Life isn’t about finding happiness-it’s about experiencing life’s situations to the fullest.
Anytime you experience a heightened uncomfortable emotion, you find yourself seeking your “go-to comfort foods” for support. This doesn’t happen all the time, and you aren’t always eating large amounts of food.
You don’t identify with having an eating disorder but recognize your relationship with food is causing you so much pain.
Emotional eating is under the umbrella of “disordered eating” and often includes the following characteristics:
- experiencing high levels of stress, causing “stress eating”
- sometimes it feels as if you can’t stop overeating, but it’s not binge eating,
- feeling uncontrollable urges to eat,
- often consumes carbohydrates and/or sugary foods, due to feeling compelled and without hunger,
- experiences a release of dopamine while eating, resulting in a lowering of the original uncomfortable emotion.
At Bricolage, we understand the challenges and obstacles around managing stress and uncomfortable emotions.
As a society, we have learned to use food as an association with all emotions. In many situations, foods are adaptive-weddings, funerals, birthdays, etc. However, when food becomes the go-to in trying to deal with stress and emotions, it can cause additional obstacles, and lead someone far away from their goals and values.
We help facilitate new ways of viewing and managing emotions, to be more aware and acceptant of what you are feeling. Using skills to change unhelpful behavior patterns, exploration of stressors and practicing mindfulness, we assist clients in finding more awareness, self-compassion towards their experiences and new ways of providing themselves with things they need.
Take the first step in finding meaningful ways to experience your emotions.
