Break Through Limiting Beliefs with EMDR Therapy

Identifying limiting beliefs is one of the most important elements within the EMDR therapy process. We take time to really understand, what are the negative cognitions, or internalized negative limiting beliefs that are holding you back, and causing you discomfort within your present life. These limiting beliefs may be keeping you from feeling grounded and centered, from taking action in your life, and from allowing yourself to feel and express your worthiness. Once we know what these core wounds are, we can work to reprocess, heal, and release them.

Some of the questions I ask my clients to help identify the limiting belief are:

• Consider what you say you want, such as a goal, a plan, a desire that you seem sabotage unconsciously, or that feels like it won’t happen no matter how hard you try. Now write down all of the reasons you can’t have it. When you reflect on why you believe you can’t have it, what do these reasons mean about you? 

• After reading through why you can’t have what you want, how does this make you feel about yourself?

This is your limiting belief, your core wound, in EMDR we call it a negative cognition. Our brains store the memories and experiences that have created or reinforced those beliefs in the memory network associated with this negative cognition. If your negative cognition is one of the following: I am not good enough, I am unworthy, I have to be perfect to be loved, or I have to please others to be loved, or I am unsafe, or I will fail, or I can’t handle it and so on… then we look for the target memories that have created or reinforced those beliefs. A target memory is a memory that still has a charge, or it still activates your nervous system when you bring it into your awareness in a way that feels uncomfortable. 

These negative cognitions, or limiting beliefs, when triggered, loop through these memories within that specific memory network, and can cause you to feel fear, ungrounded, or disconnected from your body. Feeling fearful, ungrounded, and disconnection from yourself will hold you back from taking action towards what you want. When this happens subconsciously, we wonder, “what’s wrong with me.” Because this is happening on a subconscious level, and this just further triggers the limiting belief or negative cognition. When this occurs, we then usually feel hopeless, frustrated, and this only further reinforces those limiting beliefs. This is where we often get stuck in harmful or non-useful coping strategies, such as emotional eating or any other escape or numbing behaviors. This can also cause us to become emotionally dysregulated and to generally feel overwhelmed. 

EMDR therapy helps to release limiting beliefs through the desensitization and reprocessing phase of the therapy. This is where bilateral stimulation is used while being present with the memories or experiences, and processed within the safe container of your therapy experience. The goal is to fully reprocess the memories, which frees or unravels the negative internalized belief from the memory. The memory now is relinquished to your long-term memory. At this point we create a positive cognition that supports integrating the desired feeling state. This process creates a new inner resource and it’s practiced, once the positive cognition feels true and accessible, using cognitive rehearsal and future templates.

Once all of the target memories have been reprocessed, and they are now relinquished to your long-term memory, and you have the creation of positive cognitions for all of the target memories, the way you desire to feel about yourself is now possible. For example, if your belief is, I am not good enough, a positive cognition could be, I am ok as I am, if your negative cognitions is I am unworthy, your positive cognition may be, I am always worthy. Once you’ve completed the work of EMDR, there is no longer room for the negative cognitions to overwhelm you.

EMDR therapy also includes the components of somatic release through the body scan phase of treatment with each memory. We get curious about any stuck emotions within the physical body. This process creates self-awareness, and through using curiosity and compassion to invite the emotion to process and release somatically, we do this with bilateral stimulation until your body feels clear and grounded when you bring up the target memory.

Throughout the work of EMDR, we get really curious about why an emotion is stuck within your body. We practice emotional awareness and exploration and understand the message of the emotion—why is this emotion here and what does it want us to know—we can then view the emotion as information versus judging the emotion. With this information it makes it more accessible and possible to determine how to respond to the emotion. This allows the processing of your past trauma to move forward with more emotional awareness and acceptance.

When you provide compassion for any emotion you are experiencing, comfortable or uncomfortable, you change how you show up for that emotion, as well as how you show up for yourself. When you respond to the emotion with curiosity and ask what it needs, you can offer it just that with an attitude of compassion and care, allowing you to make space for the discomfort. This process allows the opportunity to invite the emotion itself to flow away from your body, once it’s processed, with intention.

EMDR therapy is a very useful way to help identify, breakthrough, and heal limiting beliefs. Please know that there are many therapeutic modalities out there that can support healing, growth, and that support you to move closer towards a more integrated, whole self that operates from a place of empowering beliefs. No matter how you find the courage and inner strength to address what is holding you back so that you can move forward with hope, growth, and inner-strength, know that you deserve to heal.

