Decrease the Restrict-Binge Cycle During the Holidays with these 3 Somatic Tools

Let’s start out with an exercise today. Where ever you’re about to spend the holiday season, I want you to imagine you’re in that environment. You’re around the family or people you will be interacting with. You’re surrounded by the food you might be eating.

Notice how you feel in your body. What sensations are present? Where do you notice those sensations?

The body doesn’t know the difference between real and perceived. How you feel now, imagining you’re in that environment is what your body may already be prepping for.

Being around certain people and foods can bring up all sorts of reactions. These family members and friends and food can be perceived as threatening to your well being and safety and so your body moves into a fight or flight response. In this state, you might find yourself trying to gain control by restricting your intake and then binging later for your body to get what it needs nutritionally.

You may then find yourself stuck in a cycle of restricting and binging on food throughout the holidays which can leave you feeling even more dysregulated and disconnected. The thing is that this pattern is not really about food. It has become your way to try to feel connected and safe around people that leave you feeling unseen, unheard, and misunderstood.

To break this cycle, more pauses need to occur for you to slow down and tune in to make space to feel whatever you're feeling.

Here are 3 somatic tools you can practice during this holiday season.

1. Consistently regulate

The purpose of regulation isn't necessarily to feel better. Rather, regulation's purpose is for you to connect with you exactly how you are. To know how you're doing, more pauses need to occur throughout your day. So when you're at a party, on your way to your parent's house, driving home from an event, pause. Check in with you. Notice how you're feeling. Name what sensations are present. You can say out loud, "I feel mad, alone, upset."

If you want to stop restricting and binging during the holidays, you need to validate everything you're feeling. Being around family who make inappropriate comments and are unable to attune to you can feel sad, disappointing, frustrating, and lonely. You have every right to feel how you feel.

It may feel difficult to slow down and give yourself space to feel when potentially holidays have been navigated in a disconnected way where your food and body patterns have really been there for you to support you through this time. This is why you need to make these check ins very short. Just take one second before or after any holiday event or family gathering to name how you feel. Then, get curious what would support you in feeling how you wanted to feel in food or non-food ways.

And during any holiday situation, find a space you can walk away to so that you get a break from all the external stimuli and take a moment to just be with you. This might be a spare room, a bathroom, your car. You can take a few deep breaths, bring your attention down to your feet, listen to some music, or wash your hands with cold water to create an emotionally satiating moment with yourself.

2. Scan your environment

Think of what animals do in the wild. They will scan their environment looking out for possible danger and threat. You may notice yourself doing this instinctually when you're around your family or at a holiday party. You can use this impulse to your advantage though. When you catch yourself looking around the room, start to describe your environment. Notice what is safe about your surroundings. You could go through your senses and describe what you smell, touch, hear, taste, and see.

Especially when you're in environments that are familiar, like the house you grew up in, or the presence of your parents, or rooms where you have not so great memories, your body remembers and will start responding in its habitual ways that you're in danger and need to be on guard to protect yourself. So you need to show your body that it's safe even while it's around people and environments that remind it of the past and make sure it knows it is no longer living in that moment from the past anymore.

3. Connect with your inner parts

Did you ever watch the show How I Met Your Mother? Well, in the show, one of the characters made up the name Revertigo for the tendency we all have that when we get around people from our past, we start acting like we used to. Your inner child, inner teenager, inner perfectionist, inner arguer might arise when you get around people who have known previous expressions of you.

Additionally, these parts come in because they feel like they have a job to do to support you in some way. When you notice yourself starting to react to others in ways that you used to react when you were younger, get really curious about what part of you is present and what they might be needing. They might be telling you to go reach for food because that was the answer when you felt unsafe and misattuned to. So when you feel those food and body urges, ask yourself who is present with me right now? You might imagine them and have a conversation with them. Be the person this part of you always needed.

This time of the year can feel emotionally intense. This is why you can experience an increase in emotional eating, binge eating, and body image concerns. These patterns can provide a false sense of control when there are too many things that feel out of your control. So you're never ever doing anything wrong or bad or shameful. You're doing the best you can to take care of you in any moment. If you're desiring to talk to someone throughout the holidays, go to stephaniemara.com and click on book a Free Connect Call to schedule a call with me.