Hello everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Today’s episode is a Q and A episode. This is an episode where I am answering a question that was asked by a listener of the podcast. This particular question was submitted by someone who is a member of my free Facebook community. If you haven’t joined me over there, you can do that by simply going to facebook.com/groups/toomuchonherplate, all one word.

Or you can search on Facebook for the freedom from emotional eating and overeating group. The full title is Freedom from Emotional Eating and Overeating a Non-diet Community. And there are about 3,300, 3,500 members, something like that, in that community who are interested in creating freedom from overeating and peace with food. Figuring out how to eat in a way that works for them without dieting.

So, this question was submitted from that group. And today’s question that I’m going to answer on the podcast is what if feeling my feelings is just too uncomfortable? She says, I know I’m an emotional eater, but I don’t want to feel my feelings. So how do I stop overeating?

I know. We don’t like discomfort. Nobody likes discomfort. It isn’t fun. And we are constantly marketed to, to avoid discomfort. The idea that discomfort is something that you can and should not feel. You should avoid it. Buy this and you won’t feel different anymore. Buy this you won’t feel sad. Buy this and you won’t be lonely. You’ll have lots of friends or you won’t be tired anymore, or you won’t feel overwhelmed.

We have been taught the myth that feelings of uncomfortableness, that discomfort is bad. And that if somehow, we are perfect, if we get it all together, we won’t have discomfort. We’ll bypass that or surpass it somehow.

And of course, something that you have probably learned, or maybe definitely learned that helps you avoid that feeling, any feelings of discomfort or helps you avoid uncomfortable feelings is reaching for something to eat. Grabbing something to distract yourself, to numb yourself, to busy yourself. The reality is that change is uncomfortable.

Being instead of constantly doing can also be uncomfortable. That constant doing… that could be your identity. It is for a lot of busy women. Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I did today. Here’s what I accomplished today. And that constant doing can also keep you busy and feeling productive.

and not feeling other things. Constant doing can keep us away from discomfort. From uncomfortableness. When you’re busy, you don’t have to feel the things that you might not want to feel. You don’t have to know things that maybe you don’t want to know, or you don’t want to remember that you know.

We tend to avoid discomfort and food and eating are big parts of or big ways that smart, busy women cope with and avoid discomfort. You might eat to distract yourself. You eat while you’re watching TV and it keeps your mind busy so you aren’t thinking about how you’re feeling. You aren’t worrying. You avoid discomfort by procrastinating it or just not doing the thing.

And our thoughts help us with this. We tell ourselves things that help us avoid discomfort. We build stories in our head. Right? So that uncomfortable thing, it’ll be too hard. It’ll take too long. It’s a bad time. There are lots of reasons our brain can give ourselves that we create in our brain that help encourage us to avoid uncomfortable things and uncomfortable feelings.

And sometimes we do take on the uncomfortable thing, the thing that we don’t want to do, the thing that is going to make us feel a certain way we believe. But we eat at the same time so that we can push down the uncomfortable feelings that are coming up.

So, procrastination is a way of avoiding discomfort and then procrastination can turn into never doing the hard thing at all. Or coming to believe because you procrastinate and you build these thoughts and beliefs coming to believe that it isn’t possible for you. You build such a big wall that you never do the thing.

Our thoughts and our beliefs help us avoid discomfort and numbing. All those different numbing activities and numbing with food is a big one. Numbing is a big way to avoid feeling discomfort or to avoid putting yourself in a situation that you believe will be uncomfortable.

I want to keep going back to this belief about discomfort being bad. Because it’s so pervasive that it may just be something you’ve accepted as truth. There’s this belief, this idea that discomfort is bad, that if you have it all figured out, whatever is making you uncomfortable won’t.

That’s not true. Discomfort is a normal part of life and it is a very normal part of growth. And when you believe that you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable, that there’s something wrong with you if you feel uncomfortable or that you can’t feel uncomfortable, you are going to create and then embrace all the thoughts and beliefs that help you avoid the discomfort.

