Emotional eating is a lonely affair by definition. Ashamed and embarrassed, emotional eaters don’t just hide from others, they also escape into mindlessness from themselves. The result is a life of eating secrecy. Emotional eaters are stealth eaters; if they eat in front of the refrigerator it’s not because they are following Geneen Roth’s suggestion of taking time for self-care but because they don’t want to get busted red-handed, so they sneak-snack. This game of hide-and-seek naturally perpetuates the cycle of shame. This chapter is about coming out of the emotional eating closet.
A mindful emotional eating partnership (MEEP) is a relationship of support around emotional eating. MEEP is a relationship of understanding. Your MEE partner understands that emotional eating is inevitable and doesn’t judge it. Your MEE partner understands that emotional eating is a legitimate coping strategy, that it is an attempt to feel better or not to feel bad, and that there is no sin in it. Your MEE partner understands that the problem isn’t emotional eating per se but mindless emotional eating. Your MEE partner understands that the issue isn’t emotional eating but emotional over-eating. Your MEE partner understands that mindful emotional eating is not a relapse but a relapse prevention measure, that it is designed to prevent emotional over-eating. Your MEE partner understands that mindful emotional eating is not about willpower, that it is a skill-set that involves choice awareness, process mindfulness and smart relaxation. In short, your MEE understands you, understands where you are coming from and, most importantly, understands where you are going with emotional eating.
A partnership of this kind requires, at a minimum, three things: a shared knowledge base, an agreed-upon narrative of non-co-dependent support with clear boundaries and explicit understanding of reciprocation. Let me explain what I mean by these three variables.
Your MEE partner must understand where you are coming from and where you are going with all this business of mindful emotional eating. They have to be just as well versed in the mindful emotional eating know-how as you are – at the very least, just as knowledgeable. They have to know why nasal breathing out is more effective than taking a deep breath. They have to have a pretty good idea of how to use pattern interruption as part of choice awareness. They have to have some experience of sitting on the riverbank of their metacognition so as to be able to remind you how to use it for craving control/impulse control purposes. They have to know the principles of mindful emotional eating so as to make sure that they don’t inadvertently shoot you down with some abstinence-based judgment. In sum, they have to be willing to know how to support you in a pinch rather than wing it on nothing more than support and a serenity prayer.
There is nothing like the hidden narcissism of codependence to get in the way of effective support. Your MEE partner must understand that they are not responsible for you or for your MEE outcomes. They should not fear enabling you because they understand that only you have the ultimate ability to do what you do. They should be willing to walk away from any kind of self-aggrandizing halo of being a rescuer or a savior or some other psychological VIP. They should be willing to simply understand, with tact and humility, that their role is that of a supportive coach assistant. No, not the coach, but coach assistant. They are not leading you to victory, they are simply reminding you of what you know about how to get to a desired mind-state. They don’t feel burdened by your failures and they don’t take credit for your success.
And furthermore they don’t feel like you owe them something. They are clear that they are not being saintly but simply self-serving. Saints make us all look like sinners. A MEE partner neither makes you look good or bad. A MEE partner is brutally sober about his or her motives. He or she is able to say: “Look, I am not doing this for you. I am doing this for me – you and I agreed to reciprocate and it is now my turn. You owe me nothing. It’s a tit-for-tat. So, relax. Stop apologizing and let’s talk about your objectives for this mindful emotional eating episode.” In setting up a MEEP it is essential to find someone who struggles with similar issues so that any given instance of MEE support is mutually beneficial. This way both parties learn from the experience. With this in mind, I initially discourage recruiting MEEPs from spouses and partners. Often times, our stress is related to our significant relationships. While a mindful emotional eating episode is an emotionally intimate connection, you don’t want to get bogged down in the discussion of why you are upset with your partner since he or she is hardly an objective party to deal with that. What is needed is a neutral enough party – a friend, better yet an acquaintance.
The basic steps to cultivate mindful emotional eating support are as follows:
1. Identify a potential MEE partner.
2. Discuss with him/her the idea behind mindful emotional eating, get on the same page.
3. Do a few hypothetical dress-rehearsals on what is expected and how a MEEP would work.
4. Explicitly address the issue of personal responsibility to prevent any concerns about enabling and/or caregiver guilt.
5. Discuss frequency/rules of engagement/any applicable boundaries.
6. Agree to pilot this mindful emotional partnership for no longer than three months and plan to formally re-assess how it’s working.
7. Re-assess the success of the partnership, exchange feedback, modify, if necessary, the rules of engagement and/or gracefully dissolve the partnership.
When feeling emotionally upset and considering mindful emotional eating as a coping intervention, get your MEEP on the phone and let them know what you are trying to do. Tell them that you are upset or stressed and that you decided to cope by eating mindfully. Show them your cards, explain that while you are not exactly hungry, you’d like to supplement comfort food with the comfort of supportive company. Ask if your MEEP is willing to just be with you, without judgment, as you take your time to mindfully snack a bit. Explain that you are not looking for therapy or advice, just for someone to be with you, to help you stay mindful while you cope by eating. Clarify that you are not looking for them to solve your problems.
While a few years ago I would suggest to my clients that they should try to “process” what upsets them with their MEEPs, my mind has changed on the matter: a better use of the mindful emotional eating partnership is for maintaining mindfulness and not for a discussion of what stressed and upset you. This kind of emotional analysis is too free form and it gets in the way of the actual mindful emotional eating. A discussion of what happened and how you feel about it and why you need to cope with it by eating becomes too chaotic and the point of practicing mindful emotional eating is lost. Instead, my current recommendation is to simply ask your MEE partner to help you stay mindful during this coping episode.
