Emotional eating podcast

Based on my last post, I've created a hypnosis podcast: at www.julielevinmft.podbean.com

I'm slowly uploading recordings from a emotional eating group I run. The recordings are focused on self love, mindfulness and becoming an intuitive eater.

The first emotional eating podcast is up and called, Your Body Knows How to Eat Normally. 

This is a guided visualization/trance to help you reconnect to your body's natural signals of hunger, fullness and cravings. Within the visualization are hypnotic suggestions about natural, intuitive, movement too, allowing listeners to reclaim fun and play through the body, instead of seeing exercise as a chore or a way to burn off calories.

Please listen at your convenience. I'd love to hear your feedback!

Emotional Eating and Hypnosis

Even though I'm trained in hypnotherapy, I've always resisted applying hypnosis in my work with compulsive eaters. Most people who want hypnosis for weight loss are stuck in a trance of self-hatred, and helping someone lose weight from that place just feels so wrong.

Then, a few months ago, I sat with a client who has become adept at self-acceptance, and who now wants to become attuned and dependable with her self-care. She wondered if we could use hypnosis to help her recognize when she was turning to food and remember to comfort herself instead? What a great idea!

In trance, we visited a recent memory when she wanted to eat, even though she wasn't really hungry. We were able to pause the memory like a movie, going frame by frame to listen to her body's signals.

"I feel a tension in my stomach area. It's not hunger, but it's a lot like hunger," she said slowly, reliving the experience in slow motion.

"Keep the movie on the screen," I suggested, "and start another movie from a time when you felt real hunger."

She started the second trance-movie, again going in slow motion, and feeling the sensations in her stomach that came from physical hunger. Then she went back and forth between these two paused memory-movies, feeling the similarities and differences between real and emotional hunger. "They're in the exact same place," she said. "And they are both a kind of tugging feeling. Physical hunger is colder. Emotional hunger is hot. Physical hunger stays in my stomach. Emotional hunger moves up into my chest. Emotional hunger always happens after dinner. Physical hunger usually happens before dinner time or lunchtime."

We hypnotically anchored her awareness of these differences so that the awareness would stay with her. Then I asked, "What would you like to do for yourself when you are emotionally hungry?"

"I want to take care of myself. I'm usually tired or overstimulated from my day. I want to lie down away from my family and away from the TV and the electronics. No buzzing, no artificial light. I want to rest my eyes or maybe read something fun. This is like when my kids were little. When they got overstimulated, I would lie down with them in a dim room till they settled."

"What are you seeing?" I asked, noticing her facial expression moving into deeper concentration.

"I see me taking my younger self upstairs, into the dark, closing the door and relaxing. It's like this younger part needs a parent to pull her away from the family. She doesn't want to miss anything. But I know she really needs to rest, even for five minutes."

"What's it like for her to go upstairs with you?" I asked."

"Even though she wants to stay and have fun, she's grateful someone is making her go. She needs this, even though she is fighting it a little."

"What would make it easier for her?" I wondered out loud.

"Knowing that the family isn't really doing anything she likes. They're watching boring television. They're playing Angry Birds. I don't really have any interest in those things" she said.

"What is it like for your little one to remember that?"

"Good. Very good. She can have what she needs and not have to miss anything important."

I helped her anchor her awareness that taking her inner child to a quiet space for a while would feel good. Then we wrapped up the session and she went home, wondering if anything we did would make a difference.

It's three weeks later, and she reports that she has gone upstairs to rest three to five nights each week, sometimes falling asleep, sometimes just closing her eyes for five minutes and rejoining her family. She is turning to food less as she becomes adept at nurturing herself and helping her inner child feel comforted and taken care of.

I can't wait to try this with others!

Freedom from Self Hatred

If I were starting this blog today, I would name the blog the same as the title of this post. Maybe it's time for a new blog all together? Emotional eating and self hatred are usually cousins. More accurately, dieting and self hatred are cousins. Maybe sisters. People who diet, despite the double-speak of diet gurus, don't love themselves. When someone says, I want to be thinner because I love myself, they are lying. They want to be thinner because they believe that's they only way they CAN love themselves.

There is an insidious problem in our culture with true, unconditional self love, especially when it comes to status and appearance. We are told in subtle and loud ways that lovable means attractive. We are told that attractive means thin, athletic, young, strong, healthy, "normal," and a bunch of other things.

Everyone needs to be loved, to feel a sense of belonging and value. We are social animals. We are wired to want connection. Being told that we are not lovable, wantable because we are fat, old, ill, injured, or in any way different from "normal" - whatever that is - makes us feel less than, separate, icky. It hurts. Getting that message over and over makes us feel shame. And in our culture, we combat that shame by turning against ourselves in ridiculous attempts to fit in.