Beginning to Heal Food Guilt & Shame

When I’m working with someone on healing from emotional eating, an eating disorder, and body-image struggles in my therapy practice, healing the underlying guilt and shame is always a significant part of the process. Guilt and shame are two of the most common uncomfortable emotions that seem to overwhelm and plague those who encounter challenges with food and body-image.

So many people struggle with emotional eating, eating disorders, and body-image challenges, and when we first begin the work the therapy, their struggles and patterns with food feel impossible to change. When beginning the work it feels impossible to imagine that there is a path towards healing these patterns, and therefore, to healing the extremely uncomfortable emotions of guilt and shame.

All of our emotions are messages about how we are experiencing, or responding to the present moment. There are no good or bad emotions, although some are far more desirable to experience, and some are so uncomfortable that we subconsciously work really hard to not have to feel them. 

Some emotions we experience are congruent with our current experience and others are not. Guilt and shame are emotions that tend to be old, and not necessarily congruent with what is happening in the present moment. When we break it down to the root of these emotions, the message of guilt is “I did something wrong", and the message of shame is “I am something wrong.”

We can liken the experience of feeling guilty as a message from our conscience. If we did something wrong our conscience wants us to make it right, this is really useful, but only when it’s congruent with our present experience. If we ate something we deem as “bad” that does not mean we did something wrong, that does not warrant the discomfort of guilt. Shame goes deeper, Brene Brown defines it as, “Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.” When we are experiencing guilt, we can examine it and understand fairly easily whether or not it’s congruent with our present experience. However, shame is much more uncomfortable, and more challenging to cope with for most of us.

When we experience shame, we often experience many uncomfortable emotions at the same time. When experiencing shame, there are often feelings of loneliness, isolation, and sadness as well. If shame is experienced internally as, “there is something wrong with my very being itself,” if shame is saying, “I’m small, flawed, and not good enough,” then in that moment, I’m experiencing myself as deeply unworthy. When we’ve experienced shame as a result of childhood trauma, or any trauma really, it becomes difficult to not get stuck in a shame spiral.

Many people I work with experience frustration in relation to their patterns with food. Those who struggle with binge-eating, or with feeling powerless to stop eating when they are full, or any other disordered patterns, often express feelings of guilt and shame. If guilt is experienced, we can break it down together in therapy sessions. We can explore, what is the guilt about? Did you actually do something wrong? We can then work to reframe the guilt. When it’s reframed into an opportunity to see how there can be something learned from this experience, that when I’m feeling out of control with food like this in the future, what small steps can be taken to begin to alter this pattern. Through verbal processing and reframing we can search for ways to find more grace, compassion, and therefore greater self-awareness, which is healing. When we apply curiosity to the guilt, it can be released, and we can have a greater understanding of why it happened in the first place. Once there is greater self-awareness and self-compassion, it becomes more likely that we can have the ability to handle a future similar circumstance with food more mindfully. When we can reframe the guilt, and recognize that “I didn’t do anything wrong, I can learn from this,” we feel empowered, hopeful, and more certain of our ability to change. 

When people struggle with this process of healing food and body-image challenges, and they feel it’ll be impossible to change, I prompt them to consider a time when something seemed impossible, and yet they did learn it, and now it comes easily and naturally. Examples often include riding a bike, rollerskating, learning an instrument, a new skill at work, and so on. Most people can identify with this ability, and it becomes an anecdote for the guilt. When you heal your guilt, there is more room for self-compassion, more willingness to use challenges and struggles as learning opportunities rather than it becoming a shame spiral. 

If the initial internal response of guilt with food struggles can be caught, reframed, and worked through in an empowering way, most people feel hopeful and ready for the challenge of learning new ways of being with food, their bodies, and themselves. They can trust that it may be daunting, however, it’s not impossible. Unfortunately, if it has been internalized over and over and over again that “I did something wrong, (guilt)” so therefore, “I’m a bad person, there’s something wrong with me (shame),” this internalized guilt becomes shame. The shame then becomes a dark cloud of pain inside and all around you. If you have experienced trauma in the past, then the shame can often feel familiar, and can lead to a state of internal suffering, anxiety, and depression, as well as an increased likelihood of an eating disorder. Shame is not logical, it’s a felt inner experience of deep pain and suffering.

