When Food isn't the Fix - Emotion Regulation Skills (Part 3)
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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, it's Georgie again, host of this podcast. I'm here today with Christina, and we're talking about emotion regulation. This is the third episode that we're doing on this topic, and if you haven't heard the first two, definitely check them out, but you don't have to listen to them before this one. You can certainly start here. One of the messages we try to share as broadly as possible is that improving your eating patterns and relationship with food takes more than nutrition knowledge or tips on how to shop and cook. It takes a combination of nutrition skills, [00:01:00] self-management skills, and emotion regulation skills. In two previous episodes, we've covered a lot of emotion regulation skills, and in this episode we're gonna round out the collection in this third installment. This will bring you up to 12 unique emotion regulation tactics. Enough to tackle any challenge life slings at you.

Christina: As with prior episodes, we'll discuss a hypothetical situation, name the feelings which are likely to arise in response, and walk you through using a specific technique to keep your emotions regulated.

Georgie: Situation number one. Last week, your boss called you into her office and dropped some brutal news. Your local office in Atlanta is closing, so to keep your job, you have to move to a branch of the company in Portland. The company isn't gonna pay for your relocation, and if you aren't willing to move within the next four weeks, they'll just find someone else. You spend the rest of the evening at your kitchen table, your thoughts swirling [00:02:00] if you don't make the move, are there any other jobs available here in Atlanta? What if you can't find one? Putting your house on the market means you have to fix the water damage in the attic first, and you haven't even gotten an estimate on that. And what about your kids? How much of a disruption will it be for them to start over in a new state? What if you get there and you hate Portland? The cost of moving across the country must also be massive. You might not even be able to afford it.

Christina: what emotions are likely to arise in this situation? I imagine I'd feel overwhelmed, afraid, and intimidated by the complexity of this situation. There's so many parts to consider and it's a tough decision. I could also see being angry at what feel like unreasonable demands from your boss. The skill we wanna walk you through here is perfect for situations like this where there are many moving pieces and you feel like you might not have the necessary information, time, or resources to accomplish what is asked of you.

It's called overwhelm [00:03:00] management. Overwhelm management starts with organization. You can only hold so many things in your mind at once, but you can organize vast amounts of information on paper. For this situation, it would be helpful to identify the information you need to decide and a list of tasks you need to do once you have made a decision. Whether you decide to make the move or hunt for a new job, there are tasks to check off. Writing them down can help you be sure you aren't forgetting any and can help you approach one at a time instead of being stunned into immobility, trying to do all of them.

Georgie: Overwhelm management also calls for hiring or consulting others who have more expertise than you do. You may have a lot on your to-do list, but you don't have to do every bit of it yourself. Calling a contractor to give you an estimate on the water damage would be a wise move. If you know anybody in Portland, you can give them a call or write an email to ask a few things about the area. You could also find out how [00:04:00] much your house might sell for and what your money could buy you in the new town. That would mean contacting a realtor. Lastly, overwhelm management necessitates simplifying, which can mean omitting some commitments or canceling plans. In this situation, you might delay an upcoming vacation, hold off on landscaping the backyard as you had planned, or maybe you won't be able to volunteer this week at the homeless shelter. Your sudden ultimatum from work is going to need all of your focus temporarily. So these are perfectly valid ways to manage your overwhelm.

Christina: Let's move on to the second situation. Your spouse has taken up golf and now goes to play every weekend. You're happy to see them enjoying a new hobby, but you also feel lonely now that you're spending more time by yourself. You would love to have a full weekend together, but you don't wanna nag. You secretly hope that bad weather will roll in and cancel their plans, but for the last six weeks, dang it, the sun keeps shining.

Your spouse seems [00:05:00] oblivious while you grow more and more unhappy every hour you spend alone and bored. What emotions might we anticipate in this scenario? I think anger, frustration, and maybe a feeling of not being important. I could also see annoyance that your spouse hasn't picked up on your feelings.

Georgie: Once you've tuned in to what emotions you're actually having, you can start using an emotion regulation tool. The one we'll talk you through here is called express Don't suppress. It's an excellent choice for situations where there's another person involved. Suppressing our emotions and thoughts is one way of coping with discomfort by pushing it down, not paying it any attention, and essentially trying not to feel it. However, suppression tends to be maladaptive over the long term. People who use emotional suppression on a frequent basis are at a greater risk for developing anxiety, depression, and many physical health [00:06:00] ailments. Expression, on the other hand, is choosing to let our thoughts and feelings be felt and honored. It can include speaking, but it doesn't have to. You can express yourself through writing in a journal, creating art, having a good cry, singing at the top of your lungs in the car, or anything else that lets your feelings be felt instead of pushed away.

Christina: In this case, you could get some relief from expressing yourself to a good friend. But I'd say expressing how you feel to your partner is vital. Nothing will change if they aren't aware of how you feel and it's likely they will care and wanna help you not feel so lonely. When people in a relationship don't express how they feel, it can lead to a blowup where one person suddenly uncorks anger and frustration without choosing their words carefully.

