Overeating junk food sound familiar?
Alfred Adler (1870-1937), Austrian medical doctor and psychotherapist said: “We must never neglect the patient’s own use of his symptoms.” Part of our work is to help our clients find the underlying causes, or purpose behind, their symptoms. When Sherry came in to see me to address her apparent addiction to chocolate, we got to work looking at what was underneath her insatiable cravings.
Sherry confessed her habits for chocolate and sweets and she became visibly upset. Sherry believed she was sabotaging her diet with chocolate. “Why am I screwing this up for myself?!” She asked, “I don’t get it. I can be so good for one week – even 10 days sometimes! Then I just go back to junk food in the afternoon – coffee creamers, chocolate, something sweet that’s bad. I know what to do to be good. I just can’t motivate myself then I get stuck…in a rut…in a bad habit.”
“Well, what happens when you do find yourself reaching for chocolate?” I inquired.
“Well…It’s the only bit of peace I have during the day. With the kids being home… they all want so much attention, so much from me…and my husband and I aren’t getting along…and he doesn’t help out much…he mainly stays in his room…and the kids are picking up on it-”
“Okay wait, let’s slow down.”
We took a deep dive into Sherry’s life, her routine, and the demands she had daily in her life. Demands which were too many and unfortunately for manuy women, too common.
“When do you first remember bingeing on food?”
“I was 16,” Sherry talked about bingeing on chips when she returned home from school more often or that.
“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked her.
“Do what?”
“Grab a bag of chips when you came home from school?”
“Where? I…I don’t know, that’s just what I did,” Sherry answered.
“Who comforted you when you were little?”
“Who comforted me?”
“Who was your caregiver? Someone you turned to when you were upset?”
“My mom.”
“Oh I see. How did she comfort you?”
“Well, she was there. I talked to her…”
“Oh you talked to her? What’s an example of you talking to her when you were upset?”
“…Well my mom wasn’t happy…She had a lot going on…She couldn’t really be there for me,” At that, Sherry started to weep. “I started to sneak chocolate when I was nine. I had to take care of my younger siblings. You know, I had to take them to school, I had to pack lunches…My mom was really upset and always angry at my dad…She mostly stayed in bed when us kids were around…”
Sherry’s body language constricted, she pulled back into the couch and huddled in a shriveled version of herself. Her cries continued for a while.
“What’s going on inside, Sherry.”
“I’m just realizing I was always alone and I always had so much expected of me, and so much on my shoulders…that wasn’t right, I had nobody to go to.”
“Did 9 year old Sherry feel abandoned?”
“Ya…Ya…looking back, I can see how I felt like that. I look at my kids now and I could never do that to them…what my mother did with me.”
“And how did little 9 year old Sherry cope with that abandonment?”
Sherry shrugged her shoulders, “I ate! I ate! I ate anything I could get my hands on. I came home with the kids, got them to do their homework, or put them in front of the TV and I pigged out on chips, candy, anything sweet.”
The rest of our time was spent talking about how Sherry as a child had to carry so much on her shoulders to uphold the family and keep it functioning. Now, in her current life, she is facing a similar situation.
Sherry’s use of (mainly) chocolate and sweets was the key, the gateway to allowing us to explore the deeper issues of what was really going on for her. Sherry is using chocolate and sugar to comfort her when she feels like life is too much. When Sherry senses an urge for chocolate, it’s her body’s way of telling her she is being demanded on, too much. Her attempts at being the perfect mother, perfect homeschool teacher, perfect employee, perfect wife, and to have the perfect body is too much. And “failing” her diet is simply her body’s search for some semblance of comfort in this unpredictable time.
Chocolate wasn’t sabotaging her, but her use of chocolate to manage her emotions and provide the comfort her 9 year old self needed so many years ago. Reaching for chocolate became partly a habit and partly a tool for emotional regulation. Today, it was blocking her from getting the goals she was working so hard toward.
Once Sherry realized this, she was able to spend time comforting the emotionally overworked and neglected parts of herself that learned to expect not to receive emotional comfort. From there, Sherry was able to hear her urges for chocolate and sweets as an alarm bell that something in her emotional world was not okay. Instead of distracting herself with food, Sherry learned to slow down and ask herself what she needed. Sometimes it was to relax, sometimes it was alone time, sometimes it was doing something creative like writing or art. Over time, Sherry’s
This process did not go smoothly right away. It was a practice Sherry was dedicated to. With her commitment finally to herself and prioritizing her needs, Sherry was able to overcome years of emotional neglect and taking a backseat to everyone and everything else in her life.
Does Sherry’s journey sound similar to yours? Do you, too, face insatiable cravings that only certain foods (chips, chocolate, candy) can fill? Would you like to be like Sherry and finally release the hold these foods have on you? Are you finally willing to put yourself FIRST, as scary as this might sound? Click here to book a free consultation.
