Are You Eating To Stifle Your Anger?

Abigail had always been slim and attractive and a moderate, sensible eater. In the past few months, however, she has taken to eating two boxes of cookies a day, and often finishing off with a pint or two of ice cream at night. She is putting on pounds in an uncontrollable fashion but can't understand why she is doing this to herself - until, that is, she realizes the hidden connection between her compulsive overeating and buried anger that she is trying to suppress. I will tell you more about her in a moment, but let me let you in on a secret about this connection.

If you're using food to stifle your feelings of anger, you probably don't know it. That's because the type of anger that creates compulsive overeating is a suppressed emotion. It happens when you "swallow" your angry feelings as a way of not recognizing them.

Food can actually be so soothing that it can allow you to avoid whatever negative emotions you may be feeling when the cravings strike. In fact, if you reach for the food fast enough, you probably don't even notice you're feeling anything at all.

This is especially true of the emotion of anger. Society conditions us to keep our angry feelings in check; but sometimes this includes not feeling the anger at all. If you're like most people, you're not comfortable with anger. Food is an easy way to keep it at bay and avoid expressing it.

Of course, the problem is that your anger doesn't go anywhere when you handle it by eating unwisely. You still feel the anger - it's just hidden from your awareness for a while by the temporary comfort of food. Meanwhile, the downside is that you gain pounds, and the angry feelings remain dormant, ready to come up to the surface and bring about yet another food craving. It's a no-win continuous cycle.

Abigail is an example of someone caught in this cycle. She's a single mother with a teenager who is running wild and filling her with perpetual worry. Her son expresses his anger constantly in an irrational way; but Abigail feels she must keep her cool in order to keep things from getting even more out of control.

Meanwhile, Abigail's own anger toward her son and toward the situation remains stuffed down deep where Abigail is unaware of it. Instead, she turns to food as a way of keeping this anger hidden. She's so afraid of blowing up at her son that she doesn't even admit these feelings to herself. Her only means of controlling her anger is to overeat. She hasn't yet even acknowledged the fact that she has gained many pounds. She simply wears her most baggy clothing and continues to deny her true feelings.

Obviously, suppressing her anger in this way only leaves Abigail at even greater risk of blowing up at her son. Plus, it undermines her health and will eventually cause her to become more frustrated when the pounds she has put on become undeniable.

You can certainly see the logic. Using food to suppress anger only allows you to temporarily stifle your feelings, rather than express them. The biting action does offer some relief because it satisfies the primal instinct to bite our enemies in defense. For this reason, crunchy foods may feel especially good at such times.

Here is something you can do immediately if you experience the problem of overeating due to anger that you cannot express openly:

Take a 3" x 5" index card and write the following sentence on it:

"Even though I'm angry at (insert name of person or situation) and can't express this openly, I choose to honor my anger and deeply and completely accept myself (or "love myself," etc.) without judgment."

Before you go to bed each night, and after you rise in the morning (and at any other time you wish), read this sentence out loud to yourself three times.

This is a mini-version of the powerful "EFT Choices Method" which is a highly effective technique for combating emotional overeating. EFT utilizes the principles of acupressure and uses light tapping on certain strategic comfort spots on your face and upper body to train your mind to become more peaceful and self-accepting - a great advantage for losing unwanted pounds. You will no longer feel that compulsion to grab for unnecessary food when you come into harmony with yourself and accept your anger.

Self-help techniques like EFT are especially important because they get to the core of the eating problem, while diets usually fail because they focus on what foods you are eating rather than the reason you're eating them.

When you find yourself wanting your favorite comfort food when you know you're not hungry, ask yourself: What am I really feeling at this moment? If anger is the culprit, try the EFT exercise provided above, and watch the pounds melt away!

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