Then the other person gets defensive and no one ends up happy. It's better to share how you feel early so you can talk together about the situation. You don't have to have a solution at the ready [00:07:00] or demand that they change in a certain way. You can just say how you're feeling to get a conversation started. I'm feeling lonely when you're out golfing every weekend. I want you two enjoy yourself, but I also miss you.

Georgie: Situation number three. You're struggling with infertility for months and you've spent lots of time and money and heartache trying to figure out a solution. Your best friend announces she's pregnant and you know that you should be happy for her and not think so much about yourself right now. But what emotions are likely to come up for you? Grief, frustration, envy, but maybe also some joy for your friend's good news. Maybe you've talked about being moms together and supporting each other, and you can't help but feel this gnawing of loss and exhaustion.

Christina: This is such a tricky situation and it can be tempting to do one of two things. Your first instinct may be to shove your own feelings aside using the suppression technique that Georgie just mentioned, because what kind [00:08:00] of selfish person makes someone else's pregnancy announcement about them? The other tempting instinct might be to focus on your own pain, grief, and the unfairness of it all with such intensity that you can't be happy for your friend.

One of the emotion regulation strategies that can be helpful here is called Making space. Making space is about noticing an emotion, allowing it to be there without judgment or resistance, and creating some distance between you and the emotion so that it doesn't run the show. Rather than reacting impulsively, you make space for the feeling, breathe with it, observe it, and respond more intentionally.

You also make space for other emotions to exist so that you aren't solely focused on one thing. In this case, you can nonjudgmentally observe that you're experiencing a range of emotions. Your own sadness, envy, grief, or whatever is [00:09:00] coming up for you is allowed to be there because it's valid. You aren't going to judge yourself for feeling that way.

You can also make space for the fact that your friend is getting to experience something she's been looking forward to, and you want to celebrate that with her.

Georgie: I find that I'm often using the technique of making space when I have something looming on my calendar that I simultaneously want to do and want to cancel. I'm like, okay, do I wanna do this or do I not wanna do this? Do I wanna do this or do I not? And then I realize. I'm forcing myself into a false dichotomy.

I don't have to pick one or the other. I can make space to have both feelings at the same time, and I find that's It feels more balanced. It feels like more mature and nuanced and less like I'm either forcing myself to do something I don't want to do or potentially canceling something I do want to do. It really, it seems to honor whatever decision I make.

Christina: Yeah.

Georgie: As valid. We like to [00:10:00] use the metaphor when we're teaching clients about making space to use a book. And so if you imagine that you're reading a book but holding it really, really close to your face with the book, touching the end of your nose, you're not able to see anything else that's around you.

All you can see is that blurry text on the page. This is what we're doing when we're focused on our own pain, anger, or jealousy. It takes up our entire worldview. But if you pull the book away from your face, or I guess push the book away from your face, you can notice a lot of other things like the window with your house plants, the coffee table with your favorite mug of tea. So you've made space for not only that book to be there, you can still read it, but you can observe other things in the room as well. The same is true with your emotional world, and it's this intentional act of noticing it, but creating some distance that allows us to hold multiple feelings at the same time. By making space around painful or unpleasant [00:11:00] feelings, you can allow in some more positive or pleasant emotions, which makes life more bearable overall. Can you think of an example in your own life where you've been solely focused on one emotion and it would be helpful to create some distance to see what else you can notice? Have you noticed that you can feel multiple emotions all at the same time?

Christina: Let's move on to situation number four. You recently underwent knee replacement surgery. You had been putting it off for a long time because you knew that you'd have to take time off work, skip exercising, and complete painful and extensive rehab. You're back home in post-surgery recovery, and remembering exactly why you didn't wanna do this in the first place.

Everything feels harder, you need a lot of support to do daily tasks, you're nauseous from the meds, tired and in pain. You also miss going out with friends, working out at the gym, and going to work. What emotions are coming up for you right [00:12:00] now? I would probably feel discomfort, helplessness, impatience, and longing on this road to recovery.

Not to mention the physical pain of just getting over a major surgery. I also might feel lonely or disconnected or bored.

Georgie: When emotions like this are prominent, your mind and body needs soothing. That's where our next emotion regulation technique comes into play. This one is called self-soothing. There are lots of things that can activate your soothe system, but try any of these for starters. Think about engaging your different senses. You might want to wear something soft and warm. You can light a scented candle, put on calming music. You can drink a warm beverage or practice regulating your breathing into a soothing rhythm. Another option could be reach out to a friend or family member for support or capture your thoughts and [00:13:00] feelings in a journal. Think about what other things might soothe you that are non-food related and give them a try here.

Christina: Another option for this scenario is what we call looking ahead to relief. So this is a two for one situation that you can use. Sometimes, just the simple fact that you won't feel this way forever is enough to help you process through some of your emotions. Remind yourself that this is going to come to an end.

This recovery time is just temporary. You will feel better some day and every day you get through moves you closer to that first day back at the gym. Or your first pain-free walk in the sun. Knowing that you have a light at the end of the tunnel or a sunset on the recovery can help you to regulate how you feel.

