The personal relationship with food is conditioned by emotions from the first moments of life.
By suckling, the baby receives food, pleasure and love. Affections make eating not a mechanical and boring act, but a joyful experience that fills us in many ways.
But if emotional conflicts are experienced, they can dangerously transfer to food. An affective deficiency can be compensated with an excessive consumption of food or it can be at the origin of a pathological rejection of certain foods.
The incidence of obesity, anorexia and bulimia. These are serious problems and it would be a mistake to forget your emotional component, always present.
Emotions push us to eat or stop eating. They can whet our appetite or suppress it, protect us from potentially dangerous foods, or encourage us to try something new.
It is common to describe a state of mind with an expression related to foodlike: I can’t swallow it, my stomach turns, I have butterflies in my tummy…
On the other hand, when faced with a problem with food, it is less common to reflect on what is the state of mind that causes hunger or lack of appetite and what desires or disappointments can be hidden behind the impulses to eat or reject a certain food
Talk or swallow? Hidden feelings after conflicts with food
It is not easy to understand the emotional causes, because difficulties with eating express feelings that we dare not name.
Heartbreak, abandonment, guilt, anger, jealousy or sadness are some of the feelings that They can be expressed through conflicts with food.
Instead, eating in an uncontrolled manner generally serves to alleviate anguish that can have its origin in emotional conflicts of any kind.
As the psychologist Isabel Menendez in his book emotional eating:”Internal struggles are often silenced by filling our mouths with food not to pronounce words whose emotional charge can scare us; words that refer to things that we do not allow ourselves to feel.
“The mouth that closes and opens to food is the same mouth that wants to speak. The hole through which food enters is the same through which words come out.”
When you suffer emotionally, when reality and dreams seem to contradict each other and there is more sadness than joy, it is much more likely to stop enjoying food and that this becomes a problem.
recognize the emotional causes that lead to overeating, even endangering health, is the first step to stop doing it. Among them are:
- fear of growing up The excesses in food can be explained by the desire to maintain the affective bond with the protective mother and family. The abundance of food is unconsciously associated with the closeness of the parents and can eat more than necessary when faced with difficult decisions.
- I reject sexuality. In the case of women, it may happen that the fear of being desired —because they have a bad concept of life as a couple or of sexual relations or to shield themselves from disappointment— is avoided by gaining weight.
- Aggressiveness. Devouring food is a socially accepted form of aggressive behavior. It is a way of “swallowing anger”, so that aggression is channeled against oneself because one cannot accept directing it against the person with whom one has or has had a bond of affection.
- affective difficulties. Any state of emotional overflow or difficulty in fulfilling desires causes anxiety that can be appeased by eating food. The origin of anxiety is often found in low self-esteem or excessive stress.
Many people who enter into a self-destructive relationship with food reproduce with themselves the wrong behaviors that their parents had, which perhaps made them feel helpless or guilty. The solution requires recognizing the personal conflict and, if possible, putting it into words.
Discovering the negative emotions that lead to disordered eating may be the most effective way to acquire healthy nutritional habits.
By understanding the origin of harmful eating behaviors, the inner world can be recomposed and from there relate to food in a more constructive way.
Find comfort in food
Knowing yourself better is the challenge. Food preferences and habits are decided by a hidden part of oneself. That is why it is so difficult to change habits.
It is frequent behave contrary to how one would like or even enter into relationships with a destructive component.
Some foods have a special value because they are associated with pleasures that in the past nurtured self-esteem. A food and its aroma can be associated with someone who treated us with affection, like the rice pudding that grandma prepared.
That’s why we look for them when we find ourselves down. It is as if that food had the power to solve problems, in the same way that when we were little our relatives solved them.
When, as adults, you have to face difficulties and the person does not think they are capable of overcoming them, they can choose to take refuge in the calm and safe pleasure that comes from the mouth.
But eating too much can lead to excess weight that leads to feeling disgusted —since it is easy to value oneself based on physical appearance, instead of unconditionally— and then refuse food.
