feeling sad or disappointed on Christmas. I thought that if I just got one more special gift, I could guarantee a peaceful and happy Christmas.

The vulnerability underneath our emotional drives

This made me pause. For I realized – Oh. There is vulnerability here. There is something really tender underneath this impulse, this drive for the perfect holiday gift.

Underneath my frantic pursuit of a ‘happy Christmas,’ I found heartache, fear, and sorrow. I found the emotional residue of all the heartaches that my son has experienced this year, including the loss of a friendship with a very close friend, the inherent separation of moving out of childhood and into early adolescence, and the loss of three pets.

I saw how a part of me wanted to give him something to ease these losses – both for his sake, and for mine.

I could feel my own sadness and grief over these things, and how much this grief hadn’t been honored in the midst of the busyness of life. I could feel how much it wanted to be honored and felt. It was time.

Creating space for the emotion to move

So I put the computer away, leashed up the dog for a walk, and trekked to a pond a few blocks from my home. I cried and cried in the rain, for the grief and bittersweetness of it all, for my son’s sadness, and for my own.

I came home feeling softened and relieved, more connected to myself. Grief tenderizes us; it cracks our hearts open into this alive, tender, awake space where we feel the poignancy of being human, and fallible.

In the wake of this tender presence, the craving, driving search for the perfect present had fallen away. I came home strengthened by my tears, and more grounded in myself.

Moving into a space of strength

I am awed and amazed at how grief works, the emotional alchemy that it produces. For opening to grief – and to any intense emotion – is an alchemy and emotional journey. On the wake of grief, we often find resilience and a deepened intelligence.

In the case of my son and my quest for the perfect Santa gift, what fell away was my desire to control the outcome of the morning.

It was a relief to realize that my attempt to create a certain emotional experience for my son – even something simple like delighting him on Christmas morning – is truly not in my power, and to let it go. And it was a relief to turn towards what I truly do care about – my relationship with my son.

Instead of trying to make my son’s experience a happy one, I want to make room for whatever his experience is – happy, sad, frustrated, disappointed – on Christmas morning. I want to give my son intimacy and connection. I want to give my son, me. That is my heart’s desire.

This desire is what gives me the strength to walk into Christmas morning knowing that I may be greeted by many different messengers – delight, joy, disappointment, frustration, a tantrum, pouting, whining, you name it! – and the confidence to know that it’s all okay, that they aren’t wrong, and that I can help my son through them.

Making room for your emotional experience

I share this story because I find that many people who wrestle with food expereince these same dynamics internally, with themselves. Many sensitive and deep feelers harbor some residual fear of their strong or challenging emotions – especially if these emotions tend to get expressed in sugar or food.

Like my wanting to make everything work for my son on Christmas morning, this can result in our twisting ourselves into human knots trying to make everything work for ourselves – our attempt to prevent our own difficult emotions or reactions from arising.

In our own way, we are often doing the equivalent of searching for the perfect present, trying to keep ourselves from feeling sad, disappointed, frustrated, or lonely – or from touching that bittersweet grief of being impermanent, and alive. There are 10,000 ways we do this – whether it’s constantly keeping ourselves busy, distracting ourselves through entertainment, overdoing, overgiving, eating, planning, overcontrolling, perfectionism, and more.

It is so very human for us to have these reactions and responses! They’re not personal and not individual – we collectively share them. And underneath all of these things we’ll find our human vulnerability, and often, feelings and emotions that feel challenging to face and feel.

Underneath there is simple human tenderness.

It sounds counterintuitive, but making room for difficult feelings like disappointment, loneliness, sadness, grief, and frustration is how to soften these emotions so that they don’t end up in a sugar binge. Here are a few concrete ways of working with these emotions and dynamics:

