The Link Between Binge Eating and People Pleasing
What is the link between binge eating and people pleasing? How do they cycle and feed one another?
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When we have learnt to shapeshift, to attend to other’s needs before meeting our own, to keep giving even when our cup is empty, or to comply to other people’s standards or expectations, we exhaust ourselves. Binge eating is a strategy that attempts to bring some kind of relief from all of that intense, built-up energy.
It takes so much energy to be someone that we’re not. The body can only hold so much intensity. And that intense energy is stress survival energy (aka flight, fight, freeze energies).
Every time, we people please and ignore ourselves, it takes enormous effort. Instead of listening to our own needs, we become hypervigilant to the outside world, constantly scanning around us, moulding, shaping, changing ourselves for approval and validation (aka, all we are trying to do is to feel a sense of belonging). Hypervigilance comes with anxiety, defensive orienting, and urgent fixation on the external environment. This is taxing on the system.
With all of that energy in the body with nowhere to go, the action of binge eating comes in to suppress and numb that energy. The food squashes it down, out of sight, out of feeling.
Binge eating can also create an energetic wall between us and the outside world. Exhausted from trying to please others, binge eating can bring relief whereby we collapse and no longer have to engage with the world.
Binge eating can offer a moment where we no longer have to play by society’s expectations. We can flip the switch and relieve ourselves from the tight constrictions and conditionings.
Binge eating symbolizes just how much we have learnt as a society to hold it in, and how underneath all of those stiff upper lips, we are humans (aka mammals) with biological impulses, desires, and needs - and that if they cannot be met, allowed, followed, or expressed they come out in other ways which can feel out of control or unstoppable.
For those who are navigating binge eating, or an eating disorder, disordered eating, or diet culture mentality for that matter, pay attention to the times where you turn away from your authentic self and people-please instead.
Notice the times you ignore your impulses, such as suppressing a feeling, a need to rest, or a hunger pang, and see what happens when you aim to care and attend to yourself.
This practice requires a slowing down, a tuning into your body, a commitment to be with the uncomfortable sensations and feelings (even if it’s a few moments before bingeing), and to follow an authentic impulse that your body is asking. This process rewires the nervous system and takes practice practice practice.
So, observe within yourself:
What comes up for you when you fill up your cup first?
What emerges when you give space to an emotion to express itself?
Can you offer yourself compassion and gentleness throughout this process, with its ups and downs?
What happens to your overall energy with this awareness?
Can you manage food in a different way?
What does it feel like inhabit your authentic expression?
Photo by Skyler Ewing on Unsplash