This contradictory cycle leads in extreme cases to anorexia and bulimia, but also to fasting or a light diet followed by binge eating. This is just one example of the complex networks of emotions that are woven at the table.
Where does the food problem begin?
abnormal eating behaviors in adults manifesting as an addiction they can sink their roots in the first months of life.
The mother gives the baby food and at the same time transmits love, tenderness and tranquility to varying degrees. At this stage, the mouth is a source of pleasure closely linked to emotional well-being.
Teaching children to eat: without punishment or blackmail
Many food difficulties are related to the way parents teach their children to eat. The responsibility of parenthood is so heavy that parents may not be willing to assume the autonomy of their children. When they eat, they are satisfied. When not, they get angry or sad. In the end, the child may feel that he eats to satisfy his parents rather than himself.
Parentsinstead of becoming heavy or rigid, they should have flexibility to navigate setbacks varying the proportions of freedom and discipline depending on the specific circumstances.
The job of parents is make available to children a sufficient variety of healthy food. Children, who must also appreciate how their parents enjoy eating, will overcome any difficulty on their own.
In no case should children feel that the affection or mood of their parents depends on whether they eat or stop eating,
Besides, providing food is not the only mission of parents. They must know how to balance it and accompany it tenderness, unconditional support, understanding, joy and time. It is possible that when they cannot give all this—because the couple is in crisis or because the members are facing their own conflicts—they become obsessed with food, where they concentrate all their responsibility as parents.
Besides, parents should be understanding of the spontaneous emotions that children show towards food. It is frequent, for example, that they manifest disgust at a normal dish, but in which they detect “danger signs”.
The best way to redirect these situations is make them participate in the preparation of the dishesinform them of what each of the ingredients are and how they are transformed in the kitchen, and above all, show them that the result is pleasant for adults and healthy for the body… without getting angry at any time.
Adolescent rebellion and food rejection
The struggle for autonomy can exacerbate problems with food during adolescence. Young people often persist in following different habits from their parents for at least two reasons.
The first, for show that they are different and independent. This leads them, for example, to prefer food from outside the home, even if it is not the richest or the healthiest.
The second, they want identify with your friends. In this way they compensate for the security they have lost by being away from their family.
Are processes that parents can only respect, unless your desire is to keep your children anchored in childhood. At most they can, without intending to impose, offer information about the risks of “junk food” and the advantages of healthy eating, although at that age they should already know it.
Refusing to eat can be an attempt to assert yourself internally before other people who try to impose themselves or exercise their own power.
It is what It happens to many children whose parents exert excessive control and pressure to eat. From this point of view, the child’s attitude can even be understood as positive resistance, but if the situation is not resolved properly as soon as possible, it can generate a complex problem that will last a lifetime.
The act of refusing food itself can be a wake-up call about the fact that you’re not getting the kind of affection you want.
When we don’t know how to “digest” situations
Emotional eating disorders do not exclusively affect young people or are not always explained by childhood traumas and relationships with parents. Difficulties may have their direct cause in the present.
For example, a person with a sensitive stomachwho feels bad about almost everything, may believe that she has a digestive disorder when in reality suffers from an emotional conflict which is reflected in food.
A person can poorly digest everything that he scrupulously cooks at home and instead, to his surprise, he has no difficulties when eating in the company of someone he loves. Here the problem is lonelinessand the affected person – and the doctor who treats her – may have difficulties in discovering it.
In the same way, family meals can be indigestible because they are reminiscent of those suffered in childhood, even though the diners are others.
People suffering from depression experience conflicts with eating that can also affect others to a lesser extent. in the depressiveinvaded by pessimistic feelings, the lack of appetite corresponds to his lack of vital motivation.
Every time a person criticizes himself and at the same time feels sad, the risk of suffering from a food problem increases.
Beyond body image
The most frequent cause of problems with food is its relation to body weight. Going on a diet is something…