End of Season Summary of STRESS & ANXIETY Recovery Podcast Resources

Today, I end the year with a round-up of some of the main themes I’ve talked about this year. I talk about how to understand your comfort eating, and how to recover from it, so that you are prepared for the post Christmas desire to get healthier.

I get a lot of enquiries in January, so I know that many people will be facing how to deal with comfort eating. This summary will point you towards where you need to start, in my podcast. You have a lot of helpful support and information here about the things that lead to feeling out of control with food, and how to tackle them.

This podcast also comes with a handout. You can find today's handout, here.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, this is Underground Confidence with Shelly Treacher. I'm going to be taking a break from podcasting for a while so that I can build my new app and a community for you to join. This is going to take me some time. So today I want to end on a roundup of some of what I've talked about this year and how it all fits with overeating so that you're prepared for January when I can't podcast. I don't know about you, but I get overwhelmed when I see the amount of podcasts produced by some people, so I hope to reduce your overwhelm and to help you find what you need in these podcasts. I get a lot of inquiries in January, so I know that many of you will be facing how to tackle your comfort eating. This summary will point you towards where you need to start in my podcast. You have a lot of information here. This podcast also comes with a handout, so be sure to check out the link in the notes. But if you require further help in January, please do be in touch with me. My group fills up fast in January, so I may need to be running more than one, which I would be delighted to do. Whilst a group may not seem like the obvious place to bear your soul and to start facing the shame that you might be feeling around comfort eating, there's an incredible amount of healing to be had by connecting with others who identify with what you're going through. That includes the shame and the frustration, but also fear. I'd like to help you beyond that, to a place of comfort and confidence in yourself. So here's a summary of this podcast so far. One The Reasons for Overeating The first thing that I talked about was the many things that might cause you to overeat or to maintain weight. There are a lot of reasons listed here from biology, genetics, marketing, and to the availability of food. My aim here was to start to show you how difficult it is to exert willpower over your eating. Because there are so many other factors that contribute to weight gain and to wanting to overeat. This was my first podcast, Are You a Comfort Eater, Emotional Eater or Binge Eater? How to recognize it. How to recognize emotional eating. I then talked about how overeating may be understood to have uncomfortable feelings or beliefs behind it. With this, I hope to normalise for you that most of us use some substance or another to regulate how we feel. This forms the basis of the podcast, in that I talk mainly about comfort eating and all the myriad of emotional and psychological experiences that might lead to comfort eating and how to manage them differently. These podcasts are Ten Reasons Why You Might Comfort Eat and the recent revamped versions of the first podcast Why You Comfort Eat and Are You An Emotional Eater? Here's how to find out. three The Self Critic Podcast two was about the self critic. I talked about this next because I firmly believe that the self critic is responsible for much of the comfort eating that we do. Here I also started talking about the inner child in us, who responds to the self critic with hurt, anger or upset. This is the part of us that feels something uncomfortable and so tries to manage those feelings with food. This is also the part that insists we must eat. Here I begin to encourage you to be more compassionate towards yourself, because this is the key to being able to stop comfort eating. That podcast is Blame, Binge, Shame, Repeat The Self Critic and the Inner Child Behind Comfort Eating. four Feelings In most of my podcasts I've talked about different feelings and experiences that may lie behind your overeating. I've talked about what they are, how they occur in us, and how they may be understood and worked with. This is important because we react to our environment and each other all day long. In the context of comfort eating, it's essential to understand how we're affected and what we feel, so that we may start to get a handle on understanding what we actually need and then meeting that need. Expressing ourselves and feeling accepted or understood can also go a long way to healing the hurts behind comfort eating. Here are some of the podcasts that I have on specific emotional experiences that you might be dealing with. There's shame and binge eating, anger, self punishment and binge eating, worry, anxiety and comfort eating, loss or grief may be behind comfort eating and how to cope with anniversaries, occasions and firsts after a bereavement. The following podcast is about what the self critic has to say and self confidence. This is called What is Self Worth? And then the following podcast is about how to start to improve your confidence. This is open the gates to self worth and change the core beliefs that lead to comfort eating. Also in this category are coping with COVID Christmas loneliness and comfort eating and do you eat when you're bored? five Habits and Cravings I've talked about what a habit is, what a craving is, and the physiological addiction side of comfort eating. These podcasts show some chemistry behind comfort eating and why we're so drawn to it. This is helpful because it's good to know what you're dealing with in order to make a different choice. The titles of these podcasts are The Secrets to Breaking Habits How to Break the Powerful Habit of Comfort Eating and What is a Craving? This is why you can't resist food, alcohol, scrolling, or the person you've been crushing on. six Alternative Ways to Manage Feelings Part of learning to reduce comfort eating involves needing to find other ways to manage how you feel. So I've also produced various podcasts on healthy ways to manage feelings. This is a vital component in learning to manage life and emotion without comfort food. So you'll find techniques in most of my podcasts on this. You've got to have another satisfactory way of dealing with the uncomfortable experiences that come up if you don't use food or any other substance to soothe them. In these podcasts you'll find lots of suggestions for how to start to manage feelings and ways to comfort yourself without food. These podcasts are How to Comfort Yourself Without Comfort Eating eight techniques The Surprising Tool to Help You Stop Comfort Eating Embodiment Feeling at Home in Your Body is essential for your comfort eating recovery