How are you coping with things lately?  

The circumstances we’re all living through are potentially overwhelming.  The pandemic.  The political situation. These things can feel utterly defeating, and everyone I know has their own challenging life circumstances that haven’t diminished while we cope with those world worries.  

So, it’s not surprising that my clients and I have been discussing overwhelm a lot lately.

We’ve all been discovering various ways to minimize overwhelm.

And one topic keeps coming up– the topic of stress eating.  Or, how I thought of it– stuffing or numbing our feelings with non-nutritious foods or drinks.

Maybe, like me, you’ve even gotten to the point that you feel you couldn’t possible cope with your unpleasant feelings without numbing with non-nutritious food or drink.  I felt like my feelings were just too hard to cope with.  I couldn’t handle them.

As I became aware of how very stuck I was, with my eating, my health, and my coping, I started to realize something:

Our feelings are trying to tell us something.

Feelings are like indicator lights. If we’re having really uncomfortable, angsty feelings, it’s an indicator —  that something is wrong.

Ignoring the indicator lights doesn’t make the problem go away.  If you’ve ever tried ignoring the check engine lights, you might have discovered—it’s a good way to break the car!

And I found that repeatedly ignoring and numbing my feelings was a good way to break my health and my life.

And it’s a bit embarrassing to say this but, over time, it’s almost as though eating junky stuff and drinking wine every night was my ONLY coping mechanism.

I didn’t imagine I could cope without it.

But, when I got to the point that I really feared for my health if I didn’t make a change, I sat down and had a heart to heart talk with myself.

And that’s what I recommend to you, too.

Get a nice sparkling water or herbal tea and sit down and talk with yourself.

If you’re hungry, get something nourishing to eat.

Sit down and talk to yourself with loving kindness.

“What’s going on? What are you upset about?  I really want to know.  Did something happen?  How would you describe what you’re feeling right now?”T

That’s the first step—ask yourself what you’re feeling. 

You don’t have to fix it or make the feeling go away—just acknowledge it.

The next step is to identify what the feeling might be trying to tell you.  What is it “indicating?” 

What I have found is it’s often indicating some unmet need.  It could be that your needs for love and affection aren’t being met right now.  Or you’ve been bored lately, lacking challenge. Or the natural needs we all have to be seen and appreciated are not being met at all.

So, you know what you’re feeling. You’ve identified one or more unmet needs.

And the last step is to identify one or two actions you can take to get that need met, even just a little better.  It doesn’t have to be some big and dramatic action– just something you can and will do.

I remember last year, I was working too many hours and feeling irritable.  I had a heart to heart talk with myself and recognized that, although I love my work, I can get so caught up in it that I neglect my connections with friends and family.  And those unmet needs for love and connection cause some of those unhappy feelings.  Which is a good thing—letting me know I need to make a change!

I decided to take 2 small actions per week to better get those needs met—I would commit to making a phone call to at least one friend and another to a family member, every week.  Little steps, but I was honoring those relationships AND my needs for love and connection. 

So, I invite you – if you’ve been ignoring and numbing your feelings with eating or drinking, sit down and have a heart to heart talk with yourself.  Find out what you’re feeling.  And uncover what those feelings are trying to tell you.

Acknowledging your own feelings and finding ways to get your needs met are important ways to honor yourself, to affirm that you matter.  And that’s important—because you DO! 

Written by Dr. Ginny Trierweiler, health and vitality coach, Slender for Good founder

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