Hi ,
Feelings aren't facts.
~Anonymous
Have you ever assumed that you’re bad, unworthy or defective because you’ve felt angry, ashamed or guilty over something? Have you ever indulged your feelings of self-pity and eaten over them? Have you ever let your negative feelings spoil a whole week, month, or even a year?
How many times have you not exercised, eaten well or taken care of yourself because you didn’t feel like it? How often do you wait to do something until the mood strikes?
Feelings aren’t facts. They are temporary and will pass. Feelings don’t have the power to define you unless you let them. Feelings are a natural and necessary part of being human, and they do need to be acknowledged, but you don’t need to let them run the entire show.
Just because you feel something doesn’t mean it’s true. You react to the thoughts you think and many of these thoughts are false, irrational and based on past programming. Sometimes, as in the case of not feeling like exercising, it’s best to act in spite of your feelings.
If you observe little children, you will notice they often run amok with their unbridled emotions. Part of emotional maturity is the ability to gain mastery and some detachment over your feelings. It’s important to acknowledge them, but they don’t need to run your life and influence your whole decision making process.
You need to balance them with inquiry, logic and reason. You don’t need to act on your feelings, unless it’s safe and appropriate to
do so. It’s also important to practice discernment over when it’s appropriate to express them to others and when it’s best to keep your feelings to yourself.
If you find yourself in a work or social situation and you’re feeling emotional, you can practice detaching from your feelings until it’s safe to process them. You may need to come home and take a shower, journal, call a friend, or take a brisk walk.
You could also meditate, breathe, chant or pray and ask God or a Higher Power to relieve you of the feeling.
If you eat over your feelings, they never get worked through and you begin to feel dead and heavy inside. Sooner or later unexpressed feelings do get acted out in the form of emotional meltdowns, depression, anxiety, self-sabotage, illness, substance abuse and/or overeating episodes.
If you’re feeling depressed, it’s important to engage in some nurturing self-care that can make you feel better. If the depression goes on for too long, it’s important to get help and not give in to the feelings of wanting to eat and isolate from life. This can make it worse. In spite of your feelings, you may need to force yourself to take a walk, engage in self-care, and interact with others, which will often make you feel
better.
If you feel like bingeing or overeating, you can acknowledge the feeling, then pause and distract yourself with something else. The feeling will soon pass. It’s important to learn to ride out your urges as they’re temporary. They will usually pass in around twenty minutes.
You can write out a list of things you can do to distract yourself and then do them when the urge arises. If you’re feeling like you don’t want to exercise, the best thing is to not engage in an endless, internal dialogue about it, just do it anyway. You can tell yourself that you will do it for 10 minutes and usually once you’ve started, you can keep going for a longer time.
As you learn to pause and not act on your feelings and give in to your urges around overeating, you begin to feel more confident and empowered. You see that you do have far more control than you ever gave yourself credit for. You simply surrendered to your feelings.
I am learning to pause and delay gratification and think about the consequences of my actions. A life of acting on my feelings and urges is a life out of control.
In vibrant health,
P. S. If you're ready to let go of dieting and emotional eating, I'd love to be of assistance. Contact me. I offer a free consultation!
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