Stress is everywhere in our lives today. The digital age has us moving at the speed of light with our bodies trying desperately to keep up.
Growing up, I hardly remember hearing about stress. In fact, women were thought to have it so easy that for decades we were not even considered to be at risk for things like heart attack. What did we have to be stressed about? What, indeed?
The cost of going to a doctor has risen to the point that many will not seek medical help unless they believe they are dying. Fear is a big motivator.
And why should they go to the doctor when they can go to a local drugstore and get pills for just about anything? They take the pills and if the symptoms subside, they’re happy.
Food addicts self-medicate too. When you are lonely or feeling depressed, the stress of that loneliness or depression might send you off frantically in the direction of the refrigerator or a nearby store.
While food addicts sometimes have a stash, it’s not like the person who hides the bottle of Scotch in the clothes hamper.
Sometimes we have only healthy food in the house. When stress strikes, we might have to go out and buy something less healthy.
The stress of the moment and the use of food as a coping mechanism are joined but not in a planned way.
Like other addictions, no one wakes up in the morning and says, “I think I’ll be an addict today”. Stress makes it happen.
Unbridled, uncontrollable stress–even if it’s just for a short time–is the driving force behind self-medicating with food. You self-medicate long enough and you become an addict.
You break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you stress, you eat. The experience causes you to recall similar emotional predicaments and you feel like a real loser. You eat some more.
“Why does this always happen to me”? More crying, more stress, more eating. Sometimes you have to eat a lot before the feelings of loss, anger, failure, worthlessness, depression, and so on, disappear. They do eventually disappear and you stop eating.
That’s how it is for the person with a food addiction. It’s better than some things, or so we tell ourselves, but it isn’t really.
Eventually, it would be nice if our hearts would heal and the symptoms would go away.
“Self-medicating” is a label that somehow makes stuffing down our feelings with food okay because it has a name and therefore a legitimacy.
Unfortunately, it’s just a mental stopover on the journey to uncovering the source of the problem that put you on the path to food addiction in the first place.
Once you can identify that starting point, you can embrace self-discovery and learn to let things be what they are.
You will be able to release yourself from the stress of the past and there will be no further reason to self-medicate with food.