When Food Isn't The Fix: Emotion Regulation Skills (Part 2)
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Georgie: [00:00:00] This is the breaking up with binge eating podcast, where every listen moves you one step closer to complete food freedom hosted by me, Georgie fear and my team at confident eaters.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the show. Today, Christina and I are going to share some more strategies with you to help with regulating emotions. I know when I'm upset, regulating emotions doesn't sound like what I want to do. I want to turn them off like a light switch. But that's not exactly how things work in real life. In real life, the healing process from feeling emotionally overwhelmed and frequently turning to things like food or unhealthy behaviors, it looks like just learning bit by bit to Regulate those emotions a little bit [00:01:00] better, getting them into a manageable state. So, we still have them, unfortunately, but they're not so overwhelming. So, instead of a pot that's boiling over and splashing everywhere, your anger or frustration may go to a manageable simmer and stay in the pot. If you've ever felt like, oh, I am a messy, gurgling, spewing everywhere pot of soup right now, you get what I mean. Sometimes emotions just feel dysregulated. When that happens, we are prone to making poor decisions, and we can do things that might harm us or our future just because we're desperate to decrease our distress. Our goal as coaches is to help you be able to get out of that state to get regulated again without turning to food. We have about 12 emotional regulation strategies that we go through with our clients. That's an awful lot of content. So we've broken it down into several episodes. In part one, Christina and I covered distraction, adjusting expectations, Taking effective [00:02:00] action and refuting sabotaging thoughts. Today, we'll cover two more emotion regulation strategies in depth. Just like last time, we'll begin with describing a realistic ish situation that for most people is likely to churn up some uncomfortable feelings. Then, we'll try to give names to the emotions that likely come up, and then we'll go through how each specific technique could be used in that scenario. Remember that the scenarios and regulation strategies are largely interchangeable, so many times you do have your pick of which strategy you want to use on today's headache or heartache. There isn't one correct option.

Christina: Let's start with situation five. You move to a new city where you don't know anyone. You want to make friends, so you signed up for a book club and a yoga class. As the yoga class approached, you started to dread it. I don't have the right clothes. My balance is embarrassingly bad. I'll make a fool of myself.

Christina: So you don't [00:03:00] go. But at the book club, you tell yourself, you can do this. You actually show up to this one and watch people milling about and chatting. You feel awkward. It seems like they all know each other and you're the one outsider. You can't think of any smart or witty questions and you don't want to resort to something as cliche as talking about the weather.

So you just stay quiet and keep your eyes down. At the end of the evening, you have avoided speaking a complete sentence all night. As you arrive home and plop on the couch, you think what a success that was.

You don't feel like you've made any progress in initiating friendships. Okay, so first let's name the emotions that you might be feeling in this scenario. As always, there's no right or wrong and everyone may respond differently, but the more important thing is figuring out what you are feeling.

Georgie: Ah, this is so unpleasantly familiar. As I imagine myself in this scenario, I feel social [00:04:00] anxiety. Like the definition of it. I definitely know how it feels to worry about how I'd look and what sort of impression I had made. So I would call that uncertainty or self doubt I've had regret after leaving events for sure.

Replaying in my mind. Oh, I must have seemed awkward or bossy or rude. That's not a good feeling. And that tangle of social anxiety makes it really tempting for me to avoid situations and just decide to be a hermit. I don't need friends. I think I'd also feel sad that it's so hard to meet people and sad that it takes time.

Christina: Yeah, especially as an adult, as, as you get older and move to a new city, I know you've moved to new cities a few times in your life, so we want to think about what emotion regulation skill would help in this type of situation. Let's talk about acceptance. Acceptance can feel like a confusing [00:05:00] term when we use it to refer to emotions. We all know what it means to be accepted into college or to accept a UPS delivery, but what about accepting emotions? What good does that actually do? In this context, accepting is taking people and things as they are. Practicing acceptance keeps us from living in a fantasy or denial in the example scenario, it would be helpful to accept that making friends is hard for many adults and it takes some time. If we had a delusion that after attending 1 book club meeting, we'd have 5 besties to hang out with the reality of coming home without even speaking to anyone hurts much worse. Accepting, okay, this is going to take some time can help us to stay calm and reduce that distress we might be feeling.

