(Overcoming Emotional Eating) Become the Master of Your Emot

Become the Master of Your Emotions in Three Easy Steps


One of the reasons that feelings can be so uncomfortable is because you don’t know how long they’re going to last for. This element of the unknown can make them unbearable. But there are ways to become the master of your feelings rather than your feelings’ slave:

Feelings are temporary. Someone told me today that feelings have a very short shelf life. Yet we react to them as though the feeling is sticking around for good. We overeat or binge because we can’t possibly imagine that the discomfort that we’re feeling (whether it’s loneliness, anxiety, depression, or boredom) will go away any time soon. And eating is just one of the ways that we do this. We yell and rage as soon as we get angry. We buy something as soon as we see it in a store window. We cut off a friend or loved one because we don’t like something minor that they’ve done and can’t possibly imagine that the feeling will ever go away.

What would happen if we sat with feelings before reacting to them? How long do you think they would last? Do you really believe that they would last forever?

One goal in life (particularly in adulthood) is to master our emotions. Emotions are no different than weather. They storm through us, they warm us, and they shake the earth beneath us. In order to weather the storm of these emotions we need to get through them without acting rashly upon them. When you are faced with intense emotions what can you possibly do? Well, there are three choices:

1. WAIT

Sometimes it’s best to take some time without doing anything. This doesn’t mean you should stuff an emotion. It just means taking a little bit of time to fully understand what you’re feeling and why and what you might want to do with that feeling. You might discover that the intense emotion you are feeling actually has a short shelf life and when left alone it simply disappears.

2. OBSERVE

Of course, we can observe our own feelings. Watch them like clouds passing over the sky. But this tool can be very helpful in the face of other people’s feelings. The only thing as hard as weathering our own intense emotions is witnessing other people weathering theirs. The reality is that other people’s displays of feelings can be very frightening to us. It can conjure up the impotent feeling from childhood when perhaps our parents were full of rage or were stuck in a frozen depression. For many of us, our tendency is to defend ourselves, retreat, or try to fix it. What if we didn’t do any of that? What if we simply stayed present and observed what the other person was experiencing? What if we didn’t take it personally? Then, perhaps, we could see through the way someone is saying something and potentially really hear what they are actually saying.

3. COMMUNICATE

If you’ve waited to see what happens to your emotion and the particular feeling you’re having has a longer shelf life than a can of spam, then perhaps it’s time to communicate your feelings to another person; a friend that will hear you out, the person that is affecting you, or a therapist that will guide you toward determining what actions to take.

Many feelings have to be fed to perpetuate themselves. Feelings like resentment, jealousy, and self-pity. Ironically, it’s these feelings that we end up feeding with food. By using this three-step process of wait, observe, and communicate we can use our feelings to help us navigate through life and life’s decisions. If we mute their intensity by eating we miss out on important messages that can positively alter our future in so many ways.