First of all, I would like to help to relieve you of any guilt or shame that you have about overeating or for that matter any addictive, obsessive or compulsive pattern that makes you feel out of control. I believe that every behavior has a positive intent and when that intent isn’t realized it’s because we haven’t been given what we need to actualize your positive goal. Your pattern overeating got hardwired into your brain when you were young because you didn’t receive enough emotional nurturance. As a dependent and vulnerable child, your parents may not have been able to give you the love and attention that you needed and deserved. You may have felt a painful emptiness in the pit of your stomach. This emptiness could be temporarily alleviated when you were eating because food naturally has the ability to create a sense of comfort and satiation. Some wires got crossed and eating food became associated with filling the emotional void that your parents didn’t have the ability to fill. Your positive intent was to feel comforted and because food would temporarily provided this comfort you would overeat in an attempt to maintain this feeling of well-being. The operative word here is temporarily, because all addictive or compulsive and obsessive behaviors only temporarily fill a deeper need and that’s why they have to be repeated over and over again. You only wanted to feel satiated, peaceful and calm and never wanted to hurt yourself or feel out of control. You have always been doing the best you could to compensate for the emotional deprivation you experienced. In addition, the positive feelings that eating produced set off a chemical in your brain, dopamine, which is connected to the pleasure system in your brain.
Overeating became a reflexive behavior often making you feel diminished and out of control. As this behavior became more and more hardwired in you started eating in a trancelike state. This is what happens with all addictive, compulsive and obsessive behaviors. How many times have you “found” yourself reflexively taking spoon after spoon of ice cream or one chocolate chip cookie after another and felt as if you had no ability to stop yourself? You may have promised yourself that you would exercise more self-control and then it feels as if something takes over and you end up overeating with no sense of how to stop yourself. You hate yourself for not being able to stop and feel that there must be something terribly wrong with you because you are so out of control.
I don’t imagine that anybody ever told you that your brain is a reflexive organ and once a pattern gets conditioned in the brain will automatically repeat it over and over again. Your brain is designed to conserve energy and it does this by doing the same things reflexively. You know that it takes energy to change and I want to teach you how to harness the energy you need to override this reflexive pattern of overeating.
The first tool I would like to teach you is how to break that trance so that you become more empowered. Right now, I don’t want you to feel that you have to go on a diet because we know you’ve tried that many times and until you are more empowered you may repeat overly frustrating attempts to changing your diet. To start with, I would like you to be conscious of what you are doing when you are eating so that you can learn that you do have control. Every time you reach for something to eat I want you to say “I am choosing, to have a chocolate chip cookie.” Each time you eat something feel the power you have when you experience every morsel of food as a choice that you are deliberately making.
It’s also important to be able to feel compassion for yourself for this struggle, because when you are angry at yourself you just increase your stress level and promote more overeating. Your anger is sending a message to you that you are unlovable because you try to fill this void by overeating. I’d like to lend you some of my compassion. I know what it feels like to use food for comfort and I want to help you with this because I know that with the proper support you have the aility to become the person you desire to be.
I know how important support has been in my own transformation and I want to support you in any way that I can. I have worked with people all over the world and can be available in person, on the phone or through Skype. Please check out my website helenkramer.com I have written a number of blogs to give you more tools for liberation and fulfillment. Please feel free to contact me at helen@helenkramer.com.
I would like to share with you some other blogs and videos with important tools for transformation.mThis is the link to my YouTube channel and you can find blogs that contain more tools on my website helenkramer.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqDb2FtRHyE9fVVhB4eu5g
Invitation to Emotional Education and Greater Empowerment https://youtu.be/SerlxbQbc3k
How to Attract and Sustain Loving Relationships
Taking the Stress Out of Stress https://youtu.be/3YAlPW1pmO4
The Power of Compassion https://youtu.be/6W1ZYuafyvM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W1ZYuafyvM
The Hidden Cause of Emotional Suffering and How to Heal It https://youtu.be/JpypUUlH554
How to Enhance Your Self-Esteem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx6iWFXRBno
Unconditional Love Meditationhttps://youtu.be/cdS-hND7ZZU
Here are some links to videos they did in 2012 with Alan Steinfield when I appeared on his New Realities Television Show.
Helen Kramer talks about Neuroplasticity and the Adult Within
How to Deal with Anxiety in New Way
Helen Kramer talks about How to Become More Spiritual