success and lockdown overeating how can mindful eating help? Number seven Compassion Above all, I've encouraged you to be compassionate with yourself in every podcast, because this is a powerful route to choosing to treat yourself well, including what you eat and when. Self compassion and understanding are key because overeating is often a form of a lack of self compassion and a lack of self understanding. Typically, we've been taught to deny, ignore or be ashamed of our feelings and our needs. These podcasts encourage you to understand yourself instead. When you feel understood and accepted, life gets a lot easier, and it's more likely you'll select well for yourself. These podcasts are for the binge eater who puts everyone else first and your relationship with yourself and the role of kindness with binge eating. Number eight relationship I've talked a lot about relational development, relational trauma, and relational dynamics here. I've spoken about how these may influence or trigger comfort eating, and I've offered healthy ways to manage these triggers and feelings. This is a huge section, so bear with me because the list is quite long. But it's so important because we're affected by each other and trying to cope with this effect all the time. Very few of us are born into secure families who teach us how to manage relationship and feelings healthily, so this subject is complex, endlessly fascinating to me, and always a work in progress. This is also an area that I specialise in working with, particularly with my Calling in the One program for people who are dissatisfied about being single or unhappy in relationship. This program helps you uncover what's causing the problem and sets you on a more authentic path to love and connection. Here are the titles Turn Your Childhood Low Self Worth into Healing Crack Your History Code How Your Relationship History Affects Your Comfort Eating The Effect of your Upbringing on Your Comfort Eating How to Heal What Comfort Seekers need to know about the fear of rejection What feeling triggered actually means defensiveness explained Take the Stress out of conflict ten ways to cope with COVID nineteen social anxiety Why it's so difficult to say no to people twelve ways to say no The Single Comfort Eater How to Find Love and finally signs of being in an abusive relationship. nine trauma in many of my podcasts, particularly in the ones about your history, I've talked about trauma and the body's fight or flight system. This will help you to understand the physiological states that might cause comfort eating and the state you might be in when you do it. These podcasts are binge eating in the evening and where are we now emerging from COVID nineteen the impact on our well being. ten Body Shame No podcast about the emotional side of comfort eating would be complete without talking about body hatred. This is an experience shared by most comfort eaters, so I've talked about ways to address this too. These podcasts are Body Shame, Binge Eating and Body Image and Overcome Body Hatred. eleven Female Hormones I've even talked about estrogen and its influence on our comfort eating during perimenopause or menopause, but this could also apply to any other hormone cycles and polycystic ovary syndrome. This podcast is why you can't stop comfort eating in the menopause, perimenopause, or around your menstrual cycle. twelve COVID nineteen Of course I've also talked about the effects of the pandemic, which has made a comfort eater out of most of us. In December I gave a workshop on coping with or recovering from the effects of the pandemic. This is something I'll be doing again in January and probably beyond. With the shock of Omicron, just as we were beginning to think about feeling safe in our world, things are really starting to get to people. So I'll be sharing some ways to cope, so watch out for the updated workshop on my websites. These podcasts are recovering from COVID nineteen burnout and COVID comfort eating, and where are we now? Emerging from COVID nineteen the impact on our well being. thirteen My Life Throughout these podcasts I've given you lots of examples from my life and from my listeners' lives about how comfort eating plays out. I've also shown you part of what it takes for me to respond healthily to my own desire to comfort eat. These podcasts include No Sugar Month the four part series. fourteen How to Stop Comfort Eating Finally, some of my podcasts have been summary podcasts of what I think it takes to stop comfort eating. These podcasts include procrastination, realistic new year resolutions and new habits for the comfort eater. And The Mystery Revealed What It Really Takes To Stop Comfort Eating Today I'm going to end on a poem because it speaks to a substantial part of what is needed to recover from comfort eating and to be well in the world today. This poem is by Leah Perlman and it's called Can you Love the One Who? There's one in you who's sweet. There's one in you who's mean? Can you love them both? Can you let them both be seen? Can you love the one who tries? And love her when she fails? Can you love the one who lies? And love the one who wails? Can you love her tears? Can you love her worry? Can you love her darkest fears? Can you love her fury? Can you love indifference? Love the one who clings. Can you love the vibrant one? Love the one who sings? Can you love your addict? Can you love your thief? Can you love your vanity? Can you love your grief? Can you love your inner child and your body as you age? Can you love your wild side? Release her from her cage? Can you love the one fulfilled and the one who's not? Can you love the one who's chilled and whose temper's hot? Can you love the weakling? The one who's sometimes sick? Can you love the warrior who fights through thin and thick? Can you love your crazy? Can you love your sane? Can you love your foolish heart? Love your scattered brain. There's one in you who's bored and one in you who's often stressed. Can you love them both at once? And she who tries her best? If the answer's no to some of the above, then can you love the one in you who's learning how to love? You can see that I got a little bit choked up there. There's no way I can read that poem without getting choked up at the end. So thank you for listening to that. It really does mean a lot to me, and I think it sums up what I'm trying to say. So that's it for this year. I will be back in 2022. As I mentioned at the beginning, I'll be taking a break in January to develop an app and a community for you. If you need help or further support in January, please be in touch. Let's get something organized for you. Meanwhile, sign up to my newsletter to be the first to know when the podcast is coming back and to receive all the help that I offer in the meantime. In keeping with this podcast, I wish you a peaceful, loving, confident Christmas and a centered, clear, and empowered start to the new year, where all parts of you are welcome. See you in 2022!