Emotional Eating

What is emotional eating?

Eating difficulties come in all shapes and sizes. Whilst it is common to “comfort eat” sometimes, people can find that they are constantly turning to food as a way of managing emotions. This can have negative ramifications, such as shame, weight gain, or a sense of loss of control which in turn can impact on other areas of life. Even if these difficulties do not meet the full diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder, psychological therapy can give you the tools to find other ways of coping.

What does treatment for emotional eating involve?

If you seek support with emotional eating, the first thing we will do is understand what is driving the emotional eating. Sometimes people just need to develop alternative strategies for managing emotions. Sometimes emotional eating is driven by something else, such as low self-esteem, and addressing the underlying difficulties will also address the emotional eating. This is most likely to involve drawing on CBT, compassion focussed therapy, or skills from dialectical behaviour therapy.