Healing shame starts with naming the shame for what it is. Understanding and exploring where you picked up the negative internalized belief that “I am something wrong” in the first place is essential to healing. Healing shame begins with talking about it, naming it, and allowing ourselves to truly feel it, to learn from it, to hold it with curiosity and compassion. Only then can we begin to learn what the negative internalized beliefs are that we picked up, such as, I am unworthy, I am not good enough, I am unlovable, (just to name a few) and to heal where these beliefs were created or reinforced. EMDR therapy, Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), traditional talk therapy, and many other beneficial therapeutic styles, can all help work through the traumas and experiences that have created or reinforced these negative beliefs. Through the therapeutic process you can call out the shame for what it is, work through it, and ultimately heal it. 

Shame is one of the most painful, and therefore one of the most likely emotions to be avoided. It takes time to learn about your personal experience of shame. To understand where you picked it up, to identify how you experience it mentally, physically, and emotionally is essential. Be patient with yourself as you learn the process of listening to your body, to your internal language, and your true self. You then can benefit from developing an awareness of your personal window of tolerance. How long can you sit with the shame before it feels as though you want to eat, restrict, check-out, numb-out, or escape altogether? This is all helpful information, best when experienced and worked through in therapy. Learning how to be with yourself within your window of tolerance allows you to grow. Know that you are learning the new and difficult skills of emotional awareness and emotional experiencing. This is not easy work. Please be patient with yourself. Just like riding a bike or roller skating, emotional awareness and experiencing are worthwhile skills to stick with, although you might get a little scuffed up along the way. Once you learn the skills and integrate them, these new ways of being with food, your body and yourself, will be yours to keep.

One thing I know for sure after talking to people in a therapy setting for more than twenty years, is that no one gets to escape feeling pain and discomfort in this life. I also know for sure that no one deserves to live in a state of shame, especially those who struggle with food and body-image struggles. Once you can understand and release your shame, reframe any guilt experienced in the moment, you will see the new learning that can take place. Once you feel a sense of hope, you can see it as a skill that you just don’t know yet, but you can learn how to be mindful and intuitive when it comes to your food choices. With this hard work you move from shame toward self-empowerment. Ultimately, the goal of healing is to feel that you are always, unconditionally worthy. The goal of healing is to know that you are the expert on what your body wants and needs, and that you are enough—now, in this present moment, just as you are existing as you. 

Compassionate Eating: How to Be Kind to Yourself Through Emotional Eating Struggles

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines compassion as, “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Being compassionate means to suffer along with someone, to understand it, and to offer support to help release the suffering.

When talking about compassionate eating as a concept, I am not asking you to suffer with your food, or to feel any sort of distress about food or eating. Compassionate eating is more about how to be with yourself if you struggle with emotional eating, and the ways that compassion can offer relief from some of the suffering you may experience as a result of emotional eating patterns. If you struggle with negative self-talk, or if you experience any other internal distress as it relates to the process of eating and food choices you make, engaging with compassionate eating as a practice may help to alleviate some of the internal suffering that you experience.

Many who struggle with emotional eating, or any sort of disordered eating pattern, often feel a sense of persistent guilt and shame based on their food choices. The negative self-talk can be a precursor to eating, something said while eating, and most certainly following a food choice that is eaten out of emotional distress and not deemed “the right choice” or “perfect.” For example, prior to eating, negative self-talk might sound something like, “I shouldn’t eat this.” Negative self-talk during the process of eating might sound like, “I shouldn’t be eating this,” and after eating it might sound like, “I shouldn’t have eaten that…” 

There is a lot of overlap with each of these negative self-talk circumstances—and it all comes down to the shoulds. When we Should ourselves, we are immediately putting ourselves into a place where we are subjected to experiencing guilt and shame. The message of the emotion guilt signals to us is, I did something wrong, where as the message of the emotion shame signals, I am something wrong. If I tell myself, I shouldn’t be____________ (fill in the blank with anything) I am signaling through emotion (guilt/shame) inherent internal distress.

If I’m saying to myself “I shouldn’t be doing this,” no matter what “this” is, it signals that it must be wrong, bad, shameful, embarrassing, or I’m weak, and so on. The emotional discomfort that follows can lead to painful and really cruel thoughts about ourselves including not being good enough, not in control enough, not perfect enough, not enough just as I am. These feelings can trigger a negative thought loop and an internal shame spiral that may trigger more emotional eating, or any other negative self-soothing behaviors out of this feeling of deep internal suffering that something is wrong with me.

This is where compassionate eating steps in to help alleviate this pattern of deep internal suffering. Internal negativity and shame, inducing negative self-talk, is a form of suffering. The negative beliefs (e.g. I’m not good enough) that are internalized and reinforced become a pattern of low self-worth due to feeling not good enough, or feeling like a failure, or any other negative internalized belief. Self-compassion is the ability to suffer with oneself in a hope to relieve the suffering in a way that neutralizes the negative self-talk. When you offer yourself true self-compassion, you are allowing yourself to hold space for your feelings and experiences in a non-judgmental way. This can have a neutralizing or releasing impact on the discomfort you are experiencing. Giving yourself compassion allows the experience of becoming sympathetic towards yourself—with a desire to alleviate that suffering. 