Capitalism benefits from and therefore fosters this process. If companies can convince us we are ugly, icky and unlovable UNLESS we buy their diet book/exercise equipment/magic lotion/hair thickener, they can make a lot of money. So that's exactly what they do. And the cycle of fostering more and more insecurity and self hatred gets worse and worse.

We need voices of clarity to turn to, as a counter to all the painful messages that we are not good enough right now, exactly as we are. Fortunately those voices are out there - if you know where to look. One great resources is Joy Nash. Her youTube video, A Fat Rant is hysterical. Another lovely voice is Ram Dass. His book, Still Here unmasks the self-hatred that calls itself "anti-aging." As if that's a good thing.

Here's a quote:

"Women now live a full third of their lives after menopause, and yet if you believe our popular culture, a woman who isn't young, shapely and still capable of bearing children is all but invisible. I have woman friends who've gone to great lengths to keep up a youthful front with the help of plastic surgery, and while the results may be superficially satisfying, the impulse to re-carve what nature has created often masks a profound despair. It is a if we are urged to fight over and and over again, a losing battle against time, pitting ourselves against natural law. How ghastly this is, and how inhumane, toward both ourselves and the cycle of life. It reminds me of someone rushing around the fields in the autumn, painting the marvelous gold and red leaves with green paint. It's a lot of wasted time and energy."

As I re-read this quote, I declare to the world and myself, I am PRO aging. I am pro-wrinkle, pro-grey, pro-age-spot. I am also pro-body, regardless of size or shape, full figured, flat figured, all figured. I am pro-kindness, especially kindness to the bodies we live in and the selves that inhabit those bodies. I am pro-fun, pro-silly, pronated (really, my ankles turn in).

May 6th is International No Diet Day. Let's strive to make every day World Self-Kindness Day.

Radical Self-Love Instead of Resolutions

My friend and mentor Robyn Posin (forthelittleonesinside.com) often says that setting goals rather than forming open-ended intentions can lead to problems. Because we don't have the ability to predict the future, we can't know what will be right for us tomorrow.

Today though, you may have an idea that losing weight will make you happy in the future. Today, as the new year approaches, you may be setting a resolution to diet harder, to eat less, to exercise more, to get thinner.

I want to invite you to think about the last time you lost weight (and the time before that, and the time before that). Did you feel an initial rush of excitement as you fit into smaller clothes? Did your self-esteem go up as the number on the scale went down? Was there another feeling alongside or just under the excitement? Was there fear or worry, maybe even dread that you would not be able to sustain the behavior required to keep losing weight?

This is the conundrum that 95% of dieters face. Most of us can restrict our eating and up our exercise on January 1. Many of us can continue our “lifestyle changes” through January, even February. By March though, a lot of us are selling our exercise equipment on eBay. By April, we are in therapy wondering why we have failed again.

If this is you, please listen. You are not a failure. Diets have failed you. If you are an emotional eater, no diet will ever be able to address the underlying reasons why you reach for food to change your mood.

In 2012, you have an opportunity to look at your relationship with food and your body in a whole new way. Instead of viewing food or fat as an enemy to be conquered, what would it be like to open your heart in compassion and curiosity? What would it be like to feel a craving, but instead of fighting with yourself, to be a loving ally who asks, what am I really hungry for?

A few days ago, I was talking with my friend, Nadine, about how she quit smoking. She talked about having to let go of all the ideas in her head about quitting, and how even the word “quitting” was getting in the way for her. Instead she found the word “finished” as in, “Am I finished with smoking yet?”

I wonder if Nadine's discovery might be helpful in your process as well? When you feel a craving, what might happen if you ask yourself, “Am I finished feeding my emotions with food?”

If you choose to play with this language, please don't make being finished right and not being finished wrong. There is no right or wrong here. Maybe an even better question would be, "Am I ready to feed my emotions with love instead of food?"

However you phrase it, the question should help you get close to the part of you that has relied on food to feel okay, close enough to really feel into the need. Is the timing right to feel your emotions? Is the timing right to make a loving space for your needs? If the timing is right, then you might be finished feeding your emotions with food. And if the timing is not right, can you have your own tender and gentle permission to not be ready yet?

At the heart of these questions lies a fundamental stance, that you never deserve your own scorn, that anger and disgust will never motivate you, at least not for long, and that you always deserve your own lovingkindness, gentleness and support without any conditions.

Is 2012 the year you set an intention for radical self-love instead of making resolutions?

Emotional Pollution

I was in Briones Regional Park on my birthday, walking, feeling peaceful after listening to an audiobook by Eckhart Tolle. Three doggie visits into the walk, the bliss kept deepening, their puppy smiles and sweetness filling me up. My phone chimed with Facebook alerts, all happy birthday wishes. Life is good, I thought.

