Food and emotions
Broadly speaking, one of the mechanisms responsible for development and maintenance compulsive overeating, also known as emotional eating, is to treat food as a way to deal with unpleasant emotions. Although many sufferers are aware of this mechanism, the behavior itself – reaching for food in excess amounts – is perceived by them as appearing out of conscious control. Therefore, these people engage in self-destructive behavior (for example, compulsive overeating) until they experience unpleasant physical and mental symptoms.
The process of change
The aforementioned behaviors undertaken, inter alia, in situations related to high levels of stressinitially seem impossible to change. It is difficult for a person with an eating disorder to imagine any other behavioral scenario they could undertake in a stressful situation, for example. Making changes often involves making the patient aware that her behavior may have been adaptive in her childhood, for example, when it was the only way she could cope with it. unpleasant emotions. Currently, it has a wider range of available behaviors, so it is worth implementing them. However, it is not an easy process, it requires time and commitment to the therapeutic process.
Mechanism of the disorder
It is important to check during therapy motives reaching for food leading to overeating. In some cases, it may turn out that overeating was originally intended to deal with e.g. loneliness. The key is to check the adequacy of such a belief: is it really so that the patient has been abandoned by her relatives, or is she turning away from others, not allowing her to be with herself. Analysis ulterior motives is very important as it helps to better understand the mechanism of the disorder’s development and maintenance.
Beliefs and emotions
It is also very important to analyze the relationship between what is felt emotions, especially those that are difficult to express openly, and beliefs (which is what we think when feeling the emotion) and behaviors what are their consequences. For example, if the patient’s dominant emotion is bow it is worth checking what is underneath it. It may be the thought of being used, hurt, not trusting anyone. It is very likely that such feelings arose in childhood. At that time, soothing could be obtained from food, which from the earliest stages of life was probably associated with bliss, satisfaction of needs. Only significant binge eating and eating huge amounts of food could be helpful for very strong emotions. It brought relief, which, unfortunately, after some time turned into unpleasant physical symptoms, but also psychological deterioration of well-being. So during therapy and the treatment process, you can search arguments that challenge long-held beliefs underlying anxiety. It is important for the patient to become convinced that although she did not feel safe in childhood, now that she is an adult, she has more resources necessary to take control of her own life, she acquires the belief that she can feel safe in an adequate way that allows her to feel safe. get better. When a belief is changed in this way, its original form becomes useless and no longer has it destructive influence on the patient’s life.