Emotion Dysregulation and It's Impact on Binge Eating
Do you often feel that will power is your biggest weakness when it comes to food? It's not!
Here’s Why…..
'I turn to food when I am stressed and upset - I am an emotional eater' - is often something I hear from new clients, often with the belief that they just lack self-discipline when it come to food and just need to be 'stronger'.
This leads to a cycle of trying to practice more self-control which usually works for a few days but soon people fall back into old patterns. And this is simply because that practice never addresses the root cause of the problem.
One of these root causes can be to do with emotion dysregulation, which is the inability to manage, tolerate, or cope with certain emotional states, mostly negative ones. Instead of accepting, sitting with the mood or dealing with it in a more appropriate way, these people turn to food to help regulate their emotions again.
How Dysredulated Emotional Responses Impact Eating Behaviour
And new research by McClure et al, 2022 has shown that this can be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy too. It seems those who regularly practice this behaviour could have developed this learned response through negative conditioning, meaning when something uncomfortable or otherwise unpleasant (the emotion) is taken away in response to a stimulus (the food).
Another explanation put forwards by McClure and colleagues is that taps into the persons underlying belief of learned helplessness, so when a person is upset they believe there is nothing they can do to make themselves feel better, so enter into a trance-like state of binge eating as an only method to escape.
The good news is you can change conditioned behaviour - but it's not going to be through practicing self-discipline alone. The root cause is addressing how to better manage and cope with unsettling emotions as opposed to trying to always escape them. If you focus on this, you won't even need to practice self-discipline in the first place.
For some this may be by receiving support and learning how to implement better coping strategies such as problem solving, cognitive reappraisals, and self-compassion exercises. For others is might be receiving support and learning how to foster acceptance of unpleasant emotional experiences as opposed to trying to shift away from them.
If this resonates with you I hope this acts as a lightbulb moment that you are not necessarily lacking discipline of just an ‘emotional eater’ - giving yourself that label will surely do nothing to help you overcome it and gives you a subconscious ‘right’ to act out the behaviour which will never help in the long term.
Seek professional help to help you identify your real needs, and you will be able to break the cycle.