I’m speaking to those who have an overpowering need to consume large amounts of sugary food regularly, which vastly surpasses an already strong willpower and commitment to slow it down/stop. We may very well know how damaging sugar is to our health, and aware of the potential threats of weight gain, diabetes, and other inflammation-related issues that can arise from a high-sugar diet long-term, but logic loses to the deeper emotion-driven need that eating chocolate seems to fulfil. It is well known that chocolate makes people feel good at a chemical level, and we can’t deny how we can only relax when eating that large bar of chocolate, and we have to finish it all despite any physical discomfort that may arise during eating it. It just adds to the anxiety about it, frustration with ourselves and shame.

Various therapies may be tried, self-help books, meditations, diets and nutritional supplements – anything to reduce the intense cravings and urges. If there are no significant changes despite the therapists’ and our own sincere efforts we can feel ready to give up, wrongly convinced we are weak-willed, misunderstood and incurable.

If it is so difficult to make this desired change to your eating I believe it is for a reason, finding the reasons, and seeking to understand them is a significant key to releasing the behaviour from our lives. We can easily turn to beating ourselves up about it, but it only makes us feel bad and certainly doesn’t support us to change.

Understanding the importance of feeling secure in childhood

A key to this is in attachment theory, which has a clear route to understanding disordered eating behaviour, which I’m really excited about. The attachment theory relates the parent-child relationship as key to a child’s ongoing development. If the parent/primary caregiver responds accurately to the child’s needs consistently she/he feels secure, unconditionally loved, and that it is safe to let mum out of sight and explore. The child is securely attached. To feel loved and belonging, connected and safe are crucial for survival/life preservation and form part of our basic needs. You could say that to feel connected to another when growing up is equally important to food and shelter, if not more so.

If the child has a traumatic experience, and/or their emotional needs aren’t met she/he feels unsafe, unloved and that it isn’t safe to let mum out of sight. The child is insecurely attached. They are likely to have long-buried (and possibly forgotten) memories of being in pain, alone, unsafe, and overwhelmed. Forgot does not mean gone though, and the impact of this buried pain manifests in seemingly unconnected ways later on, and may re-emerge as regular after-dinner binges on packets of biscuits, cake or whole tubs of ice cream during adulthood, perhaps at a time when that childhood pain is reactivated by stress that wakes up that deep insecure feeling.

What time of day are you most likely to binge? What associations do you have at that time of day? How do you feel then each day? Did something happen then in childhood?
We might make a connection previously unseen – feeling scared and unsafe because of what was going on at that time of day while growing up can lead to a near constant need to self-soothe with food. The buried feelings from that time staying buried, and the persistent sense of inner emptiness that eating can’t satisfy suppressed (but never for long) under the weight of the food in our stomachs.

Overeating can be seen as a desperate call of ‘I don’t feel safe!’, so familiar in being unheard it takes us becoming frustrated and ashamed by the symptom of food addictions for us to recognise the issue and investigate.

‘Make safe’ at last to fill the emptiness

And here is an important consideration in turning this around: fostering the sense of safety and the secure attachments that have been missing will be a massive help towards effectively releasing this overeating behaviour.

Our root chakra connects us to the Earth, and is responsible for safety and grounding. Sometimes we need to go back to basics to readjust and strengthen our own foundations – this is one of those times. We can work solo or with a therapist to help our child self feel safe again, from there we can focus on releasing the pattern of insecure attachments to food and the people in our lives, and prepare the groundwork for secure attachments – to ourselves, our higher self, our pets, family and friends instead. We have a fundamental right to feel safe, but we can be so used to feeling unsafe that it can easily escape our attention. I hope this can rise more fully into your awareness now. I’d be very happy to help you explore and transform this in one-on-one sessions.

When working solo we might get caught up in the how, how do I address this? It is very useful to just have the intention that this will be released and the methods will reveal themselves in what your attention is drawn towards – trust that.