I really love this example because I personally have been experiencing this and recently moved to a new city, getting to [00:06:00] practice what we preach, so to speak. And I'm trying to make friends here in Warsaw, but it's a totally different culture. It's a different language. So I've felt that anxiety of putting myself out there and fear of rejection.

I even took a yoga class in Polish and, you know, made myself, follow what they were doing, couldn't understand what they were saying. And, and it was tough. I was sweating the whole time and not because the yoga positions were hard, just cause I was, I was nervous. And, You know, sometimes making friends as an adult almost feels like being interviewed in a strange way.

Georgie: That's how I experienced it anyway. But learning to accept that I feel this way and taking a chance anyway, putting myself out there. It's really made my experience more rich, I think, living in a new city. And I've gotten to meet some really interesting people, it is taking time. It's not like you can microwave friendships and they're like,

The instant noodles of [00:07:00] friendship.

Christina: Yeah. So I'm putting myself out there, even though I do feel awkward at times. And I think it's turning out much better. Like you said, then if I was just sitting at home playing hermit in my apartment all day.

Georgie: Practicing acceptance also helps us be ourselves instead of trying to be somebody else. If I accept, hey, I've got social anxiety, I'm a little awkward. I can think about what situations or setups would make it easier for me to interact a bit more. Maybe meeting just two people for a coffee or a walk would be easier than meeting 20 people at a party. Or, I might think, you know, maybe doing something outdoors would be easier. The bottom line is, when I accept that about myself, and I accept that something's Hard for me or that. I lack a particular experience or skill. I'm not wasting time blaming myself for it. Just kicking myself and be like, why, why do I do this?

Oh, I'm so messed up. I also don't waste time [00:08:00] trying to hide it or overcompensate it. Accepting it really is very effort saving and can feel like a relief. I can focus on working with who I am and what I've got. So, I encourage you to give it a try.

Christina: acceptance also helps us keep living in a world, which contains more fear, suffering and uncertainty than I think any of us would like to have in life. If we reject these realities and try to never experience discomfort, we would have to avoid a great deal of life. I think most of the people we talked to Georgie.

Really are looking to live their lives more fully and stop avoiding it. So making new friends, dating, changing jobs, all of these things include uncertainty. By accepting that some uncertainty or fear is part of the bargain, then we can choose to try new things, take a chance, put ourselves out there and reap the rewards, which are also a part of the bargain.

Things like love, [00:09:00] success, friendship, and fun often come in a package deal where we experience some uncomfortable feelings as well.

Georgie: In the example of trying to make friends but feeling anxious and awkward, acceptance that it's a tough process, that it's one that takes time, And that socializing may not be a person's strong suit would enable me to keep trying. If I don't choose to practice accepting those aspects., I might just quit on the entire thing and decide I don't need friends, and guess I'm agreeing with what you're saying that if we try and avoid these feelings instead of accepting them, I find our lives just shrink and shrink and shrink and we do less and less. Yeah

Christina: So let's move on to let next situation. For example, let's say you started training for a 5K as a new year's resolution and you're thrilled that you're sticking to it. Your brand new bright pink and neon green running shoes are definitely helping you get more excited to run. You've already worked up to [00:10:00] running two and a half miles, three times a week.

And you're feeling confident that the St. Patrick's day 5k is going to be an absolute blast. Until today, when your feet fly out from under you on an icy sidewalk and you land hard, your left leg twisted beneath you at an unnatural angle. The emergency room physician tells you nothing is broken, but you've torn a ligament in your knee and you need to speak with a surgeon to see if it needs to be repaired surgically.

The St. Patrick's day race is just two weeks away and you're gradually realizing that you won't be running in it.

Georgie: so let's name some of the emotions that are likely to come up in this situation.

Christina: I think disappointment anger, sadness about not getting to do this event that I've looked forward to doing. I'd also be worried about what the surgeon would say and whether I'd need an operation, maybe even stress about the financial cost [00:11:00] and some fear around having to endure a long, painful recovery.

