Emotion-specific MEE is for those who have the short-term MEE basics in place. Emotion-specific MEE is advanced MEE as it involves a deeper look into the emotions that we try to palliate with emotional eating. Any time you look deeper into an emotion, it can boomerang. You just might end up feeling even more emotional than you did before. Yet, traditionally, this is where we would begin in therapy: We would ask our clients such questions as “What bothers you?” And we would classically suggest something along the lines: “What if you were to journal about this instead of eating?” We rather recklessly have our clients look into an emotional abyss, without expecting that the abyss would in return look into them. Nietzsche would’ve wagged his finger at us for such naiveté. In my clinical experience, this has limited therapeutic utility and runs the risk of triggering a bout of uncontrolled emotional eating. Which is why I suggest that you first equip your client with the MEE basics of impulse-control/craving control, bottom-up emotional self-regulation, choice awareness/pattern interruption and lapse/relapse prevention training. And only then offer your client this advanced MEE. Advanced mindful emotional eating is exploratory emotional eating. Put crudely, it’s introspection with a pacifier in your mouth. Read on to see what is meant by all of this.