Have you ever wondered if something you are doing – your own thinking – is the root of what is sabotaging your success?
People often come to me saying they lack willpower, or they are not smart enough, or they don’t have enough drive, or they have too many things going on, or they don’t have enough money and these are the reasons they have not met their goals.
These are actually rarely the issue. Because there are people who have your same challenge and are still meeting their goals! The thing they have going or them is how they think and talk to themselves when they start struggling. If we avoid our thoughts and fears, or start overthinking and stressing, we will struggle to make the progress we deserve in life!
Answer the questions below to discover if you are missing out on your best life because of something you have the power to upgrade: your own thinking!
If you answered more than one yes in the above questionnaire, it’s likely your self-talk and thinking are the root of what is keeping you from your goals. The good news is that you can learn the tools and skills to change that! Take the first step to change that by scheduling a strategy session, or follow me on Instagram or YouTube to learn more about how I can help you!
Most of us weren’t taught how to identify our emotions, much less how to process them. We learned to push through. To be strong. To be grateful. To “just keep going.”
But emotional intelligence gives you something far more powerful than endurance: options.
Choice in how you respond. Choice in what story you believe. Choice in how you repair connection. An invitation to prioritize connecting and hearing yourself and your kids instead of trying to look perfect, or get everything “right” on the outside while you feel you are drowning inside.
When you understand your internal world, you no longer live at the mercy of overstimulation, guilt, or exhaustion. You can actually lead and mother yourself with love, even on the days when motherhood feels like a whirlwind you never signed up for.
And here’s the beautiful part: your kids don’t need you to be perfect! What they need most is to watch you navigate your emotions with honesty! They need to see you love yourself through the mess with grace. This is what will teach them how to manage their own inner mess much more than the pattern of stuffing your feelings then shaming yourself for exploding later.
It’s true there’s a hidden mental and emotional load in motherhood that no one truly prepares you for. It looks like…
Being attuned to every shift in your child’s mood
Holding the schedule, the meals, the social balance, the household tone
Managing the unspoken expectation that you have to be the stable one
Feeling responsible for everyone’s experience with few to no breaks
When you feel overwhelmed, irritable, or like you’re losing yourself—it’s not because you’re doing motherhood wrong.
It’s because you’re human, and the amount of time, attention and care required from you is more than you will ever experience at any other time in life under any other circumstances. Your body is signaling that you need attention, too!
Emotional intelligence teaches you to listen to that signal instead of powering through it.
The way you process your emotions is shaping something much bigger than today’s behavior—it’s forming the emotional safety your children will carry into adulthood.
When your kids watch you express feelings without exploding…
When they watch you apologize with strength, not shame…
When they watch you honor your needs instead of abandoning yourself…
When they see you turn to God not as a last resort but as a source of grounding…
They learn something life-changing:
Emotions aren’t dangerous. Emotions aren’t something to hide.
Emotions are invitations to truth, honesty, love and connection.
That is a legacy richer than any perfectly structured day, or any perfectly clean house.
This modeling will help them succeed in work, life and relationships, but most importantly, it will help YOU enjoy your once in a lifetime motherhood experience!
This might sound harsh, but if you are spiraling and feeling overwhelmed, is not about the things happening in your life. Yes, the emotional, mental and physical demands of life can be incredible, but spiraling is about something bigger. It’s about a lack of trust in yourself, and a lack of tools to help you get back on track. These are things you can change, and if you do, your inner world will start to be spiral proof!
There is NO SHAME here. If anything, this just highlights the impossible expectations we tend to live under. We want to stop spiraling, but schools, parents and life rarely hand us the right tools! Imagine trying to bake a cake without an oven, pan, bowl or spoon. No one can bake a cake without any tools! Did you ever try mixing cake batter in the air with just your hands? Did you ever try making a cake without an oven?
Yet, somehow, we think we should be able to not just live life, but we should be beautiful, rich, successful, have a family, be happy, and do it all with few if any actual tools to help ourselves emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The good news is, that with a few tools and some practice, making a cake and living a happy life without big spirals is totally possible!
The truth I have found in my own life, is that spirals have decreased, even as responsibility and demands on me have increased. How could this be? Because I have worked on myself to become a “master chef” of emotional management, so the things that used to throw me off, do not even register as issues anymore. Bake a cake? I can do that in my sleep! Baking 20 cakes? Still easy, I have practiced it so much, that more of the same doesn’t scare me!
