Discomfort Today = Strength Tomorrow

 

 

Recently I was huffing and struggling my way through a tough interval on my exercise bike, and just when I was considering taking it easy—the class instructor said (I’m paraphrasing here) —“what feels like a struggle, what you might be experiencing as pain right now, will show up tomorrow as strength in both your body AND for how you show up for yourself.” (Thank you, Tunde!) In that exact moment, when it was feeling really hard, I thought WOW, that’s just what I needed to hear. Here encouragement reminded me of my own physical and inner strength to persevere through a challenge so I can reach my desire to get stronger. 

That moment on my bike I was reminded that I can handle discomfort, that I can create strength and believe in myself. I can trust myself to handle being uncomfortable in order to grow, and that I’m not just doing this to check the exercise block off my to-do list. I’m choosing to show up for myself through exercise to be strong, healthy, powerful, and confident. What she said really was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment to not give up. It was so motivating, it felt so supportive and was such a powerful reminder that I can trust myself to put in the work, that I could do it, and that my future self will actually feel better for enduring something difficult. In that moment I felt myself tune into my inner strength— and I did it—even though it was super hard—and quite uncomfortable. 

After the class I really did feel stronger, and proud that I stuck it out and got through the hardest part—with the support and motivation from the instructor. I was struck by how this relates to the exact same process of therapy, how what feels like struggle and pain to work through emotionally today becomes our inner strength, resiliency, personal power, and resourcefulness tomorrow. 

EMDR therapy, or really any therapy, where you are processing difficult experiences or emotions, can be painful during the heart of the work. When reprocessing a painful experience, or talking through and processing distressing memories or uncomfortable feeling states, the work really can be uncomfortable. Therapy requires vulnerability, feeling at times painful and uncomfortable emotions, and this is definitely not easy. However, the distress and discomfort lessen with time, and through the therapeutic process and the willingness to be with the pain, what was once experienced as painful and uncomfortable can transform into resiliency, self-compassion, and self-worth on the other side of that discomfort.

Showing up for yourself and doing the inner work builds confidence — and some very powerful inner strength. When we are stuck in any undesirable pattern such as emotional eating, or numbing out emotions, pain or trauma with anything, it is often a call to look inward, to acknowledge the struggle and to begin along a path towards healing.

Making the choice to heal starts with a decision. A decision that living with the discomfort of the past or self-sabotaging patterns is more uncomfortable than facing it head on and working through it. The exploration of the inner workings of our own minds, delving into how our trauma or emotional struggles are impacting our relationship to food, or any other harmful patterns, are connected to what is desiring to be observed, worked through, and healed. That decision requires a willingness to be uncomfortable as you engage with the healing process. Approaching the inner work with the knowing that what feels uncomfortable today can translate to inner strength, increased self-worth, confidence, and more inner peace and joy for your future self, makes it feel worth the discomfort. Knowing this, that there will be a return on your investment in healing allows engaging with the discomfort and pain to feel more doable and worthwhile.

The way out of internal suffering and to heal the past is a willingness to walk through your inner wounds and learn, grow, and invite in the release. Through change you can build the hope and inner strength you need to press forward. When you go through the process of identifying where your struggles or traumas are showing up and holding you back in life, you begin to build self-awareness. When you confront where you are playing smaller than you may be had you not endured emotional wounding, you build empowerment. When you can identify where your pain has been so unbearable that you have been avoiding, suppressing, and repressing because of fear, you can begin to ease into doing the inner work so that you can truly, deeply heal. When you can see how the patterns of emotional eating, or any other emotional avoidance began, through self-awareness you can begin to work towards the change you desire.

If you are feeling hopeful that healing might be possible, you might benefit from reaching out, finding a therapist or other support, to help you sort through this baggage and make better sense of it. If you are tired of being stuck in a self-sabotaging cycle of emotional eating or any other emotional avoidance, and you are repeating patterns or feeling stuck in general, you just might find that engaging with the healing process is just what you need.

Finding a safe place to address any emotional pain, struggles, and fears allows you to step into a space of empowerment, confidence, a feeling of unconditional worthiness and wholeness that you may never have thought was possible. Take some time to consider what patterns are showing up in your life that you could benefit from increased self-awareness in order to feel a deeper connection with your true self, and maybe take that first step towards healing today. 

Just like physical exercise, there is no way to get stronger other than to put in the work, the effort, the consistency, and the dedication to show up for yourself. This is how you create the change you want. When you allow yourself to be with the discomfort, feel it, embrace it, and move forward, you will become stronger. Changing patterns takes first a decision that you want to change, then it is helpful to find support, and then keep showing up for yourself over and over again. You are worth becoming the mentally and emotionally healthiest version of yourself, the version that you desire in mind, body, and spirit. 

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.

What Exactly Is an EMDR Intensive?

 

 

Do you ever feel as though you are reliving the same patterns, or having the same recurring negative thoughts or experiences? Many of us are operating out of subconscious negative beliefs that are creating distressing patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and limiting our ability to feel worthy and deserving of the life we desire.

EMDR is a powerful therapeutic modality that helps to release these beliefs from our subconscious and unconscious minds, and allows us to live in a less uncomfortable, anxious, and fearful state of being. Through EMDR therapy we can release these limiting beliefs so that we can feel more empowered, confident, and safe in our daily lives.

