When nervous hunger is the main actor in your life
Whatever feeling you are currently experiencing, the only thing you do is: eating, and not just eating normal portions, but very big portions like these Duracell figures that would never stop, until you hit the off button. How do you break up this vicious circle?
It is not a real hunger out of an empty stomach, the discomfort is deeper due to psychic mechanisms. We eat out of the so-called nervous hunger in an automatic and compulsive way. The nervous hunger has a specific character, it comes with a violent voracity, we exaggerate in the quantity and quality of the food ingested.
If we want to get rid of it, trying to fight the hunger with a wide list of strategies, diets, techniques etc. will just reinforce it. This is not the adequate approach. First, the roots of this discomfort come from inside and not from outside, a change of perspective is needed, and it is inside that we must look at it. This approach needs the willingness to be open-minded, to welcome the discomfort without judging it or even fighting it at all costs. Starting a war against nervous hunger is far away from the solution.
Welcome the nervousness without any judgements and observe your deep emotions. Usually when nervous hunger comes on stage, we also notice the emotional state we are currently in (sadness, boredom, anxiety, anger, etc…) and we perceive a feeling as someone is remotely controlling us, because we just eat without thinking, it can even feel like being possessed.
Our body is extremely wise, and hunger in this case has a function, to calm down the state of mind, being so unbearable four our consciousness that it just helps itself by somehow sedating it.
By acting in this way our consciousness is not a free spirit but a controlled one. The first step out of it is to learn to persist in those emotional states and to realise that these emotions are the roots of the binge. The hunger is just a mechanism to run away. Next time when the hunger attack comes, just step back, and ask yourself, what emotion am I feeling? If it is helpful for you, you can write down the emotion (describing exactly how you feel) in a diary, so you might also have an overview when the hunger attacks come. Overthinking about why, what is the cause, and why again, will not help, but change the view and making space for your emotions will.
If you want to get out of this circle, a welcoming open-mind is essential, staying in these emotional status means to just observe them without judging, to wait, stay with their “company”, notice it and just say nothing. The same is applicable to the nervous hunger attack: Ok, now you are here, and I will stay with you as your friend. Take 5 minutes, step back and while you are waiting, be curious what comes along, no matter what, an idea, an inspiration, a desire may be something is maturing inside. And may be exactly in this small new space, something new is emerging. Exactly when you recognise that the energy of hunger wants to shatter old patterns, you are making room for new sides of you.