“Girls Growing Up To Be Women” Acrylics, 2010 © Marlene Veltre All Rights Reserved
In these difficult times of unprecedented stress, elevating anxiety and depression, many people have been turning to food as a remedy. Comfort food, emotional eating, compulsive eating, overeating. I’ve had a food addiction since I was five years old and have battled all of these. Both in my personal experience and what I’ve seen in my practice, there’s more to emotional suffering — and related eating — than meets the eye.
When we think about stress, anxiety, and depression we tend to think of each in a singular way, defined by a set of symptoms — suggesting that there’s one root cause. But there can be any number of underlying reasons for each and it will differ from one person to the next. Though stress is defined in many ways and anxiety and depression can have physical causes, the source of stress, anxiety, and depression is usually mental.
It begins with a thought. Which triggers a reaction to the thought — feelings and emotions. In turn, triggering physical symptoms.
For example, if you’ve been out of work and you’re preparing to interview for a job, you might feel pressured to get the job, thinking, “I really need this job so I can pay my bills,” which makes your heart pound, your palms sweaty, and your stomach nervous.
But emotional suffering can also be triggered by unconscious thoughts and feelings that we bury when we have painful life experiences and the feelings are too hard for us to bear. Later, when we’re triggered by the incident subconsciously, various forms of eating can follow.
I facilitate a tool that works to uncover unconscious thoughts and feelings and, once, a client was suffering from anxiety preparing to start a new job. Throughout her life she’d had a pattern of anxiety whenever she was starting something new, whether it was a new school year, a new project at work, or living in a new city.
She traced the pattern to an incident in which she was singled out by her kindergarten teacher in front of her classmates for not yet learning how to tie her shoes. As she discovered, the experience was more painful than she realized. She uncovered the thought that ”Something’s wrong with me” and the conclusion that “I have a hard time learning new things.” These thoughts created fears and doubts in herself that not only catalyzed her anxiety, but contributed to her low self-esteem and self-confidence, and made it difficult to concentrate; fear and anxiety interferes with cognition. Imagine starting a new job in this state of mind.
You might say, “She’s an adult. She should’ve gotten over it by now.” But you can’t move through what you’re not aware of, if it’s buried in your unconscious. Also, she’d internalized the pain of what had happened through the eyes of a child. So, whenever she was triggered, the feelings would surface in her adult being amplified by the perspective of her child self, which was frightening.
I worked with another client looking for a job: “Though I had struggled to find work before, this time I found the anxiety and profound negativity was paralyzing and I was unable to move forward, despite being familiar with the job search process.”
The client traced her anxiety to fears that she’d buried as a five year-old growing up in in 1980s New York City during the AIDs breakout. Although she felt safe and protected with her parents at home, she became fearful of a dangerous, unpredictable world because of incidents that occurred outside her home. She’d buried, “Who will take care of me?” along with fear and anxiety associated with survival matters that included looking for a job. This example illustrates what could happen to our children — and adults — during the current pandemic if we’re not careful to help them stay in touch with their feelings in times of great uncertainty.
In my practice, I’ve seen how common it is for people to not care for their emotional well-being. Sometimes they really don’t have the time. Or they may not prioritize mental health. Or medications are relied upon to to ease symptoms. From what I’ve observed, what’s more common is most people don’t realize that anything is wrong. This was my story. If anyone had told me I had buried so much pain, sadness, and anger — rage — I wouldn’t have believed them, and I had a lifetime of unresolved trauma and abuse to heal.
What I’ve also seen in my practice is that healing the pain is always worth it. It can be painful, and sometimes there are tears. Usually, there is disbelief — at the source of the pain. But always there is relief, the taste of newfound freedom no longer having to carry the burden of past and present pain. The alternative is to relive the pain over and over again and suffer. A simple way of knowing whether something is wrong is if: Something happened, it’s bothering you, and you can’t let it go.
In upcoming posts, I’ll provide techniques that can help with overcoming anger and fear associated with financial distress.
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The Simple Seven © Marlene Veltre 2021 All rights reserved. No portion of this post may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of Marlene Veltre. The information in this post is to be used for educational purposes only. It is not intended to serve as a substitute for professional medical advice or to prevent, cure, or heal any illness or disease. You should always see your doctor or health practitioner.