Home Archive by category 'Anxiety'

Anxiety

  • Anxiety, Emotional Abuse, Exercise, Intuitive Eating, Recovery, Relationships, Self Confidence, Self Empowerment, Self Love, Spirituality

    STRUGGLING WITH OVERWHELM? 6 Action Steps To Take Right Now

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    Overwhelm…probably makes you feel a little…Anxious? Nervous? Fearful? yep, even thinking of the word can conjure an unpleasant response in our body.

    So what exactly is it, where does it come from and most importantly how do we stop it from taking over?

    Overwhelm is rooted in a feeling of powerlessness. Overwhelm happens when we have lost our sense of self and have been plunged into confusion feeling a myriad of limitless options surrounding us with no idea which way to turn. This confusion may come from outside of us or from inside our own minds – but either way – it all feels like “too much” and often makes us want to shut down.

    It pushes many of us into procrastination or gets us doing meaningless tasks that aren’t in line with our truth.

    So why does overwhelm happen? Why, even though we know it is not helpful for us, do we let it in? Why can’t we stop it?

    Here are two fundamental reasons for overwhelm 

    1) YOU ARE NOT ANCHORED IN YOUR OWN AUTHORITY

    You get overwhelmed because your focus and energy is directed outward too much. There is too much emphasis on things that are going on outside of you and what other people are doing, thinking and saying.

    This is the manifestation often of a huge boundary issue, especially for empaths. Where your sense of self and identity is based on the reflections you receive from those around you and is not generated from within.

    You then get overwhelmed because there are limitless options available to you out there and without being anchored in your own authority you have no way to narrow down those options.

    The world is simply too much and your container is always overflowing with other peoples thoughts and ideas. Your own voice is crowded out.

    2) THE VOICE OF YOUR INNER CRITIC IS LOUDER THAN YOUR INTUITION/HEART

    You haven’t cultivated a strong enough relationship with your intuition and the voice of your ego takes over often.

    Your ego voice is one of fear. This conditioned voice will keep telling you you are not good enough, you need to be small, you shouldn’t cause a scene, you shouldn’t speak up.

    You feel overwhelmed then because suddenly everything feels like too much of a challenge. Everything is too scary, too dangerous, too risky. So you end up not doing these things – your ego has won – it has kept you safe and small.

    The pressure inside your mind has overwhelmed any dreams or desires you have in life to go and do what you want to do.

    The outcome as a result of either 1) or 2) or both is that you feel small and restricted in your own life and feel out of control.

    In both scenarios you are perpetuating a concept of separateness. You are disconnected from source, disconnected from truth.

    The natural order of things is wholeness, balance and abundance. The concept of overwhelm is a construct of your mind that keeps you feeling small because it wants you to be safe. 

    Overwhelm often comes with a growth moment. It is when you are asking more of yourself than you have done before.

    But, very importantly, you CAN grow without overwhelm.

    Here’s how…

    Here are 6 tips you can action whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed in order to reduce the overwhelm and allow you to move forward in life in whichever direction you want to go

    1) GET INTO THE BODY AND MOVE THE ENERGY

    Any intuitive movement is good, even just focusing on the breath works.

    Overwhelm manifests in the body but lives in the mind. Therefore you need to acknowledge it, and then move it. Examples include dance, yoga, stretching, walking, gym workouts. Any somatic practice that takes you out of your mind and into your body works well here. This is not the best time to learn a new physical skill though because you need your mind for that. Choose easy movement that you know how to do.

    2) TELL YOURSELF A NEW STORY

    Use affirmations to change the story in your mind. The most important thing here is to find statements that feel true to you. Here are a couple of examples.

    “I am more powerful than what is making me anxious”

    “I am a divine limitless spiritual being having a human experience”

    3) SET BOUNDARIES

    This will feel hard at first and may even feel more overwhelming but once you have set them and then stick with them your life will feel so much easier.

    A very tangible example here is setting boundaries around giving your energy to others. If you are constantly being asked by other people to do things for them and have no time for you then start setting boundaries with the people in your life. State clearly that you are happy to help them out but with conditions. Give time limits, share how much resource it takes you etc. let people know what you are available for and if they ask more of you then stay firm and say “no”. Make sure you are always spending time each day giving your own energy back to yourself.

    4) BREAK DOWN TASKS

    Break down tasks into the smallest conceivable size.

    I love this Hemingway quote that always reminds me of this…he talks about writing a book, saying that the idea of writing a whole novel can feel too daunting, too overwhelming…instead of thinking this he says “all you have to do is write one true sentence”.

