The Emotional Stages of Healing Your Relationship With Food

I have seen over the years when healing your relationship with food, there is a point many realize when it's not really about the food anymore. The focus on what, when, and how you're eating came in as protection. This protection was keeping you safe from addressing other areas, beliefs, perspectives that may have felt too emotionally intense to look at where focusing on your food actually felt safer in your body to ruminate on.

Healing your relationship with food can be experienced as in service to creating more emotional space to process, digest, assimilate, what your body has been emotionally holding on to. When you have been dieting, restricting, and focusing on food for years and years there can be many emotional reactions that arise in the process of shifting your focus away from food to attend to other areas of your life that need healing. It's like taking away a baby blanket that has been there soothing you, calming you, regulating you, and supporting you in navigating your emotions and bodily reactions. Food will always be there for you as your ally and friend on this healing journey. Let's normalize that on the path of healing your relationship with food, this doesn't mean that you will never eat food to satiate an emotional hunger ever again. Your response around that eating experience will change though.

To get to that point, there is a healing process that will occur and it will not be linear, it will not have set time frames, it will ebb and flow and shift and change.

The process can look something like this:

Denial.

There is a part of you that doesn't feel ready to attend to anything else. There is still a strong belief that if you just figure out the "right" things to eat in the "right" way everything will heal and fall into place. Here, thinking about food all day long feels safer than attending to anything else. Nothing is "wrong" with that. You can hang out here for as long as you need to.

Coming To Terms.

A small inner voice starts to make itself feel more heard letting you know that something else in your life is needing your attention. You start to realize maybe, just maybe, your healing isn't about what, when, or how you eat anymore. There is something much bigger waiting for you to process. You may not feel ready yet to address those things and that is alright. You now have powerful awareness that figuring out your food is not the only thing that needs to be attended to for you to heal. Having that awareness is a step toward curiosity and wonder what else there might be. Curiosity, questioning, and wonderment make it much easier to take the next step as this can also feel exciting about what you might discover.

O Shit, What Have I Done? Can I Handle This?

Here in this stage you're starting to take baby steps toward showing up for yourself and in your relationship with food differently. That might be not starting another diet on Monday or reaching out for support to work with someone. Our body doesn't know the difference between a real or perceived danger. Even if this change you're trying to make is the most supportive thing long term, in the moment it feels threatening. Wanting to return to the familiar relationship with food is there trying to protect you from feeling the discomfort that may be arising from engaging in actions that are taking you outside your comfort zone. You get to be so very gentle with yourself here. Some days you might engage in your familiar food actions and other days you may experiment with new ones.

If you're working with a coach or counselor or therapist, a response to want to pull out and disappear is completely normal. Please reach out to whomever you're working with and let them know what is arising so they can support you through this step.

Curiosity.

Now that you have taken a first step, you start to wonder what might be possible. What if your days didn't need to be filled with food and body image concerns anymore? What would you get to fill all that time with? How could that open space to heal other areas of your life on deeper levels that might support you in feeling physically and emotionally lighter? What have your food habits and patterns been guiding you toward? What have they been protecting you from? What could you start acknowledging about yourself to yourself that you had really always been doing the best you could with the awareness you had?

Grief.

As you start making little changes in your food habits and focusing more on satiating yourself emotionally in non-food ways, you might realize your current food patterns are no longer serving you and will never satisfy the emotional hungers you have. This is an important step to cry and grieve and say goodbye to what isn't supporting you in moving toward what you want for your life. Food has maybe been there as your friend, picking you up when you felt down, holding your hand when you felt scared, celebrating with you when good things happened in your life. Food will always be there as any ally. That doesn't need to change.

The relationship you have with food simply gets to evolve. Just like within any relationship we're in long term, that relationship grows over time. The current relationship you have with food is no longer supporting you in feeling vibrant in your life. You get to thank that relationship for all it has supported you with and all the ways it has shown up for you. You can grieve for that specific kind of relationship you had with food, say goodbye, and continue to step into the new relationship with food you're cultivating.

Commitment.

Having your self care and emotional satiation come first starts to become the norm. You feel like you're putting the power back in you and less in your food. You're trying out new actions in your relationship with your food, body, and showing up for yourself in new ways. As you practice your new food habits over and over again, they start to become a part of your comfort zone and actions that feel safety producing and regulating. You may notice that some days are easier than others. You're committed to showing up for yourself again and again and this can bring awareness that this journey never ends and so there is no such thing as setbacks anymore just opportunities to learn more about you.

As food becomes less of a concern and a focus from day to day, new emotions may arise that have not previously had space to feel heard, seen, and expressed. You may go through this process again realizing that your current relationship with your emotions also needs to transform so that all of you gets to be invited and welcomed to the table each day.

As I mentioned before, these stages are not linear. You may jump around from stage to stage and some stages you may hang out in for months or years. There is no timeline here. You're going to have a relationship with food you're entire life and this relationship with food and body will evolve again and again. You get to trust you're always exactly where you're meant to be. Your healing path will unfold the way it needs to and this is an adventure that can be enjoyed every step of the way. If you're ever looking for more support on this food healing journey, email me at support@stpehaniemara.com or click here to get set up with a free 20 minute Connect Call!