Here is an example, 15 years ago, it went to my car and it didn’t start. I spiraled. I was afraid I would need to buy a new car, I didn’t have the money, I was stressed I’d be late for my appointment and be judged, I asked myself why bad things kept happening to me, I ruminated on how I got such bad luck, I didn’t know how to get it repaired, etc. My mind went on and on in a fight-or-flight mode and that honestly made everything worse. I stated shaking, I froze, I didn’t know what to do next. It literally ruined my day.
I realized how much I had grown when recently, I went to my car, realized I had a flat tire and my entire emotional response was, “bummer, that was unexpected.” I didn’t know how to fix a tire or replace it. But I didn’t stress at all! Instead, I used the tools I have developed and practiced the last 10 years. I validated that it threw a lot of plans off but also affirmed myself that I was a flexible and adaptable person who could gracefully roll with the unknowns of life. I encouraged myself to remember that peace was a bigger priority than anything else in my life, because with peace comes clarity and direction and happiness. I encouraged myself to remember that bad things are 5% what happens and 95% how we react and I was in control of writing that narrative, no one else would. So, I took a practical step to start by asking someone who knew about what to do and they helped me, and I moved on with my day.
YOU can have this power, too! Below is a free look at a 4-step tool I created and use when I feel myself spiraling and want to get back to loving life again.
Validate whatever you are feeling. Validating doesn’t mean we “should” feel that way, it doesn’t mean the feeling is right or wrong, it just means it’s there and it’s being honest about what we think. “I feel exhausted” “I feel so overstimulated” “I feel powerless” “I feel embarrassed.” Remember, this emotion is about you, nothing and no one else. I might even add a thank you! “Thank you, powerless feeling, for helping me realize this is an area where I can reclaim my power!”
Love yourself. Love transforms faster than hate, anger, or criticism. Encouragement helps us get out of our negative spiral and focus on our power. Always lead with a positive observation, followed by a more loving way of thinking if necessary. “I am doing my best and it’s okay that everyone has limits.” “I appreciate myself for wanting to hold it together for so long when I am struggling, that is what I was taught to do and I was trying to do things right. But that is not the best method to be a happy. Instead, I need to give myself what I need now.” “No one can truly control any other person or situation, and healthy people know that even if unhealthy ones judge me.”
Identify the need and a strategy to get it. “I need 5 minutes of quiet time.” “I need to prioritize better sleep tonight above everything on my list.” “I need to remember other people are responsible for their moods and actions, not me.” “I need to start by using Chat GPT to find a practical next step.” “What is one thing I can try that might help right now?”
How might I prevent this, or improve the dynamic if this happens again? This is an important step to help us feel more confident going forward! If we feel like the thing that derailed us is solvable and we will be better at dealing with it the next time around, we grow our emotional capacity and resilience! There is one less thing on our list of things we are afraid might happen and ruin our day, and we are one step closer to being freer!
Now image this: if practice and intention with this 4-step tool was the only thing you had to master in order to stop spiraling?
By practicing taking these 4 steps, you will very quickly start to feel the process become automatic! These days, I don’t need to print it out, rehearse it, or keep it on the fridge to remind myself. After a while, your brain simply rewires this to be your normal process and you get to focus your time and energy on enjoying life without emotional swings!
If you want help mastering this method fast, reach out for a free consultation, to learn how I can help you be the person you want to be!
If you’ve ever googled, “how to stop feeling overwhelmed” as a mom, this is for you!
There’s a misconception that peaceful moms never get angry, never cry, never have a frustrated moment while buckling a squirming toddler into a car seat.
Let me tell you the truth:
Emotionally intelligent, peaceful moms do get angry.
They do feel overwhelmed.
They do have days where nothing fits and everything feels too loud.
What makes them different isn’t the absence of emotion—it’s what they do with it, and how quickly they shift from the feeling to taking action with the following steps:
1. They slow down enough to name what’s happening.
“What am I feeling right now? Is this frustration? Is this sensory overload? Is this fear of failing?”
Awareness is always step one.
2. They ask themselves what they need.
“Do I need a moment alone? Do I need help? Do I need to take some deep breaths? Do I need to identify a lie I am thinking about my worth, value, or ability?”
Needs aren’t weaknesses—they’re signals of wisdom.
