Dealing With Your Emotions Exercise

Your emotions are your feelings – joy, sorrow, hate, love, guilt, etc. Some feelings are pleasant to experience (joy), while others are not so pleasant to experience (sadness).

USING FOOD TO HANDLE EMOTIONS Unfortunately, for some people, emotions – sadness, loneliness, anxiety – are linked to hunger. When they experience the emotion (e.g. anxiety), they simultaneously experience a ‘false’ or ‘pseudo’ hunger. They confuse emotional hunger (their need to have the emotion recognized and understood) with actual or real hunger.

YOUR FOOD/MOOD CONNECTION To find out if you are an emotional eater, keep a food diary for the next week. Each time you eat, note the following: day, time, foods eaten, amount, place, feelings before eating. After one week, analyze your diary. Determine if there is a link between the feelings you experience (like anger) and eating.

BREAKING THE FOOD/MOOD CONNECTION As you know, eating to soothe emotions provides short-term, if any, relief. Rather than eat in response to your emotion, try the following:

Analyze the origin of the feeling. Our feelings follow our thoughts. Sometimes our thoughts get distorted and as a result, our feelings are distorted, as well. Think carefully about why you are feeling the way you do.

Validate your feelings. If, after examination, you determine that your feelings are not the result of distortions in thinking, confirm their validity.

Permit yourself to experience the emotion. Feelings are wonderful barometers of wants and needs. For example, when you’re angry, it’s a signal that you feel you’ve been violated by another or that you’ve been kept from reaching a goal.

Act on your feelings. Once you acknowledge and experience your feelings, you are able to address the wants or needs beneath the feelings. For example, if you’re angry, you can use assertive communication to express your feelings and corresponding wants and needs.