Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is a common experience for many people. We can eat to fill all sorts of voids in our life, to soothe sadness, emptiness, and anger or to celebrate an occasion. Sometimes we may stop eating all together in response to emotional stress. The occasional eating in response to emotional discomfort is not a problem.

When however it becomes one of our major coping mechanisms and causes extreme weight loss or weight gain then it can lead to other health problems. Emotional eating can involve bingeing or it can involve a relationship with food that is replacing other important relationships in your life. It can also involve levels of secrecy, which can make you feel quite alone. It also means that you are not dealing with the underlying causes of this emotional eating.

We will help you to recognize the triggers for emotional eating, how to manage the uncomfortable feelings and find healthier alternative coping mechanisms. If there are serious emotional reasons that you find yourself overeating or under eating and it is seriously impacting on your health and wellbeing then we can help work through this with you.

The eating might be a band-aid to cover up some painful feelings. Perhaps then you might feel you would benefit from a block of counselling sessions to help you feel more empowered and secure and able to face difficult challenges with out turning to food.