3. They take action to repair instead of shame-spiral.
After a tough moment, instead of drowning in guilt, they reconnect and show love to themself first, then to their child.
To themselves: “I’m sorry I didn’t take more time to listen to you first, and hear what you needed before I snapped. I want to do better to hear you and give you a voice to have needs, too instead of igoring you in the future.”
To their child: “I am sorry I yelled. That wasn’t your fault. I was upset with myself/the situation, but I am working on catching it faster, so I don’t feel so overwhelmed. I love you.”
That repair does more good than being calm all the time ever could. It also teaches your child you feel this way about them when they act out, and how to be kind and love themselves through their own moments of reaction in the future.
4. They honor their internal world so they can lead their external one.
Your home follows your nervous system more than your to-do list. In order to be a peaceful mom, we need to get honest about what truly matters most to us. Then, to live by that truth.
As an 80-year-old grandma, which of the following do you want to one day tell your grandkids?
First option: “I am so glad your mom saw I cleaned the floor every day even if it meant I was stressed out and yelled at her, it was worth it for the clean floor. Now you get yelled at because I passed that lack of awareness and way of operating onto her.”
Or, option two: “I am so proud I learned that the emotional energy I bring to my house impacted my kids more than the items on our list. At first, I was upset and stressed a lot, but I grew and learned to think better thoughts and have a better perspective about having a slightly dirty floor, and a system to make sure it gets cleaned enough that I am not overwhelmed by it. I am so glad I learned to accept myself honestly, stop yelling at your mom and that because of that, she feels happy, peaceful and safe around me. Not only that, I taught her how to create a loving, emotionally strong and safe home for you as well.”
Zooming out to look at our life from the bigger perspective helps us realize that honoring our internal world first leads us to live a happier life full of pride! It’s worth the investment of time and energy to take the steps to create a more peaceful motherhood today!
If there’s one thing I wish every mom knew, it’s this: you are not just allowed to feel everything you feel, you are supposed to feel it AND to love and encourage yourself through it! If you know how to embrace the emotions and learn from them instead of running from them, you will not only be a better mom – you will be a much happier one, and teach your kids how to manage their own emotions with grace at the same time!
Motherhood is beautiful, but it’s also stretching in ways that tug on every part of your identity, your patience, and your relationships. It exposes the places we’ve avoided, magnifies the false stories we’ve been carrying, and invites us—daily—into the kind of growth most people might never pursue on purpose.
But, there are ways to grow gracefully and peacefully, and ways that might look and feel very chaotic and overwhelming. I’m on a mission to help moms experience peaceful, joy filled growth, so that we can enjoy the once in a lifetime moments that motherhood offers us!
Here’s the wild truth few people will tell you: our overwhelm is not about our kids, or about the demands of motherhood. It’s about US! It’s about our emotional state and the patience, love and level of genuine connection we have with ourselves and all our emotions!
Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to perceive, understand and manage your own emotions and influence the emotions of others (aka your kids). This is what I wish most overwhelmed moms knew! If your emotions were perceived, understood and managed, it unlocks your ability to actually show up as the mom you want to be!
Now, I am not talking about faking or forcing emotions like gratitude or peace, that is the opposite of perceiving and understanding your true emotions. Instead, I want to help you feel comfortable accepting and appreciating the emotions you are genuinely feeling and understanding what they are motivating you to do or think differently! When we think or do things differently, and in a healthier way, we will naturally get the emotional feedback of peace without even trying!
Here is a practical example: if the house is a mess and I do not take time to perceive and understand that I am feeling inadequate, overwhelmed, ashamed, embarrassed, or like a bad mom because of the mess, I will naturally start to get angry or stress clean. From my child’s perspective, I am bringing the emotions of stress, anger or frustration into their world and they don’t know why (even if it’s not directed at them).
They don’t know I am telling myself the story that I am no good or that I emotionally can’t handle seeing the mess. They are not telling themself that story about you. They might react to our stress or anger by acting out, or being fussy, shutting down, being mad at us for bringing that energy, or not cooperating. I might then snap at them because I am so full of my own chaos internally and trying to clean the house at the same time and I just CAN’T HANDLE ANOTHER THING!
So how does a peaceful mom approach this differently? First by focusing on their own emotions and becoming very comfortable loving and accepting every emotion. If I can practice perceiving and understanding I feel like a bad mom because of the stories others have told me, or what I tell myself about what the mess means about me, or that the mess means I have to feel overwhelmed and I am powerless, then help myself correct those lies…my emotions, experience and outcome is wildly different. At the core, emotions like stress, fear or anger are often just trying to get our attention to help us see that we are believing a lie-that’s all.
But what does it look like practically? It could start with us intentionally changing our thoughts. For example, “I understand why I would feel upset about the house being a mess, I believed a lie that a clean house means xyz about me, and I am feeling shame. I am trying to get rid of that shame by focusing on the house and stressfully trying to fix the house. Instead, I am choosing to believe that the mess does not mean those things about me. It does not mean I have to feel shame. It may also mean I can feel pride that I let my children grow, explore and be themselves in the home we share, and now I can also teach them how to create order in their environment. I choose to love myself for feeling stressed and not wanting to feel shame, and also reassure myself it will be okay and we can create more order from a place of love and care for myself if that is what I truly need.”
In the second scenario, my child gets a version of me who has been mothered! They get a peaceful version of me who finds a way to make cleaning up fun or like a game that is connecting for us and them! (Let’s see if we can clean this room in 5 minutes, let’s clean up all the blue things first, I am excited to see how beautiful this room can look, etc).
Becoming a peaceful mom (for your own sanity first) is about becoming aware of what’s happening inside you so you can show up with intention instead of reaction. Motherhood forces this work in the most sacred, often inconvenient ways, but at the end of the day, we and our family benefit from the work.
Giving your kids the gift of a happy, peaceful, loving, emotionally available mom is one of the best things you can do for them, for their internal world (thoughts and emotions)! It also happens to be one of the best things you can do for yourself, your self-esteem and happiness!
I don’t believe in shortcuts to success, but what I do believe in is knowing which skills and mindsets have the greatest return on our time investment. After spending 18 years investing in my own growth and helping others for 14 years, I have seen that emotional intelligence (EQ) is the place everyone should start if they want to take explosive steps towards change.
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive, understand and manage your emotions and influence the emotions of others. Research shows that our level of EQ will determine more of our personal, relational, financial and professional success than anything else. In fact, up to 80% of our success can be attributed to emotional intelligence. It doesn’t just help you solve the problem at hand, but helps you learn how to solve many problems before they start, and be on good terms with people while you do!
Some quick stats if you’re not convinced: a UC Berkeley study found that EQ was 400% more likely to predict success than high IQ. According to Harvard Business School, 71% of employers believe hiring someone with high EQ is better than hiring a candidate with more technical skills. A whopping 90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence. So, if you are aiming to be successful at anything: relationships, work, or motherhood, EQ is a fundamental peice of the puzzle!
But here is the most shocking statistic: according to one study, the majority of people THINK they have high emotional intelligence, but only 15% actually do.
For example, in my work, I often hear people say things like, “I am not really an emotional person, so emotions don’t cause problems in my life.” But, if you are not aware of your emotions and just got good at stuffing them, according to the definition, if you cannot perceive and understand your emotions, and you do not have high EQ.
Emotional intelligence training gives you the skills to work confidently with your emotions, and harness them to create better results. It helps you feel capable even when you have uncomfortable emotions like stress, pressure, anger, or discouragement. It helps you create emotions like determination, confidence and empowerment. This can absolutely catapult you towards your goals.
Emotional intelligence is one of the easiest paths to help you reach your goals quickly, and working with a qualified, high quality coach is the fastest way to increase emotional intelligence! The only question is; what will it cost you in lost time and potential to try to master it on your own? What would you have to lose to gain all the education and skills that can be taught to you through an expert in a fraction of the time?
If you want to find out more about how I can help you use emotional intelligence to your advantage in work, or in your relationships, schedule a strategy session today and we will get you moving forward ASAP!
Sadness is not wrong, bad, or negative. It is uncomfortable, and that discomfort is meant to motivate us, but let’s stop blaming sadness for trying to help us! Yes, you read that right; sadness is always trying to help us. However, if we have been taught to ignore it, bury the feeling, or leave it unresolved, the messages can pile up, and we can actually end up feeling powerless instead of empowered.
As you may know from a previous blog, emotions are like the nervous system for our mind, thoughts, and behaviors. When we feel too cold or too hot, we don’t blame our body for feeling that way. We get up and change something else: our environment, clothes, or the thermostat. Sadness wants to help us know we can do something that will make us feel better, safer, or more comfortable.
