Overeating: A Response to Dangerous Needs

Today we have a guest post from Ben Ringler who is working toward his license as a Marriage and Family Therapist in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's always great to find new therapists who understand the roots of emotional eating. Ben offers us insight into how we may be eating in response to needs that feel dangerous...

Overeating: A Response to Dangerous Needs
Generally speaking, we live in a culture of addiction. Many of us make efforts to simultaneously avoid and fill ourselves because we are afraid to feel any emptiness, pain, anger or even pleasure. Anything can serve our addictions, drugs, television, sex, relationships, work and, commonly, food. Especially in our country, where we have abundant amounts of food, fast food restaurants on many street corners, supermarkets the size of small cities, eating beyond our body’s needs is common.

Challenge and Opportunity
Because food addresses some of our need for nourishment and pleasure, overeating is both challenging to overcome and an amazing opportunity for growth and self-acceptance. Challenging because we cannot avoid food like we can alcohol or drugs. We need to eat to food to survive. So, those who tend to overeat are consistently faced with their impulse to eat greater amounts of food (and types) than necessary. Opportunity because there are plenty of chances to become aware of the dynamic associated with overeating.

Eating Away Our Own Needs
How we eat often reflects how we relate to ourselves. Specifically, the way we eat is a mirror for how we feel about our own needs and how we go about getting our needs met. For many, having needs is (perceived as) dangerous. As such, the need to eat (or any other need that arises) is going to be anxiety producing and perhaps rattle the sense of inner safety. In response, overeating is one way that many have discovered to maintain a sense of safety from an inner world of unsatisfied and dangerous needs. For some, eating in large quantities may be a welcome pause from the anxiety of experiencing needs as dangerous.

Dangerous Needs
On an unconscious level, there are many who feel that their needs are dangerous. When those needs begin to arise, a sense of safety is rattled. As a result, one shoves those needs (and the fear of them) way down, often with food. Those who experience this were most likely either shamed and/or attacked or neglected and/or abandoned when they needed someone or something as a child. Their caretakers were unable to be with their own unmet needs while attending to a child’s. A chain of perceived dangerous needs is created. The unfortunate by-product is the association of needs arising with either attack or abandonment. As a survival mechanism, their needs (and the pain associated with them) were hidden from view.

Transformation through Inquiry
Food gives us a sense of substance, grounding, so there is some energetic basis for eating as providing a sense of inner safety. The question is, are our needs really dangerous? We can change our patterns over time when we begin to accept our behavior and face the truth of what drives these urges to overeat. From this perspective, if we begin to get in touch with our own needs, and the feelings we have associated with them, we can begin to break the chain of overeating as compensation.

Think about how you eat. First, bring awareness to the chain of thoughts, feelings and actions that lead up to a meal. Are you in need of food or is there something else? When you feel hungry, do you feel anxiety? Are there a lot of thoughts about what to eat? Do you fight yourself about what to eat? When you finally choose and sit down (or drive thru) for a meal, become aware of this process; can you taste the food? Are you anxious? Do you beat yourself up? How does your body feel? When you are complete, do you beat yourself up? Do you regret? How is your body now? Do you vow to do it differently the next time? Notice the repetition of these thoughts and feelings around eating.

Continue to notice each time you eat. Notice how you might resist noticing. You can begin at any time, anywhere. At one time, you adeptly learned to use food to keep yourself in tact and safe. You did the best you could and continue to. Keep that as a mantra as you simply notice how you relate to the overeating process now. This increased awareness will undoubtedly, over time, change you. New choices will emerge. It is not a question of will. Rather it is accepting the lessons that the behavior of overeating have to show you. Overeating is a doorway.

Ben Ringler is a registered MFT intern #52936, supervised by Patricia Herrera, MFT #37738
He can be reached at (510) 848-8899 or on the web at www.BenRingler.com

Ben brings up some ideas that are rich with opportunities to explore. How has it felt wrong, bad or unsafe to be "needy?" I'd love to see your comments!