Many of us who overeat find that once we start eating, we can’t stop. This is particularly poignant and problematic at the end of the day. We may be able to consciously manage our food intake at breakfast and lunch, and even make it through the afternoon without bingeing.
But once dinnertime and evening hits, watch out! We eat dinner, and then another dinner, and then several more meals before bed. This pattern is so incredibly frustrating – particularly as we wake up the next day determined to do differently, only to get stuck at night time again.
What gives? Night bingeing is not evidence of a lack of will power, control or even hunger. It’s not a symptom of a spiritual deficit or a “bad” ego. Rather, it’s the sign of an unmet developmental need. We binge at night because we feel a terror and fear of separation – in this case, the separation from food.
For many of us, food is our “mother,” our substitute parent. It’s how we feel nurtured, loved, and soothed. To turn this source of soothing and love off – to stop eating for the day – feels like a void, what psychologically feels like death. It feels like being separate from the mother; from safety, from love itself.
Some of us are extremely vulnerable to feelings of separation. It often goes hand in hand with chronic, high anxiety, as we walk around in the world feeling somewhat “unsafe.” The roots of this are in early childhood. As infants and small children, we experienced either a physical or emotional separation from our caregiver. Either the parent wasn’t physically or emotionally there.
The need to feel attached – connected and safely rooted to an emotional available, non stressed, attuned caregiver – is a primary need of all human beings. According to one of the world’s preeminant developmental psychologists, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, it’s the foundation for all human development.
I hear from many women who were raised in the “cry it out era” of child rearing – where it was believed that a crying baby was trying to manipulate you, and should be ignored. Their mothers left them in cribs and playpens to cry it out, as that’s what they were told was best. Some women experienced abuse or childhood trauma. Other women were raised by mothers who were depressed or stressed and therefore emotionally unavailable. This was true for me.
Can you imagine the frustration and terror of that infant as it is needing something – food, comfort, a diaper change – and its needs are continally ignored or not able to be met? Can you imagine the terror of the abused infant? At some point, the infant gives up. I see this tendency in adults who’ve learned to suppress their needs. They have a hard time needing and tend to deny their needs and feelings, minimize them, ignore them, and “should” over them – “I shouldn’t feel this way.” At a very tender age, they learned that no one is there. They’re on their own. So they learned to suppress their needs, becuase it felt too painful to need and have them go unmet.
(I’d like to make an aside and say that pointing out our developmental gaps is not an exercise in blame, guilt or judgment against our mothers. I am a mother. My children have gaps. I have gaps. Rather, it’s an exercise in understanding. If we can understand why we’re doing something, then we can move to care for ourselves and heal the places where we got stuck. We pair awareness with kindness in order to foster growth and healing.)
So let me normalize this for you: all of us carry wounds from our childhoods, to one degree or another, because we were raised by imperfect parents and live in an imperfect world. No parent, no matter how loving, can be 100% attuned to their child’s needs 100% of the time. You can have incredibly loving parents and still have gaps. That’s because a parent can love you tremendously and yet still be emotionally unavailable due to stress, their own emotional wounds, family challenges or circumstances outside of their control. None of us does life perfectly, which is why I’ve found forgiveness of both self and others to be foundational – I would say essential – to healing.
If you didn’t feel attached to your caregivers, or had childhood trauma, or simply got hurt (which means all of us!) you may carry this feeling of “I’m separate and alone and unsafe” in the implicit memory of the brain. What happens is that these memories get triggered as adults in our present day lives, and we live them out. Here are common ways we live out a fear of separation:
- once you stop eating, you can’t stop because not eating feels like a void, a separation
- you can’t stop eating your favorite binge foods; you’re “attached” to them (In this case, instead of being attached to a loving caregiver, you learned to become attached to food as your “mother.”)
- you avoid going to bed at night (night time is a huge separation, and was so for the infant and small child)
- you avoid being alone with yourself and your thoughts – it feels too scary
- you are highly distractible
- you are highly susceptible to rejection – for example, if someone averts their eyes while they’re talking to you, you feel rejected
- you have fears of intimacy
Our coping strategies – keeping ourselves constantly busy, overeating, staying up late, sabotaging relationships or intimacy – are attempts to care for ourselves, to avoid this terror, this feeling of psychological death. They are attempts to avoid what is too vulnerable to bear.
When our vulnerability is high, we often can’t reach out to other people – the very thing that can help us feel connected, loved and attached. So we seek out substitutes. One reason why we cling to food is that it doesn’t ask us to be vulnerable. It just loves us. It gives us feelings of love and connection by amping up the brain chemicals that create these feelings, like dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin. It’s the same with pets, books, the computer, computer games, and even virtual communities like Facebook. We go to them for connection because they don’t ask us to be vulnerable.
I hope that reading that helps you drop the judgment of “I’m a bad person because I go to these unhealthy things for connection instead of to real people.” As Sri Nisargadatta says, our flight from pain “is a sign of the love we bear for ourselves.” It is based in self protection, in love, in your tender, precious humanity – not a character flaw.
