50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food (2 page)

Mindfulness skills provide a realistic approach because you often can’t get rid of the person or event that’s causing you stress, such as an untidy spouse or a difficult job assignment. Instead, you have to learn to cope with the people and events that will continue to be a part of your everyday life, even though they tend to drive you crazy. Mindfulness is a perfect choice for self-soothing because it’s an easy, straightforward alternative to eating.

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Eating

In
chapter 4
you will learn new ways to think. The more aware you are of the way you think, the better able you are to prevent negative thoughts from triggering stress eating. Mindful thinking, affirmations, guided imagery, and realistic statements are all techniques that help to interrupt the flow of upsetting thoughts that are at the root of stress eating. Positive thinking and optimistic self-talk can help you alter self-defeating thoughts that serve only to exacerbate stress eating.

Soothing Sensations to Calmand Relax Your Body

When you are mindful of your body, you get to know how your body reacts to stress and emotions. In
chapter 5
, you’ll learn how to relax in a natural way without the aid of food. You can use your body as a tool for healing by doing self-massage, exercise, relaxation techniques, and yoga.

Mindful Distraction

Distraction is helpful when you engage in a behavior that is incompatible with eating. In
chapter 6
, you’ll think about activities that can keep you occupied, entertained, and away from the kitchen. These distractions can lift your mood, engage your attention, and be stimulating enough to lessen your urge to eat. Mindful distraction is not done to avoid your feelings but to interrupt unproductive brooding and negative habits.

Soothing Support

One of the best ways to avoid falling into the trap of mindless eating is to find helpful social support. There is nothing more soothing than some comforting words from a friend or connecting with the world in a new way. However, finding such social support can be a challenge.
Chapter 7
will give you some concrete ideas on how to reach out to others instead of to your refrigerator for comfort and support.

It’s very important to practice using the self-soothing techniques in this book before you need them. You can’t expect to put them into practice in the middle of a very strong urge to eat unless you’ve done some preliminary practicing. If you wait until you need them, it will be like trying to learn how to swim while you are drowning. You need to be a strong swimmer to deal with a huge wave of emotion. At first, these techniques might take some work or feel uncomfortable. But you want to get so good at doing them that by the time you need to use them, they will seem like second nature.

Coping vs. Blissful

The overarching goal for this book is to help people cope with whatever is driving their urge to emotionally eat. Notice that the goal isn’t to erase all of the pain, stress, and frustration complicating your life. Nor is it to obtain pleasure. In other words, don’t expect that these exercises will make you feel ecstatic, giddy, or joyous
.
Those feelings are very different from soothing and calming yourself. If the techniques help you to avoid, reduce, or delay emotional eating, consider this to be a great success.

Eastern philosophies are clear about the notion of suffering. We all suffer. No one can escape it. This is why coping skills are so essential. When you try to escape pain through numbing out or external pick-me-ups, you can unintentionally make the problem worse. If you are an emotional eater, this isn’t new news to you. As a result, you may want to really focus on mindful coping. Let this be your main objective.

I love comfort food. My favorite is homemade macaroni and cheese. I’d choose it any day over a gourmet meal. Those little noodles have an amazing ability to make me feel warm and cozy, even when I’m frazzled. I don’t understand why eating comfort food makes me feel this good. Maybe it’s biological? Or perhaps eating gooey mac and cheese reminds me of being a kid? Why is it like waving a magic wand over my mood?

—Kendra

Imagine for a moment two women, Jennifer and Cindy. They both have had a stressful day at work due to their critical and irrational boss. Jennifer begins snacking the moment she gets home, as a way to calm down. Cindy, on the other hand, calls a friend to vent about her terrible day. Why does one woman cope with her irritation by nibbling on snacks while the other turns to a friend to find comfort? You’ll find the answer in this chapter, which will cover some theories about how healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms develop and are maintained. You’ll also learn why it is so important to find a nonfood alternative to pacify your mind and body.

Self-soothing is a term coined by the branches of psychology called self psychology and attachment theory. According to these disciplines, the ability to regulate your feelings is at the core of your well-being.
Regulating feelings
simply means that you can temper strong emotions like anger and sadness. You are able to tolerate things that get you really upset and stressed-out without crumbling or falling to pieces. You’ve probably witnessed people who are very good at self-soothing. They seem able to let things go. Sometimes they look at the bright side of a difficult situation. They cope with stress without turning to methods that could make it worse or be harmful to them. They have the confidence that things will work out, no matter what happens.

You also know people who have no or little ability to self-soothe. When they hit a problem, they fall apart like an eggshell fracturing into hundreds of pieces. They are unable to put the pieces back together. The problem might cause them to become irritable or frazzled. They may have a hard time getting over whatever is bothering them. Sometimes, in extreme cases, people without self-soothing skills can’t even function. They have trouble getting up in the morning, going to work, or taking care of themselves.

