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5 Steps to Overcoming Emotional Eating
It is not surprising that many of us turn to food to calm our emotions. After all, since infancy our caregivers responded to our cries of distress by providing nourishment. Nurturing ourselves with food is a biological imperative, but for some it can lead to overeating and related health problems. If emotional eating is causing problems for you, here are some steps to gaining control.
1. Learn your triggers for emotional eating. Keep track of your urges to eat, your emotions at the time, the situation around you, the strength of the urge to eat, and your level of physical hunger. There are apps that can help with tracking, or keep notes either electronically or physically. After two or three weeks of daily tracking, you will be aware of what situations and feelings trigger your urge to comfort eat, and can make plans to engage in other comforting behaviours. You will also be more in tune with your physical hunger cues so you can tell the difference between physical and emotional hunger.
2. Learn to eat mindfully. Practice being in the moment when you eat. Take time to look at your food, smell your food, and taste your food. Explore the texture. Notice any changes in taste when you bite and chew. Be aware of how the food feels when you swallow and investigate how long the taste lingers. Not only will you gain an appreciation for the experience of eating, but eating mindfully slows us down and allows us to recognize when we are starting to feel full.
3. Learn to ride it out. When you feel the urge to comfort eat, identify the trigger and allow yourself to feel the uncomfortable emotion. Emotions are like waves; they come and they go. Another wave may follow, but usually each wave of the emotion is less intense than the one before it. Learning to tolerate uncomfortable emotions is an valuable skill that will pay off in lots of different situations, including managing emotional eating.
4. Learn new coping strategies. If riding it out is not for you, learn new ways of handling difficult emotions. One way to develop distress tolerance skills is to explore the range of sensory experiences that you find comforting. What do you find comforting to look at, touch, smell, or hear? Experiment until you find what make you feel better.
5. Seek balance in your life. No one’s life is stress free, but balancing the challenges with the joys leaves us less vulnerable to being emotionally overwhelmed. Take a hard look at your life then build in new and healthy ways to nurture yourself.
29 October 2024
How to identify feelings
Sometimes it can be hard to know what we are feeling. Maybe you’ve been told that some feelings are bad or that what you are feeling is wrong. If you grew up in an emotionally chaotic household you may have learned that feelings were dangerous and best surpressed. Or maybe, as if often true, you are feeling several things all at once and some of them are even contradictory!

Despite the challenges, its important to be in touch with our emotions. Feelings can give us the energy we need to face challenges, communicate to others our state of mind, and communicate to ourselves. Emotions help us identify our values, needs and wants as well as signal that something needs attending to. Emotions are not good or bad or “negative” or “positive”. Everything we feel is valid, although some feelings are more comfortable to experience than others. Finally, stopping to name our emotions gives us some time and space from our feelings, and helps to keep our emotions from escalating.

Here are some ways to help put a name to our feelings:
- What just happened? What is this feeling a reaction to? Did something not turn out the way you hoped? You might be feeling sad. Did you just receive a wonderful surprise? You might be feeling happy.
- What interpretations are we making about this event? If you believe you’ve been treated unfairly, you might be feeling angry. If you believe you might lose someone important to you, you might be feeling fear.
- What are you feeling in your body? Emotions affect everyone differently, but there some basic physical reactions that are common. For example, fear may make it hard to breathe, causes our heart rate speed up and muscles to tense. Butterflies in the stomach is another common effect of fear. Sadness feels heavy, saps our energy and motivation, while anger feels hot. When we are angry our muscles tense and our hands may clench. Next time you feel a strong emotion pay attention to your body to discover your unique physical manifestations of emotion.
- One of the quickest ways to identify emotions is to be aware of your impulses. For example, if you feel like fleeing, your probably afraid. If you want to ask for forgiveness, you are probably experiencing guilt. If you have an urge to smile and act silly, you are probably happy.
Naming and accepting our feelings opens up a whole new world of experience, adding colour and texture to our lives. While it might take some effort, if you want to revel in the pleasant feelings and better tolerate the uncomfortable ones the work is worth it.
22 April 2024
The Function of Depression

It is no secret that how we interpret something has a big influence on how we react to it. For example, a friend cancels a lunch date with no explanation. I can choose to believe that they hate me, have something better to do, have an emergency, or overslept and are adjusting their schedule accordingly. By choosing an interpretation, I am also choosing whether to feel hurt, worried, or disappointed. The interpretation I choose is influenced by a variety of factors including past experience, temperament and sometimes by societal norms and expectations.

Depression as an illness

Depression has been with the human race since at least the start of recorded history, and probably long before that. How we interpret depression, what we see as the cause, has changed with the times. Since perceived cause determines perceived cure, how we deal with depression has also changed with the times.

In the latter half of the past century, biological explanations of depression overtook psychodynamic ones. Depression was seen and marketed as a chemical imbalance in the brain, and treatments focused on correcting that imbalance. This shift lead to new antidepressant medications that have saved lives and enhanced the quality of life for millions. It also legitimized depression as a medical disorder, hopefully relieving some of the stigma around mental illness. The downside of acknowledging only biological causes of depression is that it puts recovery in the hands of medical professionals and out of the hands of the individual experiencing it.