One way to confront these limiting beliefs and negative cognitions is to do intensive EMDR therapy. This is where session times are extended so we can do a deep dive into releasing these beliefs about ourselves. Since I began offering EMDR intensives, I have had a lot of inquiries about why choose an EMDR intensive model over more traditional, weekly, 50 minute sessions. So I thought I’d write a little about what an EMDR intensive even is, and how to know if it might be right for you. (If you are not familiar with EMDR as a therapeutic modality, you can read a previous blog I wrote on the topic HERE or learn more about it from the EMDRIA homepage HERE.) 

An EMDR intensive is indeed, just as the name implies, intense. They are longer EMDR sessions (usually 2.5-hours, 4-hours, or even longer) where you focus for an extended period of time on your desired area of inner work. EMDR is considered a maximum exposure therapy, where you are reprocessing a specific trauma, memory, feeling state, or experience in a way that you are fully present with any lingering and unprocessed distress of that particular experience.

The discomfort that remains is based on a subjective level of distress you still experience when thinking about the memory. This is based on somatic, mental, and emotional discomfort. Through the bilateral stimulation of the brain, (and through the lens of the adaptive information processing model) repeated exposure and reprocessing of the memory allows the brain and body to release the physical, mental and emotional pain associated with the memory, so the distress level inevitably comes down. The goal is to have the distress become a 0 (subjectively on a 0-10 scale) where it feels that no distress remains present. The memory is then successfully reprocessed and released into your long term memory, rather than looping and causing triggering responses to your present life circumstances.

Once the distress is a 0, a positive cognition is created and reinforced through bilateral stimulation as well, and once it feels absolutely true (this is gauged subjectively on a number scale as well) as an inner felt sense, it is practiced with future templates. Imagining yourself accessing this new positive cognition in potentially distressing or triggering circumstances within the future helps to create new patterns and possibilities. Through this work you can now begin to respond and react within those future challenging moments in a more grounded and steady manner.

All that I’ve described so far is a very rough and quick overview, there are certainly many more elements incorporated into EMDR therapy, however this intended as just a basic gist. Our goal is to rewrite negative cognitions, or beliefs about the self, that have been created or reinforced through these distressing memories, experiences, and traumas. These experiences created beliefs about the self that perpetuated patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that can create negative internal experiences as well as difficulty feeling truly confident, hopeful, grounded, and worthy just as you are.

Through the inner work, you can release the trauma still stored mentally, physically, and emotionally, and therefore release the negative beliefs that have arisen out of those experiences. This creates a new way of existing within your life that is freeing and empowering.

With a traditional 50 minute session there is some preparation, potentially reprocessing and desensitization, verbal processing, grounding and re-stabilization in a relatively short time. With an EMDR intensive you are in that potentially reprocessing and desensitization phase for a much more extended period of time. I have found that a 2.5-hour EMDR intensive is similar to approximately 4 sessions when using the traditional, basic protocol. A 4-hour intensive is similar to approximately 6-7 sessions when using the traditional, basic protocol. There are always potentially other elements incorporated into sessions depending on each person’s individual needs along the way.

If you are someone who has done some personal work already and feels that EMDR could be helpful to resolve some traumatic memories, this could feel really nice, to get in a lot of therapy in a shorter, more intensive period of time. These intensives are useful if you find that you have some patterns that you seem to repeat in relationships, with money, with food, with negative self-talk, and with specific anxieties. Initially, we identify the primary negative cognition, and then use the protocol to work through these memories or experiences that seem to repeat themselves in a way that makes sense for you. 

For example, if you are someone who finds that you seek out relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable over and over, there may be a limiting believe or negative cognition that is stuck in your subconscious that can be worked through in a short series of EMDR intensives. We first identify the negative belief about yourself, and then work with the memories that have created or reinforced that belief. Or, if you are someone who seems to fall into the same patterns with food, or money and spending that you have repeatedly tried to change, this too could be reinforced subconsciously by a negative internalized belief that can be worked through with EMDR intensives. I have found intensives to be helpful for those struggling with perfectionism, creative blocks, resistance to or fear of change, specific anxieties (such as flying, driving over bridges…) and much more.

If you are interested in an EMDR intensive, it is best to reach out to a few certified EMDR therapists who offer them, who are also licensed in your state. Many therapists are willing to offer a 15-minute consultation where you can describe your current needs/goals and they will be able to determine if you may be a good candidate for intensive EMDR therapy. I am licensed in New York and Virginia, and therefore only can offer them to those currently living in either of those states. For people with chronic or complex post traumatic stress disorder who are just beginning treatment, those with a low distress tolerance, and for those with certain chronic conditions, I have found that traditional weekly sessions tend to work best, however, everything is truly determined on a case-by-case basis. 

I hope I’ve piqued your interest and maybe you will think about considering EMDR intensives as part of your personal growth, mental wellness, and emotional health process. Here’s to confronting our negative internalized beliefs head-on and creating a more empowered, confident self and living a life fully immersed in a feeling of worthiness. You deserve to feel your best and live your best life.