There is no doubt that divorce is a matter of importance both literally and figuratively. This often calamitous and life-changing event can flood us with emotions and make our defenses as porous as Swiss cheese. During these times of crisis, the ambush of misunderstood and therefore often unacceptable feelings, fantasies and impulses, trigger sharp reproaches. When we reflexively turn on ourselves with a limited awareness, if any, of being our own worst enemy, it is human nature to react to such helplessness by looking outside ourselves for someone to blame. That’s why when our children express normal age-appropriate complaints, make demands, or present protests that have nothing to do with the impact of divorce on their lives, we can get very defensive.
Have you ever noticed the tendency, at times like these, to head straight for the kitchen cupboard and numb emotional wounds or quell anxieties with a chemically enhanced chocolate treat that you wouldn’t think of giving to a stray cat? Or maybe you’ve thought about throwing such sweet snacks down our children’s throats to shut them up before they hear messages that provoke shame or guilt.
As you can infer from my last comment, it is easy for humans to confuse the signals from our “emotional guts” with the signals from our appetite regulatory mechanisms connected to our physical guts. The emotional gut when fully functional acts as a tuning fork that we place inside our stomachs. It channels all kinds of “vibrations” into the higher centers of the brain, where they can be translated, thought and downloaded in a constructive way. If these energies are not thought about, dysfunctional ways of feeding ourselves and our children can emerge. Psychosomatic symptoms that mimic hunger, nausea, indigestion, and bloating can trick us into disorderly eating habits. When these circumstances arise, many of us no longer eat to live and live to eat and / or eat heavily to cope with the stress in our lives.
Our post-divorce emotional vulnerabilities can create an internal environment conducive to unhealthy dependencies on eating and feeding others. Eating dysfunctions, even in their most benign forms, are perhaps the most insidious, because in a society where obesity is rapidly becoming the norm, they easily go unnoticed. One cannot stop eating; right or wrong? In addition, this activity is an acceptable social activity, a source of great pleasure and full of meaning based on lifelong associations with the earliest and most powerful experiences of being loved and cared for by trusted others. How easy it is then to deny, minimize, and rationalize this life-affirming activity that has gone haywire. We are not at risk of being arrested for bingeing or dieting to the point of malnutrition. It is very likely that we will not walk in a stupor as a result of overeating or that we are too hungover to get our children up for school. Have you ever heard of someone who was arrested for buying a loaf of bread on the street?
Still, dysfunctional eating patterns can turn into powerfully damaging psychological and physical addictions for some, and for good reason. Imagine for a moment, after the end of your marriage, feeling uncomfortable feeling needy, too eager to empower yourself to take on roles previously performed by a spouse, too guilty to be proactive in caring for yourself, or perhaps too depressed and ashamed. to the point of wanting to isolate yourself and withdraw from valuable relationships to protect yourself from more painful disappointments and rejections. Any of these emotional scenarios can lead us to take refuge in unhealthy dependencies on food. It is enough to think for a moment about how we can eat to enjoy pleasant stimulation and satisfaction, to anesthetize ourselves to pain, to calm anxieties, to fill internal voids, to bury ourselves and defend ourselves from toxic messages, to punish ourselves, to discharge and defend ourselves of hostile impulses. , to shamefully deny excessive dependency needs, etc., etc., etc. If you don’t accept my argument, listen for a minute to common expressions that underscore the psychological importance of eating in our lives to invite over-dependence on food to protect ourselves from hostile inward and / or outward aggression.
Perhaps you are familiar with some or all of the following comments: “Why don’t you cover your face and shut up?” “I’m afraid I’m so hungry I’ll eat you.” “I’m going to chew you up and spit you out.” “I need some comfort food like a Ring Ding.” “I ate non-stop all night and was still hungry.” “I have no idea how hungry I am.” “I’m so frustrated I want to bite your head off.” “What you just told me turns my stomach.” “You are so delicious that I want to eat you.” “Stop shoving that garbage down my throat.” “I lost my appetite when I knew he was leaving.” “I spend a lot of time at work thinking about what to cook for dinner.”
The answer to the problems created for us and our children by unhealthy relationships with food is, for us as single parents, to cultivate reliable and consistent support systems that listen to us, respect our capacities to change and grow, do not judge and Offer feedback in a compassionate way so as not to reinforce dysfunctional eating patterns. There is nothing that resides in our imagination that is inherently damning. It is only our reactions to such stimuli that concern us. Learning to connect, contain, think, reflect, and talk to other trusted people about what’s going on in our minds is the best insurance against disorderly eating patterns or other dysfunctional patterns of coping with stress. If we can learn to tolerate and accept what goes on within us, then we will be more available to listen to our children and help them process life experiences in a healthy way. We all deserve forgiveness for using food defensively, as these patterns imply that “we don’t know what we’re doing.” However, if we don’t break these patterns when our children are young, they may forgive us, but they will never forget us for the anxiety-filled obsessions and compulsions for food they may inherit from us.
