Why We Stuff Ourselves
Have you ever stuffed a feeling? Filled it, instead of felt it, stuffed it down with food, or booze, or doing, working, working out, swiping, sexting, sexing, dating … insert coping mechanism ______ here.
We’ve all done it: numbed with extra, at a family dinner, after a bad date, holiday, stressful meeting, family dinner. Instead of making space to feel said feeling, we fill them by over consuming, because maybe if we just have a bit more pie or another glass of whiskey, wine, rye, we won’t hear that little voice inside reminding us how uncomfortable we feel, how sad, lonely, rejected, abandoned, afraid, anxious or otherwise. How being at our childhood home Or at the wedding with the ex and his new wife Or back on the college campus where we were heartbroken brings back anxious memories of not feeling seen or worthy. And while the trigger is the teacher, the place for us to lean in and soften, instead we get triggered and numb out, distract, cop out, instead of actually learning the lesson. And we do it again, living in this constant spiral of triggered and numbing: on autopilot — blaming all things external until we actually realize, we’re the ones self sabotaging.
Feel familiar? The numbing part. It’s a bi-product of dissociating. Dissociating is defined as the disconnection or separation of something from something else or the state of being disconnected; separation of some aspects of mental functioning from conscious awareness.
It can happen in an instant— after a date and feel lonely, after an argument with your partner or roommate instead of confronting the situation, you dissociate in a pint of ice cream or Netflix binging. Pick your poison, filling instead of facing said feeling.
When we bypass said feelings— “no big deal,” “move on,” “get over it,” which is normal if we’ve been told this in past because parents hate to see their children in pain, but parents who don’t create space for feelings raise children who are afraid to feel and then raise children to be adults shut down from feelings and the cycle continues. But if we don’t feel it, we can’t heal it! And if we don’t feel it, we find other ways to FEEL, which often results in FILLING.
Pro tip: lean in to the feelings, that is, when you’re triggered, instead of reacting, hold yourself with compassion. This is called “reparenting.” Reparenting is when an adult works to meet their own emotional or physical needs that went unmet in childhood. These needs may include: affection, security, routines and structure, emotional regulation, and compassion.
Example: “Hey boo, I know you’re going into the lions den this week and I know sometimes seeing the ex is challenging for you, and the anxiety might tempt you to fill your time, mind, and body with destructive action and thinking. But it’s ok, you’re safe, “I got you,” — says you to you.
This is how we regulate emotions so we don’t start spiraling. We unfreeze the feelings, get present in them and with them, shed light on them instead of keeping the shameful behaviors, known as our shadow, in shame, silenced.
I had a coaching client this week who is going through immense amount of change say to me, “it’s not that deep, it doesn’t have to be that deep …” and I heard her, and I also heard her tell me a few minutes later how she’s been mindlessly eating, gaining weight etc. “What if it is that deep?” I responded. Her attempt to minimize the depth of her feelings resulted in emotional eating, and her body holding onto the weight as a stress response. When our bodies are stressed, often a fight or flight response, they hold weight to protect us. Creating space for her to feel safely in our session allowed her to:
Face her feelings.
Understand her triggers.
Realize & take ownership for her emotional response
Reclaim her feelings as that deep!
Recalibrate.
This is healing! Rewiring subconcious patterns to create change.
When we don’t feel our feelings, we dissociate, we numb, we seek outside of ourselves to feel something. When we over consume anything, we are often dissociated. When we dissociate, we are telling our bodies, we’re not safe. When our bodies don’t feel safe, we travel up into our minds, where we “think” we’re safe, but we’re actually no longer feeling anything. And so we continue to do what doesn’t serve us, because we’ve trained our bodies to “think” that “FEELING” isn’t safe.
So next time you have a feeling, create a safe space for you to lovingly be with it no matter how: deep, dark, happy, sad, shocked, anxious, angry, pageful, scary, loving, pleasurable, enormous or otherwise. Ask yourself: what am I stuffing? Or maybe for you, it’s starving? Name the feeling. Feel where it lives in your body and feel safe with it. When you begin to allow the expansiveness of your full spectrum of emotions, you no longer seek outside of you to FILL the empty because you’ve instead fueled yourself with presence, with the love you are made of.
Remember, Everything you need is inside. X
If you’re ready to face your habits, your patterns, your “INSIDES,” to feel them, to heal them. I have two offers:
1:1 Hourly to zap you into place.
Monthly & 3-monthly containers (1x session per week) - very limited spots.
This work takes time but it will change your life. You’re worthy of living fully — email me (olivia@livyoung.co) to book.
And read this book, Mother Hunger: