Sometimes Food Helps
Updated: May 15, 2019
Sometimes we don't have all the tools we need.
This life is complicated and overwhelming and traumatic at times. It can be lonely and stressful and full of pressure.
Sometimes food helps.
Is food helping you? Is it a tool you're using to calm down, or to relax after a day is over? Is it a tool to deal with anxiety, to cover up pain, to keep you distracted from your intuition, which may well steer you in a direction you're not willing to go at this time? Is food protecting you from being overwhelmed? Is it keeping you safe by numbing your thoughts about what really matters to you, what's too big to look at, what feels impossible to change? Sometimes food helps us. Sometimes it serves us, or protects us from feeling or experiencing that which we're not equipped to feel.
Our society is not one which emphasizes all that we truly need. We are distanced from our spiritual needs, our need for community and support, our need to be unique and create and explore, our need to be seen and accepted as we are, not as the world tells us we should be.
Our modern world does not support our need for stillness. For peace. For simplicity. No, our society gives us few options. We're taught to be good, to be the same, not to make a fuss, to conform. And we think everyone is getting it except us- that it's working for everyone else, but somehow we're different.
Food helps.
Food is so powerful that it can change our state. It can trick our brains to think we've done something for our own good. It tells us we're on the right path. Those chocolates or chips or candy are received with a resounding YES in your brain. On some level it feels right.
But more deeply it feels wrong. Intuitively we know it's out of alignment with our true needs. Intuitively we know the action of pushing food into our bodies in secret isn't serving us. But for a short time it calms the acute need to feel safe and protected.
If food weren't there for you, what would be waiting? What is food helping you avoid? What do you really need?
This week I challenge you to find one thing that's sitting below the habit of food, below the feelings of shame and regret and frustration. This week find one area of your life that needs attention, and then take one simple baby step to give it the attention it deserves.