    That is a beautiful example of breaking down a huge, overwhelming task – writing a book – into its smallest conceivable next step – writing one sentence.

    Take that principle to your to-do list.

    5) CHANGE THE TIMELINE

    Give yourself more time to do things. You don’t need to have everything done yesterday. This is so simple and so effective.

    We consistently overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a year or in a lifetime.

    Remember the tale of the tortoise and the hare. Consistent, sustainable effort over a long time period WILL give you results so long as you stay committed. Remember that you are in charge of your time and resources. If someone is asking too much of you you get to say “no” (remember action step 3 here)

    6) DO NOT STOP COMPLETELY

    When we get overwhelmed there is a tendency to want to shut down. But when we do that we lose momentum completely and it becomes more difficult and – to be honest – more overwhelming to start again. 

    Remember action step 4 – what is the smallest conceivable task you can do to keep the momentum rolling?

    For example, if you are moving house you may feel paralysed by overwhelm about sorting out and packing up your whole house – set yourself the task of clearing out and packing one bookshelf. The satisfaction of doing that will likely motivate and inspire you to do another shelf, and another. If it doesn’t then at the very least you have completed that one task and you can do another the next day. Just do not give up completely.

    I want to share one last BONUS action step….

    GET SUPPORT

    With all of these tips remember that you never need to go through this alone. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and like you cannot manage your life reach out and share those feelings with someone. Speaking out and sharing your experience is so so helpful in moving that energy. I want you to feel empowered to deal with overwhelm in your life but I also want you to know that empowered people still need support and guidance.

    If you are building a new coaching or healing business and are feeling overwhelmed and confused then I am here for you. I work with new coaches and healers to put together beautiful signature offers and build their business in a way that feels amazing and allows them to find success with ease, grace and flow. Click here for more information

    ALSO FEATURED ON MINDFLOWHARMONY HERE

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  • Anxiety, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Empowerment, Self Love, Spirituality

    The ONLY thing that’s stopping you is you

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    You’ve heard this before but let’s break it down for you so you can truly understand what this means.

    You are blocking yourself due to 3 things…

    Current Beliefs

    Fear

    The Unknown

    Your current beliefs are what you know to be true about yourself right now. And right now you are not where you want to be. Therefore you are stuck in this cycle of doing what you have always done with the knowledge you have always had staying stuck in your current position.

    The only way to break free from this is to change.

    Sounds simple.

    Here’s the catch. In order to change you need to move into the unknown. To become a new version of yourself you have to shed the current known, comfortable version and become someone new.

    This is uncomfortable AF.

    It’s literally like jumping off a cliff into total darkness.

    This is where fear comes in. Fear is your body’s natural response to this prospect. Why the hell would you want to go diving into the deep abyss of the unknown?

    This fear of the leap is ultimately why you are stopping yourself.

    The current version of yourself is holding on with all her might to your current patterns and ways of doing things.

    The known will beat the unknown every single time unless you can get comfortable with the idea of taking that leap.

    You are the only one who can know in yourself whether you want to do that. So you are truly the only one stopping you.

    Ultimately it comes down to how much you want it…how much do you want your life to be different? Are you willing to push yourself further than you ever have before? Are you willing to trust yourself to make the best decisions? Are you willing to go forth into the unknown and create something magical from your life?

    If the answer is yes then I have a tip for you.

    While you are the only person who can make the decision to leap you don’t have to do this alone. You don’t need to wade through the depths of the unknown solo. You are allowed to have help! In fact I guarantee you are going to need support.

    Coaching is an amazing way to receive the support you need while moving through this exploration of the unknown.

    As a coach I hold space for you to discover the new you in an environment that is totally safe and supportive.

    Looking to start your coaching business? Get in touch – I have just the program for you!

    Loving you as always xxx

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  • Anxiety, Emotional Abuse, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Empowerment, Self Love

    Courage, Confidence and Comfort Zones – You Don’t Need to Feel Scared to Grow

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    In this world of personal growth we often hear about getting outside our comfort zones and having the courage and confidence to push through all our fears to be a different, more successful version of ourselves. It is often described as being a challenge, an uphill struggle, we say we need to get ‘comfortable being uncomfortable’ in order to change.

    This blog post is going to propose a different way of looking at personal growth. I have developed a strong aversion to this language and have actually found in trying to take this approach I have, guess what, found myself struggling and feeling challenged at every turn. So I asked myself what if there was a different way to change?

    Can we grow, evolve and develop without this relentless Sisyphean push to continuously extend ourselves beyond our comfort zones?

