Your Relationship With Food Reflects Your Relationship With Your Parents
With the holiday season in full swing, I wanted to offer a new perspective on parents that might support you as you potentially navigate being around family more during this time.
Have you noticed having a strong reaction to your parent’s behavior when you’re around them?
Do you have desires and longings for your parents to show up differently?
Our parents ultimately have done the best they could to show up for us with what was set as an example to them from their parents on how to be a parent. Our parents also have their own wounds and struggles they are sometimes processing throughout their entire lives. These wounds can get passed down from generation to generation. When we fight internally who our parents are or crave for them to show up differently, often the person that gets hurt the most is ourselves. This yearning for something out of our control to be different ultimately can set up a struggle within us.
Additionally, our first form of love often came through the vehicle of food from a parent. For the rest of life food can be connected to am I loved, am I seen, am I supported, am I heard? When our relationships do not feel nourishing with our parents, and we are feeling that struggle for something to be different, it is then completely natural for food to come into that space to try to provide us with what we are looking to feel. Have you ever noticed that if you sensed your parent withholding love or felt their love was conditional that you found yourself withholding food? Or went the entire opposite direction and binged on food to try and receive the unconditional love you desired. Our relationship with food can often reflect the relationship we have with our parents. If there is some friction with a parent during the holidays, it actually makes sense that we would overeat during this time of year. Food has this amazing ability to numb us out, lift us up, and provide all the love, peace, and support we may actually be looking and expecting to receive from a parent.
No matter how much we eat, food will never satiate the emotional hunger of desiring a parent’s love, affection, support, and understanding. As we cultivate awareness of our desires and our reactions around how we were seen and held as a child, we can give space for those emotions to be there without trying to change them or make them go away. That is when we can discover a different relationship with food where it no longer feels desirable to reach for as we satiate ourselves by our own presence, love, and empathy. The wonderful thing about being an adult is that we get to meet our inner child the ways we always wished we were met when we were younger. On this life adventure of fostering a deeper connection with ourselves, we get to tell our inner child all the things they have needed to hear. So when you’re around family you can take a step away, connect with your inner child and you can tell them how wonderful and amazing they are just as they are. You can imagine giving them a big hug and taking time to hear what they have to say so that they can feel heard, and seen, and acknowledged.
If you have wounds around your parents, certainly allow yourself to feel the pain, feel the sadness, feel the anger. In feeling these emotions and no longer pushing them down we can heal the generational wounds passed down to us and show up for ourselves in brand new ways. You may discover that your reactions around your parents decrease with intensity as you also imagine seeing their inner child who is yearning for the same things you are. When a reaction toward your parent starts to increase, if possible, take a moment to close your eyes and imagine them as a child. See if you can hear what their inner child might be needing in that moment. When we step into compassion for our parents, the intensity of our own emotions towards them can decrease. We can then feel more grounded to assess what actions are going to feel most satiating to our body physically and emotionally.
When around family and food, we can have two options. We can explore shifting our relationship with food to support and facilitate showing up differently with others. Or, we can explore different ways to show up for ourselves around our parents to transform our relationship with food. Experiment with both approaches to discover what feels most supportive to you. If you’re ever desiring more support on this journey, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime.