In yesterday’s blog I talked about how feelings are neither good nor bad and that it is a good practice to welcome those feelings, specifically the uncomfortable ones as they are indicators that something is going on inside of us. Through curiosity and self-compassion, we can begin the work of welcoming our emotions and working with them instead of them ruling us.
By now you may have probably heard of a part of our brain referred to as the reptile brain, or the lizard brain. It is that primitive part of our brain that is highly reactive, relying on emotions. It has no context for time and place and its job is to keep track of threats. If our brain perceives that we are in danger, the part that responds instantaneously is this reptile brain, also called the amygdala. 
Can you remember the last time your body reacted as though you were being chased by a bear? It happened to me just the other day. I received a phone call from the principal’s office and the minute he said, “Hello Mrs Steen, this is Mr. Campbell. I need to talk to you about your son.” My legs went weak, my heart started palpitating and I had instant dry mouth. The memory that my reptile brain was flooded with was when I received a phone call that my son had been hit by a truck and rushed to the hospital. Mr. Campbell’s next sentence was that he wanted to make sure Dezi was in the right group for the upcoming grad camping trip. My amygdala was responding to a memory. Unless we tell ourselves that this is just recall and that we are actually safe, an alarm in our brain will sound and tell us we are in danger.
This intense reaction is what Karen Koenig calls dis-regulated emotions. Our memories get triggered and we think we are unsafe, but really we are not. Our bodies respond as though there is an actual bear in the room and we are being chased by it. A Molotov Cocktail of adrenaline, cortisol and nor-epinephrine surge through us and we move into fight, flight or freeze. As adults, we can distinguish between recall and current reality. Of course just because we know the difference doesn’t mean those memories won’t still be triggered.
Knowing your triggers is really important. Write down a list of triggers that arouse you and drive you to over eat (or drink alcohol, or under eat,etc). Is it feeling invalidated, ignored, shamed, unworthy?
Food is a way that we try to regulate our emotions. For example, we may feel unworthy and our brain wants to move us away from pain and toward pleasure and so we sit down in front of a box of donuts and eat all the contents. The minute we swallow the last bite, the pleasure is over and we feel a greater sense of shame and unworthiness than when we started. And so the cycle continues.
Here is Karen’s advice on regulating those intense emotions in a healthier way:
- Allow yourself to feel the emotion – cry.
- Use a distraction like exercise or calling a friend.
- Go for a walk.
- Journal your feelings in a book.
- Take a bath and do some mindful breathing exercises (Mindful breathing will be in a future blog!),
We don’t have to attach to any feeling or thought. Think of your feelings like passengers going by on a train. They will pass by you and you can either jump on board and attach yourself to those feelings, or you can gently notice them and allow them to go by you. If you feel yourself getting swept away with that feeling, stop the train and get off. Then try some of the above strategies to begin to work with these feelings.
Marriage and Family Therapist Beverly Engel writes that the antidote for shame is self-compassion. I love that.
I believe that self-compassion is the best starting block to understanding our emotions and how they affect our relationship with food.
Be kind to yourself today.