    I have battled with this idea of getting outside my comfort zone for a long time. Is my comfort zone something I can define with a boundary that I can simply step over every now and again when I feel the urge to push myself? Or is it something more nebulous…a thought pattern that I need to bravely find my way out of in order to elicit some change in my life? Is it a physical place or does it just exist in my mind? Is it possible to feel safe everywhere? If that’s the case then how do I go about finding the edge of my comfort zone? Do we need to push through comfort zones to grow…is that really the only way?
    Is there a reason why life needs to be split into zones where we feel comfortable and those where we feel uncomfortable?

    I’m not going to answer all these questions in this blog post. I might not answer any of them in fact, mostly because my comfort zone has been an ever-shifting place that morphs itself unexpectedly from moment to moment anytime I think I have it sussed out.

    Sometimes the edge feels very clear, where my body says “No!” but my mind says “Come on, we can move through this!” Alternatively there are moments where I find myself way outside of what I thought was my comfort zone actually feeling totally fine.

    The point I am making here is that holding on to an idea of what our comfort zone is and then pushing ourselves to cross a specific line to get out of it and scare ourselves sufficiently in order to progress to the next stage of our own personal growth is not helpful if you actually want to get on with your life.

    The comfort zone construct actually just creates a barrier between you and what you want. “Stay in your comfort zone and you won’t get what you want. Success happens only outside your comfort zone” is the idea here. Well who says…and why should we be listening to them?

    I would argue you don’t need to be listening to anyone else but yourself when in pursuit of whatever success looks like to you. There is no need to put yourself in uncomfortable situations in the name of personal growth if you don’t want to. You can have any and everything you’ve ever wanted by operating effectively within a range of behaviour that feels good and manageable to you.

    In fact I would argue even further as to say the only way you will achieve the life you dream of living is by taking action steps that feel manageable and appropriate, not by trying to push yourself to some sort of extreme out of fear to effect change.

    So let’s explore another way of looking at this idea, for now drop the idea of pushing outside your comfort zone through fear and instead come with me and let’s look at something much more helpful and way less scary.

    If you want to grow, evolve and develop, what you really need is courage in action and confidence in yourself. These are mutually supportive behaviours so when you do one you help grow the other and vice versa. But you do have to do both!

    Courage in action is reactive and is something that arises in the moment. You come up against an activity which feels like an edge. It is something that you have never done before, there might be some risk and you have no idea whether you are capable of doing it. You use courage to step up and do this activity. Afterwards you feel relief, you feel proud of yourself and you feel like you have achieved something.

    Confidence in yourself is proactive. It involves encouraging yourself, positively affirming yourself and spending time taking care of and nurturing yourself. Building confidence in yourself can be done anytime anywhere all day everyday. We don’t need to do anything scary to build confidence. We can build confidence in ourselves by simply getting to know ourselves better and then acknowledging, encouraging and speaking kindly to ourselves.

    The ‘pushing boundaries’ construct is associated with fear and struggle. It is terrifying to step outside of our comfort zone in case we fail but we must do it so that we can grow. But that is because we have not grown confidence in ourselves first. It’s scary because we have no idea what will happen to us moving through this new activity. We are going in completely blind which of course does feel terrifying. Then when we are out the other side we breathe a sigh of relief and then feel happy and have a rush of adrenaline to show us we have successfully done the hard thing. We pat ourselves on the back and feel proud. We then add that activity to the list of things we can now do. Woohoo, we have grown we are now more confident in that thing. In this construct we are using the courage in action to grow our confidence in being able to do that action.

    That is fine. But what if we don’t want to feel scared all the time? I personally am done feeling anxious and fearful of new activities. I don’t want to keep approaching any new task with fear, or even seeking things which feel uncomfortable so that I can feel the rush and relief and pride of having completed them.

    Growing confidence in this way is very slow. You have to keep finding new tasks and conquering them and then adding that to your list of things you feel confident doing. Luckily, there is another way.

    Instead of constantly trying to find our edge or things that scare us, let’s instead build our confidence in ourselves first. Building confidence in yourself first means there are far fewer things that will scare you. Having self-confidence means knowing who you are and knowing that when you approach a new task you will either succeed or not but it doesn’t matter and it is not a source of fear either way. With self-confidence you simply just ‘do the thing’. You don’t have to push through a boundary or climb a wall. The idea pops in for this new task, you say woohoo let’s try this and see how it works out. There is no struggle, no internal dilemma, no anxiety or fear.

