Grief comes in many different forms and affects people in very different ways. Often it can cause stages of different emotions, ranging from disbelief, to anger, to devastated, overwhelmed and shock. All of these together are such powerful feelings which have a huge impact on yourself. After all they have been caused by a lifechanging event. We are all human, its natural that we will feel like this. And as humans, we will automatically develop some form of coping mechanism. For some people, including myself, this comes in the form of food. Depending on your own tendencies, this could come either as complete rejection of appetite (which happens alongside shock anyway) as your body comes to terms with what has happened, or it comes in the form of comfort eating. Speaking from my own experiences, this can introduce feelings of guilt or anger at yourself on top of everything else. By doing this we are distracting ourselves from thinking about what we actually upset about and diverting our attention to food instead.
I want to relate this topic to the brow chakra in Reiki. Any form of shock will send us spinning straight up into our heads and we just can’t think straight. Those feelings generated through our grief are emphasized in our head. To use myself as an example, I overthink everything! And in the past, I would try to make myself feel better by eating a lot of food in one go and then be angry at myself for it. And this wasn’t helping me. It was making me feel even worse.
So how can we help ourselves? The grief is still going to be there, but we can change our coping mechanism. The first thing we can do is to stop and breathe. Breathe, meditate, do some reiki, cry it out, take yourself for a walk – all things which will help you to come down from your head and into your body. In this state of mind, it’s a lot easier to be kind and compassionate with yourself. Give this a try whenever you feel like comfort eating or struggling to eat food. You may find that you’ve suddenly gained your appetite and ability to cook something delicious for self-care – or it could prevent you from feeling the need to eat out of comfort.
It’s not easy to suddenly be able to switch your way of thinking. It takes time, gradually building up a habit so that these other activities become your go to in order to cope, rather than food. But you can’t expect it to happen straight away. And that doesn’t matter. Therefore, you can’t beat yourself up for struggling, because not everybody finds it easy. So how can we help ourselves when we feel like we are ‘stuck’ in a pattern?
Back in the past, when my head ran off with everything, I had a real binge eating problem. I could eat way past the point of feeling full and be so uncomfortable with myself – then I would beat myself up for this on top of everything else I was going through at that time. When recovering, I had to remind myself that it’s ok. I am not superwoman (as fun as that would be). I was dealing with something huge in my life – this way of feeling in grief is completely normal. Therefore, I had to tell myself; “I am not going to beat myself up for the way in which I am reacting in grief. I am going to appreciate that this is my form of coping. And that I am doing ok. There are no expectations that I ‘should’ be coping or eating in a particular way. Therefore, I am going to do a bit of self-care and throw on a facemask…” And gradually, over time, the need to use food as a form of coping decreased.
In our lives, we all face times of disappointments, grief and sadness. There are no set guidelines as to how to deal with this. Everybody copes in their own way. It’s your choice to help yourself change your coping mechanism. If you are ready to break your pattern, try this exercise!
Find yourself a comfortable place to sit. If you feel emotional, acknowledge it and let it be. Take a few deep breaths and repeat the following sentences to yourself, as a reminder:
- I am human
- I am doing really well
- I am not placing any expectations on myself
- I will be kind to myself in whatever I do
- I am going to look after myself
- This time will pass
Love Hattie xx