Kristin Neff, who literally wrote the book on self-compassion, (which I highly recommend) breaks down the process of practicing self-compassion into these three elements:

1. Mindfulness

2. Self-kindness

3. Common humanity

The first is about how when we bring mindful awareness to a feeling or experience we are seeing it more broadly and without judgment, versus the felt state of over-identification with the suffering (e.g. I am not good enough, or I’m a failure) that triggers the negative self-talk. The second element of self-compassion is self-kindness. This process helps to release the self-judgement, I am ok versus I am a bad, weak, or a not a good enough person. The third element is creating a sense of common humanity, bringing in the awareness that the feelings and experiences are universal. This opens us to the understanding that suffering simply cannot be avoided if one is a human, and allows a feeling of not being alone in the suffering and discomfort of one’s own experiences, emotions, and behaviors.

Practicing self-compassion in a form of compassionate eating when struggling with emotional eating might look and sound something like this:

1. Mindful awareness of the feeling/experience: “I feel shame for eating something when I wasn’t hungry despite my attempts to be more mindful of my hunger and full cues, I want to change my emotional eating patterns and I feel really sad when I feel as though I’ve failed.”

2. Self-kindness is creating an opportunity to speak to yourself as you would a friend, loved one, or anyone you care about. Consider a good friend came to you with the same feeling or experience, you might say to them: “I understand why you feel so disappointed and down on yourself, you have been working really hard to eat more mindfully and intuitively, however, please know that no one is perfect and everyone struggles at times. What you are trying to accomplish is really challenging and takes time. I’m here for you and want to support you as you continue to heal, I believe in you.” Turn the same sentiment inward, say all of this to yourself. If you have a hard time being kind to yourself, imagine that it’s as if a friend, mentor, family member, or even your pet is saying it to you. Really let it sink in and offer you comfort. 

3. Common humanity is the ability to recognize the universality of the feeling, it might sound something like this: “I can recognize that this is a part of the human experience, at times everyone feels shame or disappointed in a choice they make.” This practice of self-compassion is asking yourself, can you be more gentle with yourself? Can you see that you were having a really bad day and struggling and the food felt like the only option you had to feel better at the time? Changing a pattern of behavior is really, really difficult. It takes so much time, effort, focus, intention, and practice to do. The process of self-compassion and being with yourself in this kinder, more gentle way allows you to heal some of the underlying negative mental and emotional patterns that are perpetuating the behavioral patterns. It all works together.

I recommend adding a daily self-compassion practice where you can check in with yourself consistently and begin to offer yourself this three step process. Go through the steps of offering yourself mindful awareness, self-kindness (just like you would to a friend) and giving yourself the opportunity to connect with the felt sense of the common humanity of your feelings and experiences. Remember that you get good at what you practice. This will feel hard at first. Remember that you most likely would never speak to someone else the way you speak to yourself in those negative self-talk moments. So why do you allow yourself to speak to yourself in this way? Most people don’t even notice the level of cruelty they inflict on themselves, and yet they feel the painful impact and discomfort that becomes self-created. Also, many people fear that being kind and gentle with themselves will make them feel like they get a pass, that they’ll never change if they aren’t uncomfortable or unkind to themselves. Maybe they received “tough love” or felt that they were shamed into doing things or being a certain way that was expected of them growing up and then they internalized this way of speaking to themselves. However, this cruelty never works in the long run. Unkindness, cruelty, and meanness lead to shame, pain, and suffering. These feelings usually lead to increased feeling of defeat, depression, anxiety, and fear. True change comes from encouragement, practice, self-awareness, empowerment, and more practice. Self-compassion offers a way of being with yourself that is more grounded, positive, and mindful. Compassionate eating offers of way of being with yourself and your experience with food and eating in a more kind, thoughtful, and empowered way.

The next time you find yourself in a negative thought loop, give the three step self-compassion practice a try and notice what happens for you. The next time you hear yourself saying “I should or shouldn’t be _____________, pause and try more compassionate self-talk instead and notice the outcome. Here’s to finding more inner peace, more peace with food, and more peace with your inner thoughts. Remember, you cannot heal your way out of being a human, but with practice you can love and accept yourself for exactly who you are in this moment.