    Self-confidence is having a voice in you that knows the only time fear is appropriate is when there is a risk of harm or death. Any other task or activity does not warrant fear or bravery all it takes is a yes. Courage in action does not become this big moment of needing to overcome a huge hurdle but instead simply checking in with ourselves as to whether this feels like the ‘right’ thing to do, i.e. whether it is in line with our personal values and beliefs, and then moving forward with it.

    As someone who has spent a long time pushing herself outside of her comfort zone through endless fear barrier after fear barrier I can tell you one thing, it is terrifying and did not make me feel more confident. It did not lead me to the life of my dreams, it lead me to panic attacks, depression and cripplingly low self-worth.

    The only thing that grew my self-confidence was working on my self-confidence. Constantly doing things that scared me just made me feel scared. Crazy, huh? And yet…that is what we are being told is the only way to grow.

    I’m calling BS. You don’t need to be scared to grow. You need to take care of and nurture yourself so that the world feels less terrifying. From that place you will be so much more able to cope with new things and move outside your so-called ‘comfort zone’ in such a way that you will grow and change with ease and comfort.

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  • Anxiety, Dieting, Emotional Eating, Intuitive Eating, Recovery

    The Number One Thing Stopping You From Quitting Emotional Eating For Good

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    I tried to diet so many times.

    I must have started and stopped hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times. Often multiple times in one day. My mind would go from little miss iron will power to f*ck all of this, imma just quit life starting with this diet within seconds.

    Cue emotional eating, bingeing, cripplingly low moods and a feeling that things would simply NEVER EVER get better.

    Let me tell you right now. Things do get better. MUCH BETTER. But in quitting dieting and emotional eating there is a big, some might say monstrous, feeling that awaits when attempting to move through this.

    It’s the reason most of us get lulled back into the cycle and the reason that destructive emotional eating remains our key coping mechanism/best friend.

    In fact, I used to justify my “mini daily binges” as healthy intuitive eating because of this very thing.

    A little thing known as ‘overwhelm’.

    Overwhelm is that feeling where anything becomes ‘too much’. Your to-do list is perpetually too long, you will never have enough time, there are too many things and everything is a priority.

    Battling on in this way is living in a state of crisis.

    That is not an exaggeration. We put our bodies into crisis mode when we live like this. Where the mountain of things we need to do, should do or would like to do is so massive that anything we have accomplished feels pointless or worthless in comparison.

    Feeling overwhelmed often leads us back to emotional eating. If we are eating as a way to escape the feeling of overwhelm then something is not right.

    Overwhelm shouldn’t be our default setting.

    The problem is that most of us don’t even realise we are living in a state of overwhelm because of our reliance on dieting, bingeing, overexercise to get us through.

    So when we try to stop these behaviours, what happens?

    The overwhelm sets in ten times stronger than ever before because we have pulled the rug out from under our own feet.

    Our destructive relationship with food was acting as a support system, a barrier between us and the things we really didn’t want to deal with. If we simply try and stop with no other helpful support system in between we get left with complete and utter overwhelm.

    And guess what?

    We slip back into our old coping mechanisms. For me it started with one chocolate bar in an afternoon when I was feeling tired but also knew that I had ‘too much’ to do to warrant taking a break. It was a ‘treat’ to help me get through. Of course, the overwhelm dissipated. I felt competent again.

    But my old patterns around food very slowly started seeping back in. Before I knew it I was avoiding my to-do list and just heading to the shop every afternoon. Life was unravelling. Again.

    The only way out of this pattern is to recognise the overwhelm for what it is and give ourselves a break.

    Rather than moving from overwhelm to coping mechanism we need to stop and take a look at why the overwhelm has appeared in our lives and whether there are things we can change about our overall lifestyle to reduce it.

    Removing the coping mechanism, i.e. the food/exercise problems, only reveals the underlying problem. We need to be prepared to face what is underneath if we are going to truly change the way we feel about food.

    This takes courage, time and patience. A lot of it. It also takes support and persistence. If you are feeling constantly overwhelmed and using food to cope know that it doesn’t always need to feel this way.

    My email is always open – let me know now – what is the one thing in your life that is causing you the most overwhelm right now? Tell me right here and let’s see if we can change that.

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  • Anxiety, Blogvember, Emotional Eating, Intuitive Eating, Self Love

    29 – The only time you shouldn’t listen to your body

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    Now I say that tongue-in-cheek because my true philosophy in life is to always in every moment listen to our body and act intuitively from that space.

    However sometimes in life there are times where we don’t ‘feel’ like eating but we need to eat and vice versa, where we feel like eating but it’s actually not the best time.

