Dealing With Emotions
Lesson 10
Dealing With Emotions
Friends and Enemies
Your emotions are your feelings, joy, sorrow, hate, love, guilt, fear, etc. The things you feel are very different from the things you know. Sometimes your emotions are your friends, lifting you up on a cloud of euphoria. Other times they feel like enemies, dragging you into the pit of despair.
When the Going Gets Rough
Take stock of the feeling Validate your feelings
Analyze its origin Act on your feelings
Permit yourself to experience the emotion
If you are feeling sad, analyze where that feeling is coming from. Are you seeking comfort in the refrigerator? Stop, look & listen, but do not eat, act! Allow yourself to experience the pain you feel, and then use HM&N talking to yourself skills to begin feeling better.
Eating Responses as Clues To Emotions
Sometimes your response to sadness, joy or fear or any other emotion is inappropriate, even harmful. Keep a food diary for 5 days to analyze your eating patterns and note your emotional state. Notice how often you ate because you were depressed, anxious, nervous, angry, or even happy.
Ask yourself why you felt the need to eat because you were feeling these emotions. Do you eat when you are depressed because it makes you feel better? Perhaps it does make you feel satisfied and nurtured for a short span of time, but the self-loathing you feel after the food has passed your lips probably lasts far longer than the brief feeling of satisfaction.
Do you find that you have been eating because you are bored? Eating is hardly an appropriate response to boredom. It destroys your feelings of self worth and undermines your success. And what happens after you eat? Is the boredom gone? No, it is still there, joined by anger and self hate at succumbing to temptation. If you are bored, find something worthwhile to fill your time.
Breaking the Mood/Food Connection
The mood/food connection is not an easy one to break. It has been long established, and changing the pattern will take time, effort and determination.
The choice is up to you. You can listen to your inner voice or you can give in to your mind when it tries to talk you out of the choice that is right for you the constructive choice, the one that helps you build yourself up, not tear yourself down.
And, when you triumph over an old eating pattern, you will experience feelings of self satisfaction, joy and power that are well worth the struggle that preceded them.
Gene C.
Dealing With Emotions
Friends and Enemies
Your emotions are your feelings, joy, sorrow, hate, love, guilt, fear, etc. The things you feel are very different from the things you know. Sometimes your emotions are your friends, lifting you up on a cloud of euphoria. Other times they feel like enemies, dragging you into the pit of despair.
When the Going Gets Rough
Take stock of the feeling Validate your feelings
Analyze its origin Act on your feelings
Permit yourself to experience the emotion
If you are feeling sad, analyze where that feeling is coming from. Are you seeking comfort in the refrigerator? Stop, look & listen, but do not eat, act! Allow yourself to experience the pain you feel, and then use HM&N talking to yourself skills to begin feeling better.
Eating Responses as Clues To Emotions
Sometimes your response to sadness, joy or fear or any other emotion is inappropriate, even harmful. Keep a food diary for 5 days to analyze your eating patterns and note your emotional state. Notice how often you ate because you were depressed, anxious, nervous, angry, or even happy.
Ask yourself why you felt the need to eat because you were feeling these emotions. Do you eat when you are depressed because it makes you feel better? Perhaps it does make you feel satisfied and nurtured for a short span of time, but the self-loathing you feel after the food has passed your lips probably lasts far longer than the brief feeling of satisfaction.
Do you find that you have been eating because you are bored? Eating is hardly an appropriate response to boredom. It destroys your feelings of self worth and undermines your success. And what happens after you eat? Is the boredom gone? No, it is still there, joined by anger and self hate at succumbing to temptation. If you are bored, find something worthwhile to fill your time.
Breaking the Mood/Food Connection
The mood/food connection is not an easy one to break. It has been long established, and changing the pattern will take time, effort and determination.
The choice is up to you. You can listen to your inner voice or you can give in to your mind when it tries to talk you out of the choice that is right for you the constructive choice, the one that helps you build yourself up, not tear yourself down.
And, when you triumph over an old eating pattern, you will experience feelings of self satisfaction, joy and power that are well worth the struggle that preceded them.
Gene C.
posted by Gene Carbonell at
6:04 PM
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