Georgie: Yeah, not knowing if you need surgery on something is, the uncertainty is so uncomfortable, but then there's the added catastrophizing that my brain loves to do that is just imagining post surgical recovery before I've even been told that I need surgery. I'd be like, how am I going to manage the pain? Yeah, it's just a very, very hard situation. I've had my own experiences, which I've talked about I know of entering something and being incredibly eager, looking forward to a race, doing lots of preparation only to have injury or illness just totally sidelined my plans. I felt all the things you mentioned, disappointment and sadness really being intense. And I also somehow have felt in these situations like it was my fault. I shouldn't have done this or that to get hurt or sick. So self blame can creep in there too. The emotion regulation technique that we want to demonstrate here that could help you through this [00:12:00] scenario is reframing. Reframing is essentially thinking about things in a new way. Looking at our example situation with the injured knee and not being able to run, one reframe that could decrease how upsetting it feels is to look at things as Okay, I have a few weeks to really strengthen my upper body and core. Many situations that are upsetting also have a bit of opportunity to them. And we're not saying look on the bright side, which is one of the most irritating things you can say to somebody who's upset. But we're talking about when it's yourself. Encouraging yourself to see that your pain and your sadness or whatever you're feeling is legitimate. We don't want to minimize that or disregard it, but acknowledge that also there may be some opportunity in the situation.

And if we ignore that opportunity, all we have to focus on is our despair. So if we do remember that there is some opportunity to a lot of really lousy situations, [00:13:00] Might not be the opportunity we wanted, but we can help ourselves fall less far into the pit of despair by saying, well, there is something that I can do here. One way to reframe when you're being challenged is to think about what skills or abilities you can strengthen from getting through this particular problem. Dealing with a difficult person could strengthen your patience and improve your customer service skills. Another aspect you can use to focus your reframe is relationships. Sometimes, often actually, going through awful things together with another person really cements your friendship or marriage in a new way. Reframing can also take the angle of Noting how things are going to improve with time, that it won't always be as bad as it is in this moment. For example, with the knee injury, you could think, my knee is going to heal. Or with parenting, you might think, my child will eventually grow past the toilet training [00:14:00] stage. Or, in a workplace situation, I will eventually turn this project in and not have to deal with it anymore.

Christina: it's natural to focus on the problem when we're feeling distressed or upset, but if you can stop and think about it, you also have resources to help you with the problem. An injured athlete might think, okay, what resources do I have in my corner to help me get through this? I have doctors to help my friends to encourage me, I have a gym membership, so I have access to equipment to do any rehab exercises that I might need to do.

Your resources might be money, time, objects, tools, or know how, people to support you, or personal qualities. So you might think, wow, this is complicated, but I'm a superstar at organization, so that will help. Reframing can also help you if you are upset over a problem that someone else has. Your friend may be going through a rough time.

Maybe a job loss or personal [00:15:00] tragedy. It's understandable to feel some emotions yourself because you care a lot about this person. Some resource related reframes which could help might be, I'm glad she has me and such a great family to support her. We also can remind ourselves that she will get through this, that she will be more confident as a result of overcoming this challenge.

In other words, it's helpful to find ways of looking at the situation that remind us the world is not ending and while we wish our friend wasn't going through this, it's not going to kill her.

Georgie: One last note on reframing is that situations feel extra, ultra upsetting when we interpret them as personal, pervasive, and permanent. You could think of these as the three Ps. When we think, this is my fault, or I'm the only one that has this happen to them, that is a personal interpretation. More upsetting. Viewing a problem as pervasive and permanent means that we see it infiltrating [00:16:00] every area of our lives forever. When, in reality, the problem may only affect one area of our lives, and only for a finite amount of time, days, weeks, or months. Most problems are not personal, pervasive, or permanent. Viewing a situation impersonally can sound like, this is no one's fault, it's just a thing that happens.

And this is something that many people have gone through. Try to reframe the problem in language that keeps it specific and temporary. So instead of, my boss makes my life a living hell. Your reframe could be, My work hours have become really challenging, at least while I'm in this department. See the difference? It's not 24 7 forever. It's just work hours, and it's just for now. We've brought up a lot of tactics in these two episodes so far on emotion regulation, and we have a couple more coming. So far, we've given you six. We encourage you to [00:17:00] give them all an initial try. Even if you're skeptical about a few of them, sometimes the techniques that we did not think would be any good actually surprise us by bringing about a lot of relief. Then, once you've tried them all, try to gain more practice with whatever techniques seemed to work best for you. And try to recognize that certain situations may be best suited for certain tactics. Christina, Mary Claire, and I are always here to help if you could use an experienced guide to help coach you through this process. It takes time, but we've been helping people do it for a long time, and I'll say there's nobody better. Thank you for listening. Keep believing in yourself.