    An example of the first scenario would be grief, where someone close to us dies and we completely lose our appetite. We know we should be eating, our body might even feel tired and hungry but we just don’t want to. We don’t feel like it and feel as though we really can’t.

    Let’s delve a little deeper, in the case of the second scenario let’s use the example where our normal hunger and urge to eat arises but we are also going through an emotional period.

    When we are going through a tricky period, where things are getting on top of us and we feel overwhelmed and stressed normally we switch to auto-pilot with our routine and just ‘keep calm and carry on’. However we are missing a really excellent opportunity to learn here.

    This is also the case with our eating, we just fall into whatever pattern is easiest when things get stressful. Maybe we switch to take-out more than cooking at home, perhaps we treat ourselves with more snacks or desserts, maybe we go out for dinner and order the richest, creamiest pasta dish. Whatever it looks like, our body is sending us signals to retreat, to comfort ourselves, to eat more, and we are unconsciously following these signals. We just suddenly find ourselves eating more or eating differently.

    It can be so subtle and hard to pick up but we do begin to notice, because those are the times where we start feeling ‘fat’. We feel more lethargic, and less enthusiastic about life. These are the times where it seems like your body just wants more more more.

    These are the times we need to stop and take notice. Our body is super clever and attentive, it is trying to give your brain what it wants to make it happy. Your brain is sending out stress signals so your body is telling you it wants comfort to make your brain happy.

    This is a malfunction, the cravings are actually not coming from your body’s signals at all. This is where we need to take some time to do some self-reflection. So that our minds can relax and so can our bodies so we stop this auto-pilot of comfort eating in its tracks.

    In that moment where we decide to have a take-away meal rather than cooking for the fifth time that week instead we need to just take a pause. Stop and ask yourself how you are feeling, this is the time to not eat. This is the time to be in a quiet place with yourself, to stop the auto-pilot.

    When we do this we begin to tap in to what is really going on and stop using food as a way of escaping….even though we didn’t necessarily know we were doing it in the first place!

    In order to really understand ourselves and the optimal way of eating for our bodies we need to do a lot of self-reflection. We need to become more conscious of all the ways our eating habits and patterns are formed. This will allow us to see where and when we slip into habits that aren’t actually based on what is best for our body even though it could feel like it.

    If you’re feeling confused or struggling please reach out, comment below or email me, hope to hear from you.

    Lots of love xx

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  • Anxiety, Blogvember, Emotional Abuse, Intuitive Eating, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Love, Spirituality

    22 – How to feel your feelings for real

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    This is one of my all-time favourite topics, firstly because I think it is just so incredible that we as humans who have this beautiful ability to sense the wonders of the world around us purposefully numb ourselves to its beauty so that we can avoid any hint of unpleasantness. I could talk for days about how we are taught to numb ourselves and how society is created on the foundations that in our life we should seek to live a life with only pleasure and any pain is bad and dissonant with our purpose here on earth. But this is not the purpose of this blog post!

    You want the action steps right? You want to know how to really get into your feelings. You know you numb yourself. You know that you don’t cry when you’re sad, you don’t speak out when you’re angry, you pretend you’re ok when inside you are slowly shrivelling up silently wishing you could hibernate forever…

    So how do we get past this, how do we get into our real feelings?

    As a disclaimer, read through the exercise first and if you have never done anything like this before I strongly suggest you do it in the presence of someone you trust, a therapist, coach or close friend or family member. If we have been detached from our feelings for a long time it can sometimes be quite overwhelming when we begin to explore them.

    The first thing to know is that feelings are bodily sensations. The way we experience feelings is visceral, it is felt physically. You can’t have an emotion just in your head (I will use the words emotion and feeling interchangeably in this post). If you think you can feel your feelings only in your mind then this is a surefire way to tell you are numbed to or have repressed your own emotions.

    Lets take a look at an example. An obvious one we all can identify with…fear. When we feel fear our heart rate increases, our palms get sweaty, we might need to go to the toilet, our hunger evaporates, we may feel our muscles tense and our senses become heightened. This is an extreme bodily response as when we feel fear our body sends around a massive amount of hormones in preparation to take action to save its own life, survival becomes our priority when we feel fear.

    What about other more subtle emotions? Every individual will experience their emotions in a way that is unique to them, they will have their own flavour but the way to identify them is the same.

    As a human you will have an emotional reaction to pretty much every change in circumstance around you whether you are aware of it or not, for example you will automatically respond when someone has said something kind (or mean) to you, if someone has offered to help you or you have solved a problem you have been working on for a while. In our ever-changing world we are constantly responding to evolving circumstances around us.