Like an alarm going off that is ignored, it will get more and more uncomfortable until you feel like you can’t stand it anymore. Like any other skill, it takes time and practice to get better, and listening and knowing how to resolve it, but the good news is that with practice, you can start to feel like it happens easily and naturally.
The messages sadness sends and the things it is motivating you to resolve are actually countless! It’s like any relationship; you start to notice trends and themes about what you care about as you slow down and really listen. Then, you get better at predicting your emotions are telling you they care about. To give you an idea of where to start, below are 11 messages sadness might be sending and ideas about what action it needs from you in order to stop spam messaging you. As I said, the things sadness may say are limitless, so these examples may not be any of the messages sadness sends to you, don’t think I am suggesting any of these will resolve your specific kind of sadness, or that they are your best action step forward. They are just examples.
1. There is something you need to do less or more. If you are constantly overextending yourself for others, sadness may be the emotion to alert you to take action to set boundaries, pull back, and take better care of yourself. If you are not investing at all in others, it may be telling you to do more for others, get out of your own head, or boost your confidence by helping others.
2. You are low on comfort and positive feedback from your environment and/or yourself. All humans need comfort and positive feedback. If others are not providing this, you are not allowing yourself to accept it, or you are not giving enough to yourself, it’s the job of sadness to inform you. Sadness may be saying you need to advocate for yourself to be seen or do something to show appreciation for yourself!
3. You need rest and a break from anger. Sadness gives you a way to take a break from frustration or anger. You may cry or sleep to release the tension that sadness knows is too much stress for your body to be holding.
4. Something meaningful that you value is not able to be grasped, is lost, or could be lost one day. Sadness makes space for us to grieve, which helps us process and make sense of our new life without the person or thing. Sadness wants you to know what you value and be intentional about creating, investing in, or having more of in the future.
5. You are using unhelpful thinking styles. The sadness alerts you that your thinking style is hurting you. It doesn’t help you to put yourself down, label, mind-read, or catastrophizing. Sadness wants you to make a correction to practice thoughts that are healthier for you.
6. You feel like you performed under your potential. By noticing that, you realize and are motivated to take steps to reach what your potential really is. You can put in more time or work to change it or accept yourself and your limited resources and time in life.
7. A hurt or mistreatment has happened to you. You were tricked or betrayed and you need to slow down, find red flags and find better protect yourself in the future, gain healing, or regather your strength.
8. You realize that things are better than they have been at other times and are grieving or processing the realization of what you missed out on before. Sadness wants you to be aware of what you want to continue to create for your future and what was not best for you.
9. Your expectations were not met. Sadness teaches us to create more accurate and realistic expectations and reminds us to gain resilience to setbacks by planning and reminding us to take our next best action based on what actually did happen, not what we wished happened.
10. Your blood sugar is low, hormones are off, or you have not had enough sleep. It wants you to get what your physical body needs to feel happy.
11. You are getting your value from the wrong places. You achieved something and feel sad because you put so much time and energy into something you actually, authentically, don’t care much about. Or, you didn’t achieve something, but feel the pressure of others to achieve it and are wasting precious time trying to impress them.
Emotions are not random, vague, or harmful. When we are grateful for them and open to their communication instead of resisting it, we tend to act with more clarity and feel much less turmoil. Much of the emotional stress we experience is due to fighting our feelings instead of working with them. How we act after having an emotion and how we resolve them makes all the difference. If we are proactive and positive towards them, no matter how uncomfortable, they will lead us to our best life!
If you’d like expert support figuring out what sadness and other emotions are teaching you about yourself and your best life, I invite you to schedule a strategy session today!
Emotions are sometimes labeled as the problem, but emotions are never the problem. Emotions are meant to help lead you to your best life. Our interpretation of them is what gets us stuck. When we don’t know what our emotions are saying and how to resolve them, it can cause us to act or react in strange, unhelpful, hurtful, or self-sabotaging ways. When we practice understanding the message our emotions are trying to communicate to us for our own good, we will live a happier, more peaceful, and more fulfilling life.
Emotions are messengers. They are not good or bad. They give us information. If we are open to receiving the information an uncomfortable emotion is sending and resolving the issue, it will naturally and easily go away without a fuss.
