Part 10: Mindfulness, Spirituality, and Guided Visualization-Prayers, Visualizing Happiness, and Accepting Emotions
Prayer is my primary form of meditation. If I can't stop stress eating, I recite a quick prayer to seek strength to alleviate stress eating without completely harming myself. It makes me feel less alone and calms me down. It comforts me and lets me know that there are other energies, stronger than mine, that can help me alleviate stress eating. But I can't pray alone.
-Mary
Marie spent six months in France on a study abroad program. She loved her students, but after three months, she started to miss home. France is a country where it's easy to get caught up in stress eating. Every corner of the city has crepe stands or stalls selling fresh French bread and abundant cheese. If she kept eating at that pace, she wouldn't be able to fit into the clothes she brought home when she got home.
On a particularly lonely day, Mary wandered into a church. She sat on a pew and listened to people praying in hushed French. The rhythm of the prayers reminded her of prayers from her childhood. She immediately felt calm. That familiar, comforting tone and the connection to her childhood seemed exactly what she needed for self-care. For the remainder of her overseas trip, she had abandoned her self-soothing methods of food. She realized that reciting a childhood prayer brought her comfort when she was lonely or homesick.
You don't have to be a devout religious person; just come and feel the power of prayer. Reciting a repeated prayer is simply a form of meditation. After reciting a prayer several times, people who feel comfortable with prayer often experience a positive change in their mood.
Self-soothing techniques
Find your mindfulness spirituality
(1) Choose a short prayer that has special meaning for you. It may be a passage from a spiritual book. Make sure the prayer you choose is short, within a few lines. Also, it must be something you can remember. This passage should resonate with you or move you in an emotional way. Here are some suggestions: Hymn No. 23, the prayer of St. Francis, Buddhist sayings about goodness, and prayers of peace.
(2) Repeat this passage several times until the desire to eat diminishes.
(3) If you can’t find a passage you like, or you are still looking, you can try this meditation prayer: Peace before me, tranquility beside me, serenity surrounding me, loving-kindness in my heart.
imagined happiness
My job is very stressful. I'm a paralegal, and I see many people after they've been arrested for various crimes. Sometimes, the stories people tell me are very upsetting. But I have to remain calm and professional, even when I feel like crying. I experience stress eating every day. How do I cope now? Sometimes, I detach myself from the situation. I hang a picture of a bright sunflower opposite my consultation chair. After someone tells me a sad story, I look at the picture and take a moment to focus on myself. I imagine myself stepping into the picture, which calms me down and releases me from my emotional influence. If I don't do this, I quickly eat the food I've hidden in my desk after the client leaves the room.
-Kate
Imagine you're lying on a beach, the sun warmly shining on your body. You gradually feel relaxed and happy. The deep blue waves of the ocean gently lap against the rocks. You listen intently to this sound.
As you read the above description, a vivid, peaceful image may immediately come to mind. This is a simple example of guided visualization. When you focus on guided visualization, you direct your thoughts toward positive imagery. You consciously guide your thoughts toward places that make you feel comforted and at ease.
Guided visualization has been clinically proven to be a useful technique for reducing overeating. It works because your consciousness and your body are intricately connected. When you imagine certain emotions and feelings, your body responds as if they were actually happening. Imagine you are biting into a peach. If this image comes to mind, you'll likely start salivating. So, let's return to the visualization of lying on a beach. When you imagine a safe and relaxing place, you may not consciously notice a change in your mood, but make sure your body responds with relaxation.
Have you ever imagined yourself comfortably eating ice cream in front of the TV or idly enjoying a meal? If so, you're unconsciously using guided imagery, which increases stress eating rather than stopping it. If you unconsciously focus on using food to achieve self-soothing imagery, don't be too harsh on yourself. Gently acknowledge that this behavior will interrupt your unconscious emotional eating. If you're stuck with the imagery of eating, let this guided imagery continue, but change the outcome-build an imagery of successfully detaching from food and practice the non-food activities in this book.
Self-soothing techniques
Imagine a peaceful world without food.