    In that moment where you sense a change in yourself, or if you don’t sense a change but something has happened and you think you ‘should’ have reacted then take a second to stop. Stay still. Sitting or standing. Close your eyes. Breathe in and out a couple of times. Bring your attention first to the breath coming in through your nose and feel it track down through your windpipe and into your lungs, filling them, then trace the air moving back out, feeling your lungs empty and the air coming out through your nostrils. Once you feel comfortable with this bring your attention to any sensations in your body that are acute, for example any pain, pressure or tightness. Move around your body and explore what is happening. Keep moving your attention around your body remaining curious and non-judgemental the whole time, take a few minutes. As you are doing this you will sense your mind making sense of your bodily sensations and it will start to give you potential answers to what you’re feeling. For example you might close your eyes and breathe and feel your legs become tingly, you might feel a tightness in your chest and the back of your eyes might begin to burn, your mind will spontaneously provide you with answers for how to make sense of what is happening. It might offer you heartache, grief, sorrow. Your intuition will know when you have the right answer. Remember that your body has felt this many many times in your life it is just that you haven’t been aware of what has been going on.

    When you first start doing this, especially if you have numbed yourself or repressed your feelings for a long time, the most common responses are likely to be anxiety, fear and emptiness or loneliness. That is ok. Remember we are doing this exercise with no-judgement.

    It might take you some practice to get answers on what you’re feeling, to start with you might not be able to tune in to your body. But this is all the more reason to keep trying.

    Reconnecting our mind and our body is absolutely vital to improving our well-being, spirit and happiness within ourselves.

    The amazing thing is that you have literally hundreds of opportunities to practice this throughout the day as you are constantly responding and reacting to the environment around you. If you are not sure where to start do this exercise in a scenario where you already know the feeling. For example, if you get angry when someone cuts in front of you in a line, next time it happens take a moment to check in with how your body is feeling. By reverse engineering it you will see how your body responds in different scenarios.

    At the other end of the spectrum, feeling huge emotions fly through your body taking you on a rollercoaster ride on a daily basis is a very different matter. This often disproportionate emotional response to what is going on around you can signify that there is something deep you are repressing and it is trying to be released any way it can, like a pressure cooker needing to let off steam. The exercise described above can still be very useful as you may notice that your body is actually telling you of the ‘real’ emotion that is lurking beneath the intensity of the one you think is being shown. For example often under intense anger there is actually a lot of pain and sadness

    If you would like to explore this exercise or go deeper with me please just book in for a free clarity session where we can discuss how to feel your feelings in more depth, just email me here to book a time.

    Lots of love xx

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  • Anxiety, Blogvember, Emotional Eating, Self Love, Sexual Abuse

    18 – How past trauma is affecting your emotional eating

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    As I’ve said on this blog and will keep saying until we all hear it – emotional eating is an escape. It is a way of not feeling our feelings.

    One of the most common reasons we turn to emotional eating is because of past trauma. It is not within the scope of this blog to dive super deep here, but just know this is a massive topic with loads of research around it and I want you as readers of this blog to just be aware that trauma and emotional eating are very often interrelated.
    I’m not going to go deep into the science but in order to understand why emotional eating or disordered eating patterns are related to trauma we need to be aware of what happens in the body in a traumatic event.

    When we experience trauma, i.e. when we are in a traumatic event or receive a trauma our body is the first thing to respond in order to protect us. You may have heard before of the ‘lizard brain’, that very ancient part of our brain that controls our fight or flight response, this response is the one which kicks in first when we are experiencing trauma.

    In order to protect us, to keep us alive, our body reacts much faster than our mind and it produces a load of hormones, adrenaline, cortisol, and others, that tell our body to either fight, flight or freeze. There is also some literature around a fourth response, fawning, this is in relation to when you receive trauma from a primary caregiver or in a co-dependent relationship. Fawning essentially means that in response to receiving trauma from someone you deem as being vital to survival, rather than fight, flight or freeze you instead move towards them and try to placate them, try to make them happy and essentially get them to stop traumatising you. This happens a lot of the time between children and abusive parental figures or vice versa.

    If in the moment of the trauma our bodies are unable to respond with either fight, flight or freeze in order to protect ourselves, then the trauma gets stuck in our body. In essence the trauma is received by the body and it is unable to process it in the way it wants to therefore the traumatic experience gets trapped.