So, if not eating chocolate at a certain time of day, so maybe you, let’s let me back up. Let’s say you eat chocolate as a way to numb your boredom. So, if not eating the chocolate as a way to numb your boredom is uncomfortable. Your mind is going to feed you stories about how to avoid not eating chocolate as a way to numb your boredom. There’s got to be a more simple way to say that.

Your mind is going to feed you stories about why you shouldn’t give up the chocolate. Right? About how you deserve the chocolate. The rationalizations about how today is already ruined by your, the way you’ve eaten already, so the chocolate isn’t going to make a difference. About how there’s so much weight that you want to lose, that it’s a lost cause anyway. So, the, you might as well eat the chocolate.

Your brain is going to come down on the side of avoiding discomfort, which is what you would feel. Remember the scenario is, okay, I’m eating chocolate to numb my feelings. So, if I take away the chocolate, I’m going to feel my feelings. Your brain is always going to come down on the side of you being more comfortable. Or what your brain believes and what you believe is more comfortable.

So, in these kinds of situations, it is going to be really easy to just believe it’s true that, you know what, I’m too tired to deal with how I’m feeling. It’s not going to help anything to feel how I’m feeling. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway. So why should I feel the discomfort? And you know what, I deserve that reward from the chocolate. It’s been a really lousy day. It is really easy to fall into the path of avoiding discomfort. It’s really comfortable to avoid discomfort.

And then back to the listener’s question, it gets really easy to say, you know what? I don’t want to feel my feelings. So how can I, how can I change my eating and just not feel my feelings? Cause I don’t want to feel my feelings. As if it is perfectly reasonable.

Okay. I would like to give you a different perspective or a different challenge. What if you give yourself permission to be uncomfortable? What if you go beyond that? What if you decide to experiment with the idea that discomfort, being uncomfortable is not a bad thing.

If you give yourself permission to be uncomfortable, being uncomfortable is not the end of the world. It’s just uncomfortable. If you learn to be with the discomfort. If you learn to feel your feelings, for instance. If you learn to sit and watch the discomfort. I’m going to just sit and experience my feelings.

First of all, this means being, not doing. So, you start there. You feel what it feels like. You learn that it is not that bad to be uncomfortable. I know it sounds… it may sound like I’m talking in opposites here because your brain is conditioned to feel like uncomfortableness must avoid discomfort is bad. You can feel discomfort. You’ll learn that it’s not that bad. When you feel discomfort, the sky really doesn’t fall in.

There’s this myth that you can be successful and avoid discomfort. I know I’ve said it a couple of times, but I just want to keep coming back to that. Right? It is a myth that if you do this really well, you will somehow outgrow discomfort. Again, it’s that perfectionism, like, like you can be perfect enough and not have discomfort in your life. And it is so pervasive.

So, for instance, recently I was listening to this podcast. And Abby Wambach was talking about her daily habit of doing cold plunges. Right? Where you plunge yourself into ice cold water and you sit there for a while. I tried the cold shower thing. I’ve never gotten to the cold plunge thing. But I did try the cold shower thing where you at the end of your shower turn to Turn it to really cold water for a few minutes at the end of your shower.

I tried that a few years ago and yes, it was invigorating and it was energizing and I did see the benefit. I got out of that shower feeling really great, but it was really hard to turn the shower, my nice hot shower down to the cold. So, I didn’t stick with it. It was hard.

So, I’m listening to this podcast episode a couple of years later, and Abby is talking very matter-of-factly about how she does this cold plunge thing daily. And, I didn’t catch it at first. I didn’t realize it, but as I’m listening, I’m starting to spin stories in my head about how it was easy for her to do this. How she must have stuck with this cold plunge habit until it became comfortable. Right? And I’m feeling a little jealous of her persistence.

And I’m also thinking, hmm, maybe I could try it again. And if I tried it and stuck with it just a little bit longer, I’d eventually get really comfortable with the whole cold shower thing. I would enjoy it.

These thoughts happened so fast. This planning to overcome the discomfort happened so fast in my head. And before I could get any farther on the podcast episode, Abby says, you know, my cold plunge is the hardest thing physically that I do every day. This world champion athlete, this Olympian is still uncomfortable doing the cold plunges. It’s the hardest thing physically she does every day. And She does it every day. She does the thing and she has the discomfort. It is not about beating the discomfort.