  • Welcome your true feelings. Many of us have learned to edit or minimize our feelings – especially if appearing ‘needless’ or ‘less emotional’ was a way of receiving approval, having belonging, or feeling connected to others. But if our feelings are constantly being dismissed or minimized, the emotional build up tends to come out in food. Can you be honest with yourself about how you’re truly feeling? I find that honoring the truth of how we feel is what gives space for this emotional energy to be expressed and to move, so it isn’t building and building only to come out in a binge. Honoring the truth of how we feel is not equated with acting on it, following whatever whim or fancy it dictates – merely, that admitting what we’re truly feeling is the first step of emotional self care.
  • Invite in the difficult. Big emotions tend to come up around the holidays, for we all can carry expectations and longings about how we want the holidays to unfold, as well as memories and felt experiences of holidays past. When these emotions arise, we tend to feel ashamed, guilty, or somehow at fault – as if we should’ve done something to prevent these painful emotions from coming up. Rather than seeing these emotions as proof that something’s wrong, or that something’s wrong with you, normalize and make room for them. It’s simply our human vulnerability appearing, and something that yearns for connection. This is moving from a mindset of ‘these feelings are my enemy’ to ‘these feelings are pointing to a vulnerability that is asking for love and support.’ This approach makes space for a ‘tend and befriend’ rather than a ‘fight or flight’ response to our human neediness.
  • Reach out for emotional support. Emotional support – empathy, connection, listening, being heard, feeling seen, and being witnessed – creates a container where emotions can move, ebb and flow. It softens feelings of fear or shame that can arise around our human emotions and neediness, and builds feelings of strength and resilience. Where are places where you can receive emotional support – whether it’s from a friend, partner, family member, counselor, or support group? Sharing our vulnerability with a trusted other is a bridge to intimacy and connection, and softens the modern tendency to ‘tough it out on our own.’
  • Create a connection plan. Create a plan for daily touches of connection – both internally, with yourself – and externally, with others. When our connection needs run dry, several emotions arise – including frustration, anxiety, and what my mentor calls intensified pursuit. All of these emotions can drive you towards food. Proactively meeting your attachment and connection needs can soften these drives and help you feel less driven towards sugar or food. Connecting with Nature and the earth is a helpful antidote to any kind of overdoing, including overeating.
  • Play. Give yourself emotional outlets for emotions to move. While tears and crying are one way of moving emotion, laughter, play, movement, and artistic expression are other ways of doing so that are equally helpful and powerful. Going for a walk, doing something silly, playing with your kids or nieces and nephews (roughhousing is a great way to move energy), dancing, singing to holiday music, making art, playing a game of catch, or playing in the snow if you live in a cold climate – all these things can soften the load on the limbic system.
  • Give yourself scaffolding and support. If the holidays are a hard time of year for you, give yourself extra support. This kind of support will look different for each person, but whether it’s structured meal times, having an exercise partner, or scheduling time at a yoga class, find ways to honor your daily needs in a rhythmic way during a time that tends to be busier and full of activity. Make a plan for those times when bingeing tends to happen, a ‘riverbank’ to hold the flow of the river.

More reading you may enjoy on this topic:

If you’re eager to learn or read more about understanding the emotions and drives that feed sugar cravings, as well as how to build impulse control and soften the drive for it, then these posts may be a help to you –

Wanting more hands on help?

If you’re needing hands on help with food, here are ways I’m offering support:

The Heart of Food: this is a new course to soften anxiety, shame and self judgment with food. If you’ve been interested in my work, but were unsure where to start, this course may be a great fit for you. It will help you in 3 key areas: softening shame, self judgment and blame around your food struggles; gaining understanding and practice in caring for the key emotions and needs that drive you to food, and growing resilience, where you feel more capable and less victimized by food.

What’s new about this course is that it comes with monthly, group Q&A calls for 5 months. These regular calls give you a chance to ask questions, connect with others, and get support. This is often the ‘missing piece’ that do at home courses don’t offer, and I’m glad to make regular connection a part of your journey. You can learn more and see exactly what’s included here.

The next Q&A is Wednesday, September 19th.

Q&A: What to do when you don’t have anyone for support?

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A few days ago, I hosted a webinar about my When Food is Your Mother class, and was asked a question that I hear often:

What do you do when you don’t have anyone you can go to for support? Or what do you do when you have a lot of deficits of connection in your life from early experiences? It is too late for me? I hear you saying that the ultimate answer to overeating and binge eating is connection, but I don’t have many places where I can receive the connection that you’re talking about.

This is a poignant and powerful question – and one that I think so many of us can relate to.

Yes – it’s a bit of a catch 22 – when the answer is connection, but safe, trusted spaces of connection aren’t available – where do you start, or begin? And if your early experiences were particularly difficult, is there hope?

Yes, this is vulnerable and courageous territory!

As this conundrum is so common, I wanted to share my answer with everyone here. I hope it speaks to your heart and reaffirms that it is never too late.

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