    If you want to read more on this I highly recommend Bessel van der Kolk’s book ‘The Body Keeps the Score’. Buy it here*

    When we have traumas stuck in our bodies our lizard brain is constantly on high alert telling us to process the trauma (this is where PTSD comes in) and therefore our bodies are swimming in high levels of these hormones being pumped out trying to get us to react and move the trauma through our bodies.

    These hormones are the reason we emotionally eat or adopt erratic eating patterns.

    The hormones mess with our natural bodily functions and signals and therefore we are not getting the normal hunger and fullness signals we should be getting. Instead we are listening to the signals of our body in a heightened state. Cycles of high adrenaline will mean we don’t feel hungry for hours despite being active and not eating. Then as it crashes we will suddenly become starving and start craving a lot of calorie dense food to stop the crash.

    Not dealing with trauma, releasing it and allowing it to pass through our bodies means it is stored and constantly triggered. This upsets our body’s natural rhythms and therefore constantly sends out signals that are very confusing for us to react to.  This gives us the feeling of being totally out of control and of having an unpredictable appetite and relationship with food.

    If you have done a lot of work on feeling your feelings and listening to your body and your relationship with food still feels out of control or completely unpredictable then find someone who you can explore potential past traumas with. Once these are healed your body will naturally come back into balance and it will be so much easier to manage your relationship with food.

    If this blog resonated you might also like to explore this one

    It is not in the scope of this blog to get deep down into the science behind how trauma affects your body, just please be aware that it can have a really big impact on how you eat. If you think past trauma could be affecting your relationship with food please reach out, you don’t need to go through this alone, drop me an email sasha@sashafardell.com

    *This is just an amazon link for convenience, I have absolutely no affiliation with amazon and get nothing if you purchase the book through this link

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  • Anxiety, Blogvember, Emotional Eating, Intuitive Eating

    13 – Are Coffee and Chocolate really the devil?

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    There are plenty of mixed messages out there on these so-called ‘vices’ or common everyday ‘addictions’ so many of us seem to have. We can’t get through the day without our caffeine fix or little chocolate pick me up.

    My aim is not to confuse you any further. Instead I just want to give you an alternative way of looking at these tasty treats.

    I never claim to be a nutritional scientist either or know all the intricate ways these substances affect our body when we ingest them. I am only interested in the emotional circumstances we are in when we choose to consume these things.

    In our society where food and drink are abundant many of us eat not out of necessity but for some other reason. We eat emotionally, for pleasure, to comfort. I would never demonise emotional eating, and nor should you, that simply doesn’t help anyone, what we need to be however is curious. Why are we emotionally eating? Injecting ourselves with these ‘fixes’ in the form of these everyday common foodstuffs.

    When you reach for that coffee or chocolate take a moment to stop and ask yourself what am I trying to hide from right now? With coffee the answer is often ‘tiredness’. You are so tired you need that fix. But why are you so tired? You want to dig deep here. Get right to the root of the problem.

    If you think about this question of tiredness honestly the only logical answer to feeling tired is to sleep…not to reach for stimulants. So why are we choosing not to sleep and instead to stimulate ourselves so we can stay awake? (and it is most definitely a choice by the way)

    If you’re eating chocolate as a distraction, ask yourself what feeling am I trying to avoid? Feel into your solar plexus area, just where your stomach is, does it feel empty? Is there anxiety there? Loneliness? Really take a moment to feel inside yourself and do your best to identify the emotion you are wanting to cover.

    Often we experience this as a void, an uncomfortable feeling of emptiness. I want to implore you to do your best to sit with this discomfort in your body. Follow the sensations of it, notices how it moves around, changes quality, take this short time to be with yourself in that moment.

    If this is not something you are used to doing you might find it excruciatingly uncomfortable to sit with. In that moment perhaps ask yourself “why is it so difficult for me to spend a minute or two quietly, completely alone with myself?”

    There is no problem with using the occasional pick-me-up, we are all imperfect humans and comfort eating or consuming some sort of stimulant is an easy tool to help ourselves feel better. But if this is something you identify as issue, i.e. “I am addicted to coffee” what I want you to start doing is bringing awareness to what you are hiding from in that moment. I promise you that sooner or later you will have to face this emotion, you can repress it with food temporarily but it will keep coming back and unless you want to live the rest of your days eating or stimulating yourself into oblivion it is far far better to face the feeling, however potentially painful it may be so that you can free yourself from the grip of these ‘vices’ and be in a position where you can simply choose to consume them if you really want them.