My mom called to say Happy Birthday. Then she got all instructional about how to take care of myself (because at 47, I apparently still don’t know how) and judgmental about my sisters (because that’s how she is). Since I can’t talk her out of her negativity, I kindly excused myself from the conversation – yay me! Still, a little emotional pollution got in. I refocused on the now, the woods, finding and photographing trees that look like they have faces.

I could hear a jogger coming, her footfalls, rhythmic and stomping as she loudly fought with her boyfriend on the phone. I heard her complaining about how he treats her, his negative judgment about her weight. She passed me. She was skinny and fit. And she was flooded with anger which leaked into the forest, into the trees, into me. I felt slimed. Once again, I redirected myself to the present moment, the music of the birds, the excitement of the squirrels in a bounty of acorns. I felt almost better.

As I came to the end of the trail, the jogger was there, stretching, still fighting, even louder. She didn’t know it was my birthday. Didn’t know she was in my "church." Didn’t know her hostility was polluting me (or even that it was polluting her). I wanted to tell her to hang up, to stop running, to slow down and see how beautiful the world is, and she is. I wanted to hug her till she calmed down. Instead, I hugged myself till I calmed down. It was all I could do.

Driving home, I was still upset, and all the upsetting things my mind could find started joining in the chorus. Eckhart Tolle was on the CD player, talking about being in the now. You can’t have problems if you are truly in the now, he said with his German accent. Clearly, I was not in the now. Or maybe I was. Maybe the sensation in my body, feeling slimed, was the now I was not accepting. Eckhart Tolle said to take action if I could or to accept reality if there is no action to take.

The action I could take in that moment was to keep hugging myself, to breathe in pain and breathe out love as the Buddhists instruct. It worked. But I had to work it, training my mind, like a puppy, to be in the now, to be in loving presence with myself. Like the jogger, like my mother, I had to get myself off the phone with the part of me who thinks life should be different, that I shouldn’t have to deal with slime in my church, on my birthday. Shoulds, clearly indicating that I am not accepting reality.

I leaned into the present moment. There was a tightness in my chest, my sympathetic nervous system still processing out the chemicals that arose in reaction to my mother and the jogger. I helped it along, reaching inward with an invisible hand, massaging the tightness. I’m so sorry this doesn’t feel good. I told myself. I will stay with you until it feels better.

At home, I went back in my mind to the start of the walk, the smell of the bay laurel, the coolness within the shade of the trees, the baby plants sprouting after the first fall rains. I remembered the dogs, all tail wags and love. My chest eased.

Then I remembered on my way out of the park, a man carried some trash to a can in the parking lot. I don’t know if it was his trash. It could be that he found some trash in the park and decided to throw it away, even though it wasn’t his. And in that moment, I put my emotional trash in there too.

Workaholism, Part 2

A lot of emotional eaters tend to be adults who were "good kids." We do as we are told. We are courteous. We have a lot of empathy. When something goes wrong, we are quick to ask, "What did I do?" often taking responsibility for mistakes or problems we didn't create. Given these characteristics, we make really good workers.

We also have a tendency to feel less than or not good enough. We may diet to feel thin enough, which is really code for worthy - worthy of love, respect, good relationships... We are always proving ourselves, always "earning" our place in the world. This too makes us really good workers.

But the price of overwork and/or perfectionism at work is incredibly high. You may pay the price with stress related illnesses, more overeating, drinking, impaired relationships or isolation. You may pay the price in time - waking up one day to realize that you haven't really lived your life.

Recovery from Workaholism is just as hard as recovery from emotional eating - maybe harder, since overwork is praised and rewarded in ways that overeating is not! The recovery method is the same - really as it is with any addictive behavior. The key is in learning what the behavior is trying to help you soothe or distract yourself from: loneliness, anger, worry, emptiness, lack of security, shame....

When you have a better grasp of the feelings you are working to avoid, then you can begin tending to these feelings directly. As you become a skilled caregiver to yourself, you may discover that work is not so compelling. You may be more tuned into other needs - the need for rest or play, the need for time with family or friends, the need to just goof off.

Getting there is a process, so be gentle with yourself and celebrate even the little moments when you close your laptop or turn off your Blackberry. Close your eyes and just breathe. Find the parts of you who haven't yet learned that you are loveable, even when you are doing nothing, and send them love anyway.

Workaholism

Emotional eaters often have more than one compulsion. And we tend to be ultra-responsible, often co-dependent. It's no surprise that many compulsive eaters are also workaholics. While we may not get the cultural approval we seek by being thin, we can get it by being good workers. But as with any addiction, workaholism comes at a high price. If you think you (or someone you love) is using work to avoid feelings, relationships or both, read this article by Erin Lenderts. Next time, I'll follow up with more about how to recover if you are a workaholic. Till then, be as gentle with yourself as you can possibly be.