Moving out of deprivation Mentality with eating and food and creating freedom from overeating it requires discomfort. Because doing things differently is uncomfortable no matter what How you mix it up and how you look at it.

Feeling our feelings is uncomfortable. Sometimes some of our feelings are uncomfortable. Training yourself not to numb, not to distract, and not to avoid discomfort with food, but to be with your life in a different way. This is uncomfortable.

It doesn’t mean the results aren’t worth having. Abby Wambach does the cold plunge every day because I’m assuming how it makes her feel and what she gets from it. Right? But you do have to wade through some crappy, swampy discomfort to get to those results.

That’s what creating long term, effective change requires for all of us. And just like with the cold plunges, you’ve got to get more comfortable with discomfort because freedom from overeating means losing the lie. It is a lie. That there’s a way to get all the discomfort out of your life.

I’m going to say that again. Creating freedom from overeating means losing the lie, letting go of the myth that there’s some way to get all the discomfort out of your life. It’s not possible. And it’s such an unhelpful belief. So how do we do this? How do you grow your capacity for discomfort?

I hope you already know my first piece of advice. It is to start small. Do not throw yourself off this cliff into this abyss of discomfort. Right? There’s no point to that. Start small. Use a delay tactic to sit with your discomfort for 60 seconds before you open your desk drawer for the candy.

Practice taking little pauses. Practice asking yourself, what do I know about what I’m feeling? And then breathe with it for just 30 seconds. Practice being with the discomfort in small steps. Not to make the discomfort go away. Remember, this is about being with discomfort. So, it’s not about making the discomfort go away. It is not to talk yourself out of it, tell yourself, oh, I really shouldn’t be uncomfortable with this. I really should be fine with this.

But to experiment with what it feels like to really be in your body with uncomfortableness. To really embody discomfort and feel what it feels like. Instead of practicing the thought, I don’t want to feel my feelings over and over again, start reframing discomfort as a normal experience. And start reframing your ability to be uncomfortable as a valuable muscle, a strength and a coping strategy.

Now, I’m not saying it is your only muscle and it’s not your only coping mechanism. Nobody aims to always be uncomfortable. But if you have to avoid discomfort, if it’s like, I can’t feel that I can’t go there. I don’t want to feel my feelings. If you have to avoid it, that comes at a cost. And often the cost for you is going to be overeating.

So, reframe discomfort as normal. And then give yourself props for strengthening your muscle to tolerate discomfort. Sitting with the discomfort, feeling discomfort, feeling your feelings in teeny bits- that’s a good thing. And your brain has to be reminded of that so that it can relearn what you’ve learned about discomfort. Or maybe unlearn what you’ve learned about discomfort.

So, experiment with choosing discomfort sometimes, not just for the hell of it, but to learn more about what happens when you do. You probably have a ton of stories in your head about why you need to avoid certain kinds of discomfort at all costs. And you’re probably going to find out that they aren’t true.

You can do something like challenge yourself to do one uncomfortable thing a day. Maybe it’s eating a mindful meal if the thought of it just makes you twitchy. If the thought of putting down your phone or turning off the TV while you’re eating makes you uncomfortable, try it. You could set a timer for 20 minutes and devote it to that thing you just don’t want to do. Do it anyway.

You could try the cold plunge or turning your shower to cold. You could say no to something even though it is really uncomfortable to do it. Remember, you are not trying to create a perfect, unattainable version of yourself who never feels discomfort. You’re not trying to learn your way out of feeling uncomfortable.

You’re experimenting with feeling discomfort and surviving and learning that maybe it’s not the big deal or as big a deal as your brain has been telling you.

If you want to expand your capacity and your comfort with discomfort, another thing you can do is simply be curious. Start watching for the patterns in your life of you avoiding discomfort. Just notice where you do it. Where do you catch yourself? And then be especially observant of how food and eating might play a role here.

So, when do you eat to numb out? When do you go on autopilot with your eating? When do you eat to distract yourself or to avoid a situation or a feeling? And then, what might you possibly learn if you didn’t do the eating thing or the obsessing about food thing in those situations?