If you find yourself on the other side of this intervention, as a MEE partner, do your best to avoid being judgmental of emotional eating. Your job is to remind the other person of the fact that they have a particular method of coping, that they know what to do and you are there on a kind of standby to help them stay on track. That’s it. Ask them and/or tell them:
What is your coping intention?
Have you had a chance to wake yourself up with a bit of pattern interruption?
Now would be a good time to go ahead and wake yourself up: Draw a mindful circle.
Have you had relaxation as your first course?
Now would be a good time to have some relaxation as your first course.
Tell me what you decided to eat mindfully.
What pattern interruption techniques will you use to keep yourself present during eating?
Would eating with a non-dominant hand help?
Would eating while standing help?
Would it help if you used chopsticks with your bowl of cereal to keep your mind present?
Now take your time to have a few mindfuls.
Pause for a second and let’s talk about what it’s like in this moment?
Are you now feeling better? Are you feeling the way you wanted?
You mentioned getting seconds. Now might be a good time to sit on the riverbank a bit and watch the cravings come and go as you focus on your breath.
If you feel that the emotional eating episode is gradually becoming an episode of emotional overeating, remind yourself that you are not responsible for the other’s eating behavior and make your concern known in the form of feedback:
I am not there so I am not sure what is going on but I am beginning to wonder if this episode of emotional eating is becoming an episode of emotional overeating. How do you yourself feel about how this is playing out? Let’s talk about what your current coping intention is.
With this contingency in mind, it helps to ask from the beginning:
Hey, I’d love to be there with you as you take care of yourself… Do you want me to encourage you to slow down a bit and remind you to not overdo?
If yes, then do. If no, then just be there for them, with them, without judgment. This kind of role induction can help both of you avoid any awkwardness. Also, as part of role induction it might be useful to set a time limit for a mindful emotional eating episode. As a MEE partner you can say from the outset:
I have about five minutes. Let’s get started, ok?
And when you feel that this coping episode is beginning to take more time than you can currently afford simply excuse yourself and say:
Hey, I hope this helped. I am sorry but I do have to go. You seem to be off to a good start. You seem to know what to do. So, it’s all you from here. Let me know how it worked out. But I do want to give you kudos for reaching out and approaching emotional eating in this kind of mindful manner. Congrats on mindful coping.
As you see, it helps to be direct and to the point. This kind of matter-of-fact attitude takes the crisis out of this emotional eating episode. Your work-like tone conveys calmness. It normalizes what is going on. There is no crisis here, just another attempt at conscious, mindful coping.
At the end of this coping episode, your last task as MEE partner is to help your opponent acknowledge the success of this coping endeavor. The very fact that they reached out to you is already an important precedent. The very fact that they set out to cope by eating mindfully, with intention and a plan is a clear mark of progress. The very fact that they made the first steps (of waking their mind through pattern interruption and then calming their mind through relaxation) is a big deal and should be acknowledged as such. In other words, be prepared to help the coping person see that their motive was psychologically healthy and that their effort reflects their moment-specific best. Try to conclude on a supportive note:
You did your best. Let’s make sure we acknowledge that.
Good going! Glad for you!
It might also be useful to remind your opponent that they owe you nothing, that you too benefited from this moment:
Listen, I learned a lot from this moment too. It helps me to see how this works since I myself, as you know, struggle with this issue. Helping you with this mindful emotional eating episode is a good dress rehearsal for me as well. So, thanks for reaching out and giving me a chance to be mindful of this coping option that I too have.
End on the same matter-of-fact note as you begin. This doesn’t have to be a super-sappy bonding moment. While it is special and laden with emotional intimacy, it is also, in a way, nothing special – just another learning opportunity, just another precedent of conscious coping. Making a super-big deal about this is unnecessary drama. Treat this as a routine encounter in a two-way mindful emotional eating partnership. Nothing more, nothing less.
It goes without saying that developing these kinds of mindful emotional eating partnerships will take time. With this in mind, it helps to not wait and to get started right away. Finding a local therapist to work with you in this manner might be a great way to get started quickly. Or, if you are already in therapy, see if your current therapist would be willing to work with you in this manner. Explain that you are not necessarily looking for on-call support but merely for a chance to process your emotional eating episodes in session. Introduce your therapist to this idea, explain how it works and what you are trying to do and see if they would be willing to coach you on this. And, of course, if your therapist is willing to offer you this kind of support in real time by phone then that would be really great. There might or might not be a financial stipulation that comes with this. Which brings up a point for you to consider: How valuable is this kind of real time support to you? If you feel it would be worth it to you to pay for it, then let your therapist know and perhaps the two of you can arrive at a coaching arrangement that is mutually beneficial. After all, most therapists don’t like on-call work. Alternatively, check to see if your therapist would be able to bill your insurance for this kind of after-hours, on-demand assistance.
If all falls through and you don’t know anyone who can enter into a reciprocal MEE partnership with you, check to see if you can hire a life coach. Explain that you are looking for a set of frontal lobes for hire, so to say. Explain that you are working on a specific awareness-building/habit-modifying project and that you need someone to help you stay on track. Have them familiarize themselves with this book, with this chapter, in particular, and take it from there. Or, if you can’t afford life coaching, see if you can mobilize your social media resources to start your own network of MEE support. Dare to offer MEE-style support and you will likely get it in return. Finally, feel free to call out for MEE-type support on Mindful Eating Tracker, a feature on my book site (www.eatingthemoment.com) where my readers come to share their mindful eating moments and support each other in their mindful eating endeavors.