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  • Anxiety, Blogvember, Body Image, Recovery, Self Confidence

    7 – Take courage – Bravely move forward into food freedom now

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    My guess is that if you want to find food freedom, and love your body exactly as it is in every moment of every day you’re going to need to seriously transform the way you are currently living your life and how you think about yourself. In order to enter into the terrifying territory (and those first steps can be incredibly scary) of radically loving yourself fully exactly as you are you’ll need a lot of courage. Trust me.

    Yes it should be something we do naturally but we are conditioned over our whole lives to believe we are not good enough as we are, we need to be thinner, taller, prettier, funnier, sexier, smarter…the list goes on. You need bravery to stand up strong against those stories.

    The amazing thing about bravery is that you can cultivate it in one area of life and then watch that new found bravery carry over into others.

    Let me explain with an example.

    You want the courage to rock that bikini on the beach and not give a crap what anyone thinks. If this is something you are truly afraid of it will probably be too big a hurdle for you to expect that one day you’ll suddenly be able to strut right on to that beach. For you the fear is real. So instead we find something else that is a little less terrifying and face our fear in that area instead. Let’s say making new friends is a fear, but less so than the bikini beach scenario. Instead of standing crying in the bikini we forget that for the time being. Instead we find places where you can meet new people and make new friends, for example a new art class or group expedition. At first you might feel a bit afraid but then you get there and start speaking to people and then after a while the fear is gone and you’re having a good time. You could start even smaller, like going to a new coffee shop, trying something new at your favourite restaurant (these may not sound like a big deal but these are real life example of things I genuinely found to be scary in my life…I lived with a LOT of anxiety…)

    The point here is that this is a marathon not a sprint, facing your fears takes practice, so start small! Every time you face one of these fears your confidence grows. We keep knocking of these fears until one day you look at your bikini and think ‘hell yea of course I can rock that on the beach, why not? I have faced all these other fears, I am a strong warrior woman and I can do whatever I want!’

    Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone doesn’t have to be related to food and your body to start with. These are where your biggest fears lay right?

    It’s like that common analogy ‘trying to run before you can walk’…So pick some other fears. The important thing is to get into the habit of pushing outside of your comfort zone in some way in life. Take this step-by-step. Remember, this is your journey. There is no rush.

    If you want to understand more about how to push through comfort zone read this post on letting go of control.

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  • Anxiety, Recovery

    Facing The Stories

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    Sometimes I get scared that it won’t work. That whatever I am doing is not going to work. Generally I know it will. But on bad days I remember all those times I tried to diet and exercise my way out of this, I tried to girlboss my way out of this, I tried to shop and clothe and tan myself out of this, I tried to “hipster” my way out of this, I tried intoxicating myself out of this. I spent my whole life trying to avoid this. it now feels crazy to be doing a complete 180 and trying to tackle it head on. It’s almost like I’m trying to fool myself.

    I didn’t use to believe in paradoxes, it was simply too confusing. I couldn’t believe that someone could be good and bad, that some things can sometimes be right and other times wrong, that light and dark come hand in hand. But to be healthy you have to know this. The world is a paradox, we have known this for millennia.

    I never used to identify as a black and white thinker, I always thought I believed in the grey area, in the middle way. But actually I just believed in the black. The blackness was all I ever knew. Everything to me was scary and therefore evil and most likely harmful. So things were just more or less evil depending on what the people around me thought.
    This is what the bad days feel like. That it’s not worth leaving the house. That it is just too scary and unpredictable. On those days I still have to leave the house, sometimes I have to get food or I need to run an errand. So I go. Because I know now that what I’m feeling is not real. It feels real but it is just the stories speaking.

    And generally nothing bad happens but I am trying so hard to not engage, to not feel because otherwise I know I will freeze or need to run home. The stories can be so unbelievably powerful I freeze sometimes on the street. I just stop walking. To an outsider it must look strange. But my brain is processing so much that I literally can’t walk and think at the same time. Or I walk really fast and people inevitably get in my way and I get so angry, like ‘don’t they understand I am terrified and need to move as fast as possible?’. It is like moving through a computer game where everyone on the street is an enemy you have to dodge. They have an entire arsenal and could strike at any moment but you have no weapons at all.

    But in repeatedly facing and unpicking the stories that deliver me these bad days I have found good days. Where my brain and body know that if I want to go somewhere I can and it will be fine whatever I choose to do. Because I am in charge. The real me who knows that I will live regardless of what other people are doing. I might still be a little scared. But I know I can take precautions and protect myself from pretty much every normal everyday threat. I know now that actually if I let my guard down there is a glorious beautiful world out there to see, I just have to trust myself to step out into it.

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