According to attachment theory, your primary caregivers are the first people to teach you self-soothing skills. As a toddler, when you fall down and scrape your knee, you begin to internalize the caring and calming words your parents say to you while they are picking you up. Your parents also help by rocking you and talking in a slow, soothing voice. One or both parents may also kiss your knee.

As an adult, when you experience a big crisis or an emotional pitfall, you’re likely to have a repertoire of calming and soothing words in your memory that you can use to talk yourself through the problem. These calming words became paired with the soothing physiological responses that took place when a parent calmed you down by rocking you. So talking yourself through a crisis tends to automatically trigger the reduction of your physiological reactions associated with stress. You also may find yourself seeking a hug from a loved one. The hug comforts you because you grew up with a parent’s touch as a source of support and reassurance.

If you did not learn self-soothing from a parent early on, a hug may not help you at all. Moreover, without early experiences of self-soothing, you may be at a loss for what to say to yourself to work through how you feel. The intensity of your emotion can be so great that you become paralyzed or overwhelmed by how you are feeling. If this is your habitual response to stressful situations, most likely you weren’t taught the words you need to soothe yourself. Many people with eating problems have a lot of difficulty putting into words how they feel.

Although your parents may have set the stage for your self-soothing abilities, they weren’t the only people who influenced the development of this ability. You may have had other role models in your life who taught you how to self-soothe. For example, therapy clients often talk about the praise and comfort they received from a beloved teacher, mentor, or relative. When they feel alone or are struggling emotionally, the memory of the kind words spoken by this important person often help them to feel better.

Some of it depends on you. You teach yourself how to self-soothe through trial and error. For example, once on a particularly bad day, you may have pulled the covers over your head and stayed in bed. It seemed to help. More sleep calmed you down, and you woke up in a much better mood. So the next time you feel so stressed-out, you might try the same method. You also might have achieved some goals that help you to feel good about yourself, like running a marathon. When you’re feeling down in the dumps, thinking about this accomplishment can help you to feel better about yourself.

If you don’t have a strong set of skills already in place, this means it’s important to work on developing them now. The good news, according to attachment theory, is that it is possible to strengthen these skills. This is one reason that people go into therapy, to learn (or relearn) the self-soothing skills needed to cope with stressful events. If your old ways are not adequate, you can learn new ways to comfort and soothe yourself.

In the absence of strong internal self-soothing skills, eating becomes a common substitute (Freeman and Gil 2004; Macht 2008; Spoor et al. 2007). There are a number of reasons why food takes on the role of comforter. We can’t ignore the fact that people wouldn’t use it if it didn’t succeed at making them feel better. Here are some of the psychological and physiological reasons that explain why eating feels so good:

• Biochemical changes in your body.
  Some foods increase the amount of neurotransmitters in your brain or induce other biochemical changes that provide comfort. Often, this is why people are so drawn to chocolate. Chocolate raises the levels of serotonin and other chemicals that have mood-enhancing qualities (Parker, Parker, and Brotchie 2006). For example, you might feel more excited or alert because chocolate raises your blood sugar; it also has traces of caffeine. So eating can prompt physiological and biochemical reactions throughout your body that are psychologically pleasurable.
  
• Conditioned emotions.
  Certain foods are mentally linked with emotions. Think for a moment of the feelings that arise when you say the word “chocolate” to yourself. Anticipation? Joy? Bliss? Guilt? You may experience these emotions because that’s what you think you’re supposed to feel. That’s because you’ve seen or heard the word paired with these emotional words in ads and in everyday conversations.
  
• Celebration.
  Eating is strongly intertwined with the notion of celebration and holidays. When we celebrate, we feel good.
  
• Innate behavior.
  We are not the only creatures who eat to find comfort. Some animals also turn to food to regulate their stress levels. For example, when rats are injected with stress hormones, they consume more sugar. One study suggests that like rats, we turn to comfort foods to help balance our stress hormones (Dallman et al. 2003).
  
• Comfort foods.
  Certain foods are more soothing than others, especially those high in fat and sugar (Wansink, Cheney, and Chan 2003). Comfort foods are edibles like mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, potato chips, and chicken casserole—anything that tastes good and is palatable to your senses. Often, comfort foods are strongly associated with childhood. They may remind you of your mom’s cooking or food that was served at birthday parties when you were a kid. Frequently, comfort foods are carbohydrate rich, which is associated with sensations that make you feel full. And when you feel full, you feel comforted.
  
• Diverting your attention from negative feelings.
  Eating seems to take the edge off negative feelings because it distracts and diverts your attention away from whatever is bothering you (Heatherton and Baumeister 1991; Macht 2008). When you engage in another activity, such as eating, you aren’t as aware of feeling bad. In addition, you might feel bad about your eating habits rather than allow yourself to feel bad about the issue that’s really bothering you.
  
• Interrupting boredom.
  If you constantly need to be busy or you struggle with boredom, you may find eating an engaging task and therefore soothing. Finding food, thinking about what you want to eat, preparing it, and cleaning up take a lot of energy. These actions feel purposeful and seem to fill the time productively.
  