Guided visualization is a bit like daydreaming. It uses this power of consciousness to paint a picture of a safe and peaceful environment. Guided visualization is a great option when you're far from a real beach or don't have enough money for a spa. Visualization is a realistic alternative that can replace comfort food.
Consciously create a new guiding image. Choose a very quiet place. It could be a place you've vacationed in, your actual bedroom, or an imagined garden. Remember, this is a place where you feel safe and relaxed. As you visualize this place, bring all the sensory details into your mind. If you're at the beach, think about the smell of the ocean, the color of the sky, and the temperature. If you're in your bedroom, think about the texture of the pillows and the color of the comforter. It's important to bring as many sensory details as possible into your mind, as this will stimulate different areas of your brain, helping you experience it as if you were actually there.
Need some advice? You can try these: imagine drifting in a canoe on a quiet river, floating in outer space, strolling through alpine meadows, hiking on hillsides, taking a hot bath, sitting on a balcony gazing at the ocean, or lying on a warm beach on an island.
If you still can't form your own guiding imagery, try focusing your attention on a calming photograph. It could be a picture taken during a past trip or a landscape painting by a famous artist.
Practice creating this scene in your mind multiple times.
If these visualizations don't work for you, you can find more free guided visualization audio online.
The feeling of ending hide-and-seek
I call eating food paralysis. I fall into this state when I overeat. Eating is like an emotional paralysis; it takes me to a place where I can't feel anything. For example, I started eating a few days ago because I couldn't bear my disappointment and anger towards my boyfriend. I ate some, and then I ate more. I didn't want to experience that bad feeling. I didn't want to accept the fact that he wasn't a good person. If I were brave enough to face that fact, I could break up with him immediately. Instead, I gained three pounds, which made me even more miserable.
-Mary Ann
What is the real core of emotional eating? Using food to eliminate negative emotions implies the existence of something you cannot accept. You don't want to feel bad; you believe you can't tolerate this bad feeling. Eating is a way to escape your feelings; it allows you to temporarily distract yourself from them. You can't blame yourself for turning to something that works for you because it temporarily releases you from negative emotions or discomfort. But what if you had a higher tolerance for bad emotions?
Instead of trying to eliminate your negative feelings about food, try to accept those feelings as much as possible, and be able to coexist with them for a period of time. Feeling angry, disappointed, and stressed is normal sometimes. Learning to coexist with these negative emotions, instead of numbing yourself with food or temporarily escaping them, is called complete acceptance. Complete acceptance is a way of focusing entirely on the thing itself, not on what you want it to be. Accept the situation as it is, without trying to change it or fighting it. Complete acceptance is also an ancient technique for dealing with distressing emotions.
Emotional eating is the opposite of acceptance. It involves using comfort eating to avoid bad emotions because you are not accepting your current feelings. Acceptance does not mean you agree with or tolerate the situation. For example, when you are stressed, you may not like how you feel. You may not see it as a good thing either. However, it is a fact. When you stop fighting with how you truly feel right now, you will find more constructive ways to manage difficult emotions. You can make plans instead of worrying about how unfair it is. Achieving complete acceptance is not easy, but it is worth the time and effort to practice.
Self-soothing techniques
Acceptance language for emotional eating
When you feel the urge to eat emotionally, repeat the following acceptance statements to yourself. You can also create your own acceptance statements if you prefer.
I fully accept myself.
I accept my rollercoaster emotions.
I accept that I want to comfort myself with food.
I accept that I am not perfect, and sometimes I can't control myself from eating.
I accept that I can bear this pain without needing to numb myself with food.
I accept that I cannot change how I feel.
I accepted these feelings and set out to find comfort in a healthy way that wouldn't harm me.
Self-soothing techniques
worst-case scenario
This is a quick writing exercise to get to the heart of those emotions that make you feel uncomfortable (and thus make you feel better through food).
(1) Ask yourself, what aspect of this emotion is particularly bad?
(2) Could the degree of pain or discomfort harm your body or kill you?
(3) Does this emotion provide you with any important information? For example, overeating may be a sign of anger than you think.