Looking ahead to relief can help you get through a long workday, a boring meeting, an illness, or an airplane flight, which is what I use it for [00:14:00] regularly with my anxiety that I get from flying. What are some areas in your life that you need to look ahead to relief? How can you encourage yourself with this tool?

Georgie: Moving on to situation number five, the weather is finally warming up and you start shuffling through your spring and summer clothes to find a cute outfit. You spot a dress that you bought last year. It's a cheerful polka dot pattern, and you put it on. But you can't zip it up. You struggle for a minute with it and you realize there's no way this is going to fit.

You peel it off and you leave it on the floor. You find something else to wear, but your mind is swirling for the rest of the day about how that dress didn't fit. Getting a lot of delicious food to eat seems like just a thing to do because you're never going to feel like the pretty fashionable woman you wanna feel like.

Christina: This is an example of a situation many of our clients find triggering a piece of clothing, not fitting, [00:15:00] getting weighed at the doctor's office, weighing yourself and being unhappy with a number, or seeing a photo of yourself where you don't like how you look. All of these can lead straight to body criticism. The emotions that pop up after such a triggering event can include shame, anger, frustration, hopelessness, feeling inferior or less valuable, and self-directed negative emotions like these are strongly linked with binge eating or overeating. Even things that don't have anything to do with our bodies can be triggering in this way.

Making a mistake, saying something we regret, having an argument or being unsuccessful at something we tried can all create that same painful self-awareness from which we want to escape.

Georgie: One of my clients shared with me an experience that has always stuck in my mind as something that has nothing to do with our bodies. That she said, made her quotes feel fat. She [00:16:00] was driving and she needed to make a left hand turn, and as sometimes happens, you know, the lane fills up before you get all the way outta the intersection.

So the trunk end of her car was sticking into the intersection and she said, Georgie, I felt so fat. The car was like an extension of her body and feeling like our, car is in the way of other people and potentially, you know, impeding them moving through the intersection. I can completely relate to that.

I completely understand how that feels. We're like, oh my God, I feel like my ass is so big because my car is

Christina: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: In the way in this intersection. And I bet a lot of people listening can relate to that too. When we're uncomfortable or uncertain or at war with our bodies, any sort of mistake that we make even like the most innocent one can lead straight to body criticism. A technique that's worked well for some of my clients is to keep a short saying sort of in the back of their mind to use when this feeling comes up. So when they feel fat [00:17:00] or they feel not good enough, or any other achy feeling that says I need food, they recite their mantra and most of 'em don't call it a mantra.

It tends to be some saying that we've actually stumbled across in conversation and they're like, ah. That's so helpful and they sort of keep it in their pocket. For example, I said to one client like, keep it moving. Try not to spiral into that. Oh my god, I'm so fat. Oh my God, that dress didn't fit. You know, seeing how you wanted it to look, comparing it, how it did look, envisioning yourself walking down a cute little European street and the dress and the wind's blowing your hair.

Like stop it. Like move on. The dress didn't fit. We move on, we find another outfit, we go on with our day. And for her, keep it moving, became something that she used a lot to a great benefit. So she found if she was starting to get bogged down in heavy emotions or fixating on her body, instead of spiraling down in this whirlpool of unhappiness, she could just say, keep it moving, keep it moving.

And she [00:18:00] could reengage with her life, her friends, or whatever's going on in that moment. So keep it moving is just one that we recommend that you might find helpful.

Christina: We also wanted to share a handful of our other favorites. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

Georgie: It is not my job to be beautiful. This is a good one. If you're looking at photographs,

Christina: It is okay to feel this way.

Georgie: I don't have to get it perfect to make progress.

Christina: I can care for myself through this.

Georgie: Feelings are not emergencies.

Christina: I am not my thoughts.

Georgie: This is a moment. It's not forever

Christina: I have survived many events like this before. This is a helpful one for panic attacks.

Georgie: or airplane flights, right?

Christina: Yeah, true.

Georgie: 100% survival rating.

Christina: Yes.

Georgie: I get to choose what happens next.

Christina: All bodies change over [00:19:00] time.

Georgie: My appearance is the least important or interesting thing about me. This is handy for boosting your confidence in social settings or when you're going on a date.

Christina: Clothes are auditioning to get to be on this body, and this is a good one for fitting rooms. I can see a person coming home seeing the dress on the floor that didn't fit that morning and saying to herself. Well, that dress failed the audition, scooping it into a bag to donate and going on with her evening.

Georgie: So there you have it. If you've listened to all three episodes on emotion regulation, you now have 12 techniques to help you weather emotional storms. The hurricane force ones might call for you to combine several of these tactics to cope, but you can do that and you will survive. Today, we covered overwhelm management expressing instead of suppressing, making space, self-soothing. ahead to relief and [00:20:00] keeping helpful mantras in your pocket. If you find content like this is valuable, please give us a five star rating and let us know by leaving a review. If you think a different type of content would be more helpful, definitely let us know. Take good care of your precious self and remember, we at Confident Eaters are on your team.