• Conditioning.
  Parents, often unintentionally, reinforce the connection between self-soothing and eating very early in a child’s life. Using a bottle to pacify a crying baby is a prime example. Parents find it easier to use a bottle rather than rocking or singing to the infant because the bottle (or the breast) works so well. Fast-forward to this child as a toddler. Her mother gives the child a cookie to distract from the pain of a scraped knee. Again, food is associated with making the child feel better. If you treat yourself to a brownie to perk up your mood, it’s likely that someone used food to console you in your past.
  
• Dieting.
  Dieters are particularly vulnerable to emotional eating (Polivy and Herman 2005). Emotional eating provides an immediately pleasurable reward rather than working toward the distant goal of becoming healthier and slimmer. It takes a lot of thought and energy to restrain one’s eating. If you’re stressed-out, it may be too demanding to find ways to reduce your food intake, which can lead to abandoning your diet plan.
  
• Arousal.
  Eating may feel good because it stimulates you. Low-arousal states, such as boredom, tend to increase food consumption. However, for some people, sadness and chronic stress are less likely to increase eating and may even lead to weight loss (Macht 2008; Polivy and Herman 2005).
  
• Habit.
  If you do anything repeatedly, it becomes a habit. Activities that feel familiar, even if they’re unhealthy, can be soothing. For example, when you go on vacation and then return home, it’s comforting to reenter your old routines, despite the fact that you would rather being sitting on the beach under a palm tree.
  
• Modeling.
  It’s likely that you picked up your means of coping from your early caregivers or by observing the people around you. People tend to model the eating behaviors of their caregivers (Wardle et al. 2002). Maybe you watched your stressed-out mom dive into a bag of tortilla chips whenever she returned from visiting her supercritical aunt. Or perhaps a friend suggested going out for ice cream when you had the blues. You may have picked up the habit of eating to calm down by watching TV. Many TV commercials push the therapeutic value of food as a ploy to get you to buy their products.
  

So why is the soothing effect temporary and ultimately unsuccessful? It is difficult, even impossible sometimes, to eat just the right amount of food to feel truly comforted. Eating is pleasurable only up to a point. When you nibble past feeling full to feeling stuffed, comfort quickly turns to discomfort. Sometimes there is a time delay between the pleasure you feel while you are eating and the physiological reactions your body has after consuming and digesting the food, not to mention that the entertainment and pleasure value of eating wears off quickly. Snacking may distract you temporarily from your worries, but those underlying feelings come right back. For all of these reasons, the soothing qualities of food are often fleeting.

As you have seen, there are many reasons why eating feels soothing. Some of these reasons may seem familiar to you. If so, that’s okay. While you read this book, keep in mind some of the specific reasons why you use food to comfort yourself.

Physical and emotional problems are likely to crop up in everyone’s life, but if you know self-soothing skills, you are much better prepared to deal with them productively. Life is full of stress and responsibility. Most people need a way to calm down almost daily. That’s why food is such an overly used self-soothing mechanism. You are seldom more than fifty feet away from some form of food at any moment, whether it’s a vending machine or a fast-food restaurant. It is legal, cheap, and easy to get. The problems associated with using food to self-soothe range from merely annoying to life threatening.

• The guilt caused by overeating is both irritating and frustrating. My clients spend many sessions discussing the guilt and shame they feel due to repeating the same cycle over and over again. Regret, shame, and guilt can get in the way of being productive and enjoying life.
  
• Feeling too full from excess eating can make you feel sluggish, uncomfortable, or overweight.
  
• The temporary highs from eating followed by guilt or the original stress that caused you to overeat in the first place can be hard on your mood and damaging to your self-esteem.
  
• Overeating may lead to weight gain, which, in turn, can lead to many health complications and problems.
  
• When people have little or no ability to calm themselves down, in extreme cases they’re in a constant state of disarray and internal chaos. Everything is a crisis. Friends and family members feel as though they are walking on eggshells around you, because your moods are intense and can be unpredictable. Unknowingly, you may become a threat to your most valued intimate relationships. You may take out your frustration on the person closest to you or place the burden of comforting you on his or her shoulders.
  
• Little or no ability to self-soothe in healthy ways is characteristic of a disorder called
  borderline personality disorder
  . People who have this disorder display a pattern of self-harm, such as chronic abuse of alcohol or hurting their bodies. Or they may damage their relationships because of their anger, or have inappropriate boundaries, which leads to them to push others away or to become too dependent on another person. Ironically, for some people, self-harm can actually be calming. It distracts from the original problem and places the pain directly under the person’s control. It is that person’s way of calming down, even it if it is potentially harmful.
  
• A number of clinical disorders are associated with problems of self-soothing. Addictive behaviors (drugs, alcohol, gambling), obsessive-compulsive disorder, obesity, anorexia, bulimia, and borderline personality disorder are but a few examples.