What if you could peel that back? Step away from the eating and into the discomfort a little bit? What would that experience be like? This is a place where you use that small step idea and practice not avoiding that uncomfortableness for a short period of time. Just to be curious, just to grow a tiny bit stronger.

This is not about action taking and habit building. As you play with discomfort, you don’t want to ignore your brain. Your brain runs the show. All those thoughts and beliefs that have helped you build a pattern of using food and overeating to avoid feeling uncomfortable things, those are powerful. And they’re probably pretty entrenched.

So, what you also want to do is you want to start Building your beliefs about the value of discomfort. About why it’s okay to allow yourself to feel uncomfortable. So, what’s good about being more comfortable with discomfort? Why is tolerating discomfort helpful? How do you grow when you build this muscle and what ways are you growing your capacity for discomfort?

These are questions to think about. These are places to pay attention, make lists. Notice these things. What’s good about this? Why am I doing this? Why is it helpful to be able to tolerate discomfort? What happens when I sit with discomfort? Remember I said the sky doesn’t fall in. Well, what else doesn’t happen that I have been afraid of?

Challenge the fears. Start to create new beliefs. Start to see the new possibilities. If, if experiencing discomfort and tolerating discomfort and expanding your capacity for that is actually building a strength, that’s a whole different list of things that you never come up with as long as discomfort feels dangerous.

So, make lists and keep making them and use what you’re learning to remind yourself what you can do instead of telling yourself all the things that you can’t do or shouldn’t do or don’t want to do.

Here’s one more thing that can be helpful. If you have taken my free hidden hungers quiz, you might have discovered that there is something called a hidden hunger for compassion.

If you are eating to avoid discomfort, and that looks like mindless eating or eating on autopilot or eating to numb, then you quite likely have a hidden hunger for compassion. If you want to know more about this, if you want to get some resources for how to take care of that hidden hunger, if you haven’t taken the quiz, by all means, go to my website, TooMuchOnHerPlate.Com, click the button, take the free quiz. You will find out what your primary hidden hunger is. And you will get some resources to help you start dealing with that. And you’ll also get an opportunity to learn about this hidden hunger for compassion in a deeper way.

Here’s what I want you to hear in this podcast episode. If you are eating to avoid discomfort. Mindless eating, eating on autopilot, eating to numb. You very likely have a hidden hunger for compassion. That means you might have very high expectations for yourself. You may be hard on yourself.

You might be somebody who constantly lives in the belief that you need to be stronger. You need to be more disciplined. That you’re not doing enough. Growing your capacity for discomfort does not mean leaning into those thoughts. Growing your capacity for discomfort does not mean beating yourself up or being your own inner drill sergeant.

You can choose to do the difficult, uncomfortable thing from a place of kindness and compassion. And this is an important nuance here. It’s important to look out for. Just as a parent helps their child do something that they’re afraid of with love. You want to do that for yourself.

So, what does this look like? Pulling in compassion and being uncomfortable. Well, you can acknowledge that feeling discomfort is hard. And you can reward the crap out of yourself after you do the hard thing. Or in order to do the hard thing. You give yourself all the high fives. All the acknowledgement. You should do these things.

Discomfort and self-compassion are not opposites. Discomfort and self-compassion work together. A lot of people believe the myth that discomfort is the opposite of self-compassion. Don’t make this mistake. You don’t want to make the mistake that hiding from discomfort is self-compassion. Or that numbing out with the Tostitos after a hard day is self-compassion.

Self-compassion sometimes looks like telling yourself that you need to do the very uncomfortable thing. It’s okay to feel the uncomfortable feeling. And speaking of self-compassion, do not beat yourself up if you recognize yourself in what I’m saying. The truth is we could probably all grow both our self-compassion and our discomfort tolerating muscles.

We all have work to do here. So today, try a small step.

When you grow your capacity to be uncomfortable, you grow your capacity to be. You grow your capacity to be yourself, to be in your life. And you also grow your own power and you shrink the power that food and eating, overeating, cravings, urges to binge, all these things, you shrink the power that these things have in your life.

It’s okay to not want to feel your feelings. And just like taking a cold plunge, you can still do it.