One could say our emotions are much like our nervous system. No one who accidentally touches a hot stove gets upset at their hand hurting and blames their hand for burning. No one says, “I hate my hand; it is so weak; why could it not be strong? Why did it let the heat get to it? What kind of a wimpy hand would get a burn? I expect better!”
Someone might rightly blame the environment (the hot stove or the person who left it on without telling us) before blaming their hand for feeling hot. Their hand didn’t spontaneously burn; the burning was an uncomfortable feeling that helped them create change to no longer be hurt by their environment. By recognizing the stove is hot, they can then create solutions to carefully avoid that pain (or worse pain) in the moment and in the future. That is very helpful to know in order to stay healthy, even though the experience is not comfortable.
Uncomfortable emotions tell us that something is wrong and we have a need. Every uncomfortable emotion tells us that something needs to change either in our thinking OR our environment. If I feel sad, I am thankful to have that feeling! Why? Because it cares about me, wants me to be healthy, and it is telling me something can change to keep the sadness from sticking around longer.
The sadness may be telling me someone is mistreating me, and I need to change who I spend my time with or set better boundaries. Maybe the sadness is telling me I keep imagining a future of doom that is not realistic, and my thoughts need to change because those thoughts are hurtful to me and wasting my time and vitality. Maybe the sadness is telling me I lost something I value, and it is teaching me what I value and what I want to spend more time doing in the future. No matter what the message is, my emotions are sending the message to try to help me out. They want me to find a resolution, so they can stop spamming me with the same message.
It takes practice to learn the language of our emotions, interpret the message correctly and identify what needs to be understood or resolved. The good news is that, like any other language, the more you practice, the easier it gets.
I used to be completely overwhelmed by my emotions. There were so many messages coming, and I had no interpretation skills. I felt like listening to gibberish. It felt like not only did it not make sense, but the reactions I had to my emotions were constantly sabotaging my success. Now that I understand what emotions are for and how to interpret them, I am able to resolve most of my emotions as they are happening. I have become fluent, so to speak. If something upsets me, I resolve it. When I resolve it, the emotion stops spam messaging me, and I get to move on with my day.
The skill of understanding and resolving emotions doesn’t develop overnight any more than the skill of driving a car or learning a new language. Thankfully, like anything else, we learn more quickly if we are trained or supported by an expert. After all, it does no good to know that our uncomfortable emotions are telling us we need to set better boundaries if we don’t know how to do that. It doesn’t help to know that our work is causing our stress if we don’t know that stress can be reduced by recalibrating our thoughts, not taking work home with us, and improving our communication skills.
Everything takes longer, and it is harder when we have to figure things out on our own. That is where a life coach can come in and help you figure it out in a fraction of the time.
With practice and guidance, it can become second nature for you to resolve emotions as they show up! When that happens, you become more productive, focused, and confident and live in greater peace and happiness. After all, peace and happiness are messengers telling you that your thoughts and environment are on the right track!
One of the biggest things that causes people to struggle with their health goals is emotional eating. This idea is that poor eating habits are usually triggered by negative emotions or stress. Most people try to stop emotional eating with willpower or logical thinking. That rarely (if ever) works. On a fundamental level, it cannot work. Food and willpower are not the issues; they are distractions from the issue. In this blog, I will share some of the reasons we emotionally eat and what we actually need in order to stop the cycle before it starts.
If we take a step back, we have to give ourselves credit that emotional eating actually makes a lot of sense as a strategy to help ourselves feel better. Eating high-calorie food releases endorphins connected to pleasure, and this can be strong enough to override difficult feelings we are having. If we think about the history of humanity, famines and starvation have been a constant threat. From a survival standpoint, it is helpful if our brain makes us feel good when we eat high-calorie food. Humanity wouldn’t have survived for long if we only felt good eating low-calorie things. If that were the case, we would never have gained physical strength to survive or built up fat stores to get us through hard times.
When we are stressed, cortisol is released, and this can also increase our hunger. Back in human history, another one of the biggest threats was physical harm. Eating rapidly can be a natural urge when we are stressed because that extra energy from food could be needed to help you think more clearly, win a fight, or run fast and far enough to save your life. These days, the feeling of threat may come because you had a difficult meeting with your boss, but your body still interprets threats the same way, causing an urge to eat.