Depression as a signal

A recent study, summarized here: https://www.psypost.org/the-surprising-psychological-benefits-of-framing-depression-as-a-functional-signal/ looked at whether shifting one’s understanding of depression from a disease to having an important function influences how the individual responds. This functional interpretation flows from the evolutionary perspective: does having depression give an advantage in certain situations; does it serve an important function in survival?

They found that those who interpreted their depression as a sign that something needed to be looked at in their lives had a greater belief in their own agency and ability to overcome depression than those who saw depression as an illness. They also engaged in less self-stigma, and had stronger beliefs in the adaptiveness and manageability of their condition (measured by endorsing items such as “experiencing depression can lead to new insights”). These positive impacts were stronger among women participants than men.

This study did not explore whether this change in perspective was related to the rate or likelihood of recovery from depression. Anecdotally though, in my experience those who take an active role in recovering from depression have better outcomes. Whether or not depression truly serves an adaptive function we may never be able to prove or disprove, but it seem clear that a what we chose to believe about depression can have an impact on how we chose to deal with it.

28 March 2024
On Change

25 March 2024
Managing Depression and Anxiety at Work

The Canadian Journal of Behaviour Science (Roberge, C, Meunier, S., Cleary J. 2024 vol 56, No 1 10-19. Canadian Psychological Association) recently republished a study that explored the strategies used by those experiencing symptoms of depression and/or anxiety to manage their symptoms and enhance their ability to function effectively at work.

While the sample size was small, the participants all well enough to be at work, and not including any objective measures of the effectiveness of these strategies, their results fit with the therapeutic tenets of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based CBT approaches in the treatment of depression and anxiety. In short, although the study was flawed (as most social science research is), the authors have happened upon some real and useful strategies.

The authors break these self-management strategies into three categories: behavioural, cognitive and affective.

Behavioural strategies for self-managing depression/anxiety symptoms at work.

Behavioural strategies were, according to the study, the most frequently mentioned by the study participants. These strategies include:

Managing tasks. Examples include setting realistic objectives and prioritizing tasks based on the participants mental state. Tackling less complex tasks when a person’s concentration is not at its best for example. Taking notes, asking for reminders and clarifying expectations are other examples.

Managing work time. Examples of these strategies include using time management tools such as a planner, taking breaks to recover energy and disconnect from work tasks, and participating in physical, relaxing or recreational activities during lunch breaks.

Managing workspace. Strategies such as personalizing one’s workspace, ensuring physical and ergonomic comfort and keeping the workspace clean and organized.

Managing the boundaries between work and personal life. Limiting contact with workplace and coworkers during evenings, weekends and holidays for example, or creating a transition time between work and home, possibly on the daily commute.

Using time off to recover energy. These strategies include engaging in activities that allow for psychological detachment, that promote relaxation, that enhance feelings of usefulness and competence or simply engaging in enjoyable and pleasant activities.

Taking care of physical health. Behaviours such as following a schedule, adopting good sleep patterns, eating healthy, limiting alcohol and recreational drug consumption, taking prescribed medication and engaging in physical activities all enhance our physical and mental health.

Cognitive strategies for self-managing depression/anxiety symptoms at work.

Practicing self-compassion. Strategies in this category include adopting a kind inner voice and taking time to recognizing and value our achievements.

Managing negative thoughts. These approaches include intercepting negative thoughts and transforming them into something more positive, focusing on something other than the situation, acknowledging challenging situations as temporary and keeping things in perspective.

Adopting a positive outlook. Examples are learning to look on the bright side, practicing positive affirmations, being grateful for positive work experiences, and understanding mistakes as learning opportunities.

Accepting situations as they are. For example, accepting the reality of having mental health challenges, and accepting that we have no control over some situations and all other people.

Living in the present moment, developing self-awareness and defining oneself by more than work are other useful cognitive strategies.

Affective strategies for self-managing depression/anxiety symptoms at work.

The least commonly used strategies in this study, probably because directly changing how we feel is nearly impossible. However, there are some ways to cool our emotional reactions. These include identifying and naming emotions, venting, and stepping back or away when the emotional temperature is rising.

If you are living with chronic or recurring depression or anxiety you are probably already using some of these strategies. As for the other strategies mentioned, it is very easy to say “adopt a positive outlook” and not so easy to do. But if you see a self-management strategy on this list that you suspect might work for you, explore it further. There are tons of great self-help books with a CBT perspective, there is information online, there are apps, and there are therapists and life coaches to help you take action.

6 March 2024
How to be an Ally

Recently attended a panel discussion called Unveiling Equity: Tackling Structural Racism. Learned lots especially the importance of listening. After all, when we’ve been lucky enough (priviledged) to not have had an experience, how can we know how to support those that have lived it? A recording of the event can be found here:

26 February 2024