At the root, emotional eating can be a strategy to distract ourselves from uncomfortable emotions that we don’t have the confidence to resolve. It can feel stressful and overwhelming not to know how to resolve uncomfortable emotions. Eating is also a helpful strategy to get our minds off that stress. Why? Because at least we know how to resolve overeating. It is a relief to know how to solve a problem, so if we create a problem with food and decide to resolve it by another trip to the gym, we don’t feel as helpless.
We can also be driven to eat as a way of expressing and confirming how we feel. If we feel out of control, the way we treat food may mirror that feeling. If someone is upset with themself, the way they eat may be a physical manifestation of that feeling. Like charades or a pantomime, our emotions want to be understood and resolved. They may resort to symbolic ways of showing us what they are experiencing through our behavior and actions around food.
Finally, we might emotionally eat certain foods to remind ourselves of good memories. When we feel we can’t resolve our uncomfortable emotions, we know we can go get our favorite dessert. This reminds us of special occasions and thinking about that memory can minimize our uncomfortable feelings for a while.
While eating is a good strategy to help distract us from uncomfortable emotions, it will never actually resolve our emotions. Every uncomfortable and unpleasant emotion is meant to be resolved. The purpose of emotions is to communicate vital information about what you need to live your best life. But, if they don’t trust you got their message, they will keep sending it over and over until it is resolved. By covering up the message with food, we only ensure we stay stuck in a pattern that is not helping us. To stop emotional eating, we have to develop the skill of interpreting, understanding, and resolving emotions.
This skill, like any other, doesn’t develop overnight. If you notice you engage in emotional eating, there are strategies you can use to give yourself space and a chance to resolve the actual issue. Some of these are in the way you set up your environment, the things you buy, and the way you train your thinking and self-talk. I talk much more about these strategies as well as how to resolve emotions in my Health Coaching program.
The good news is that when we master the ability to resolve uncomfortable emotions, we resolve the root issue, and we won’t need emotional eating or anything else to distract us. Our emotional eating will naturally no longer serve a purpose or be needed as a strategy that helps our life.
Wondering why some people achieve their fitness goals effortlessly, while others seem doomed to try, fail and repeat the cycle? I know you probably know what to do, but it’s a matter of doing it (and for more than a couple weeks).
There is a reason so many fail at achieving their health, fitness, and weight goals. It has nothing to do with willpower and discipline.
It comes back to our neurobiology and our thoughts which are the origin of our behavior. Changing behavior doesn’t work because it’s like cutting the top of a weed. As long as the roots are still there, it is determined to grow back. In the same way, your neurobiology drives you to go back to unhelpful behaviors that are familiar, even if you hate them!
The goal of coaching is to recalibrate your thoughts and emotions, which are the roots of the behavior you hate, To uproot the old, and plant and water the new. When this happens, the things we want to achieve are also things we genuinely enjoy doing and achieving!
Maybe you have always hated working out or eating healthy foods. You’ve said, “it’s just who I am!” If that is the case, I’m sorry to say that you set yourself up for failure on a neurobiological level.
But, there is hope! Reaching your health goals with coaching takes the same 4 step process as any other goal.
We have to strengthen the communication and quality of the relationship you have with yourself. In coaching, we call this neurolinguistic programming. That mean voice that shames you and gets angry with you? Yeah, that’s one of the things that has got to go! Why? Because people who beat themselves up over failure are actually more likely to fail than those that don’t. Once we can help that voice see it’s not helping, and change it, it will start to empower you and GIVE you energy! I am here to expertly teach you HOW to change.
Next, we refine and clarify your health goals and why you want them. Sometimes, as we become kinder to ourselves our goals shift to be more authentic, or even bigger than before!
We move into a phase of consistency. This is where we focus on the practice of rewiring our brain and recalibrating our habits.
We reach a phase of confidence where we know that we know your goals are able to be maintained even in a difficult week, or when old challenges come up.
I use my background in psychology, and principles of neuroscience to help people change their relationship with themselves and become a source of empowerment and joy for new health habits!
I combine this with knowledge gained from a college-level Fitness Specialist Program, and 4 years of work experience with individuals with eating disorders in hospital and treatment center settings.
This experience gives me a truly unique approach and understanding of what motivates our habits, thoughts, emotions, and experiences around food, exercise, and wellness.
So, that is the plan, but what is left out? Wishing, hoping, and apathy are not part of the strategy! Neither is starting a new diet plan or following some strict rules. Instead of telling you what to do, I guide you toward figuring out how to do what you already want to do, provide new strategies, and believe in you every step of the way!