Thank God that we can heal – that the story doesn’t end here. Thank God that we can heal our brain, our bodies, and soothe this hurt part of us that feels so vulnerable and alone. How do we heal? Safety and belonging are crucial. We can’t drop the food unless we feel safe that something else will step in to take its place.
We can support ourselves through the healing process by creating safety in our own hearts, building up our sense of connection and belonging. This is why self acceptance and self compassion are foundational – they allow us to create a feeling of belonging – of sanctuary – inside. This internal belonging is always, always there; it is always available.
Tools that I use to foster self acceptance and self compassion are:
- Putting my hand on my heart and connecting with the feelings that are arising in me. Offering my feelings care, love and tenderness: “I hear you.”
- Mindfulness practices – noticing when fear or anxiety is arising in my body and looking to see what’s there.
- Offering myself self forgiveness at the end of the day or when I’m feeling small, separate or ashamed.
- Doing something that helps me feel held, soothed, or nurtured like rocking in a rocking chair, going outside and listening to the birds, or cuddling with a stuffed animal.
- Being curious about why I’m doing something unhelpful to myself rather than jumping on my case about why I “shouldn’t” have done it.
- Playing! Letting myself have a portion of my day for my enjoyment.
And lastly, my favorite technique for soothing my fear of separation: I put my hand on my heart, close my eyes, and tell myself, over and over, “You belong to me. You belong. You belong on the earth. You are safe with me.” It’s so powerfully healing. It’s a form of self parenting, reassuring that scared small part of me that she is safe, that I will never leave her, and that she belongs. I feel my body relax as I feel calmed by this self love.
I also encourage you to find all the support that you need to move through vulnerability. I agree with Dr. Harville Hendrix, who says that “we are wounded in relationship and we heal in relationship.” Loving friends, support groups, therapists and counselors, and supportive family members are crucial because they help change this belief that “I’m all alone.” They come alongside you so that you can heal those spaces inside that are too traumatized to touch on your own. In order to find lasting healing, I think we have to experience both internal healing with ourselves and external healing with others. Reaching out to others, then, is a necessary step, even as it can also be a scary one.
You belong, dear one. You belong. You are safe.
Needing more hands on help?
- To learn more about this topic, I invite you to explore my overeating program, Heal Overeating: Untangled. You’ll learn tools to heal this fear of separation that shows up with food.
- You may also enjoy reading this post on how your attachment style affects your relationship with food – http://www.firstourselves.org/missing-link-overeating/
- You may also enjoy reading this post on 5 reasons why you overeat – http://www.firstourselves.org/5-reasons-why-you-overeat/
Oh my….you hit the nail on the head. I cried softly when I read this. It was like you were writing my thoughts. Thank you for your beautiful work, and shedding light on to such a painful topic. my emontional needs went unmet in my childhood. Thank you for telling me that I can make changes, and that this isn’t my lot. I have had food issues for the last 6 years. I couldn’t believe when they crept up on me, because I never had food/weight issues previously. Awareness is a huge key towards paving the recovery road. I will remain unconditionally loving to myself. Thank you so much.
Dearest Rebecca,
You’re so welcome. It sounds like this post was healing to you – that it helped you understand your tender self, your “wiring” and your food issues better. This understanding gives us a whole new frame of reference, doesn’t it? I’m so glad my synthesis was a balm to your heart.
I’m so sorry that your emotional needs were unmet when you were young..how painful for you. I sincerely hope that you are able to love and care for those hurting, young parts inside who want to be validated – who want to be seen, heard and understood. In my experience, it’s never too late – giving yourself this empathy and validation now can be radically healing.
In love and care, Karly
Beautifully stated! Thank you so very much for this.
I am not a binge eater, but suffer from anxiety – and your words are extremely helpful.
Thank you again, and please be well.
I am trying to steady myself after reading this page. I am a 51-year-old man, and I suffer incredibly from night binges, having reached nearly 350 lbs recently. This has been an unbelievable battle my entire life. My binges have taken me to depression that has led at times to thoughts of suicide.
I cannot tell you the amount of relief I feel at reading the words on this page. That someone has been able to pinpoint what might be the cause of my binges.
Everything written is spot on. I lost my father when I was 5, my mother became distant emotionally and physically, and then she married a man who abused me with beatings and who never said more than a few words to me.
I now understand. It took this article for me to see what happened. I am entirely in awe that someone has put in words exactly what has happened to me. I feel there is hope.
Perhaps this is only a job for you, perhaps it is a way that you want to help people…I haven’t read enough yet to know who or what you are about. But I can tell you that in this case, on Dec. 16, 2012, you may have changed one man’s life completely. I don’t mean like getting a different haircut. I mean like totally changing my thoughts and the trajectory of my life. Taking the despair I have and replacing it with hope.
I know there is a lot of work ahead for me. But I feel like the person whose child has been missing for years, and then the police call and say they have found the child…the child is now an adult and grown, and there will be a lot of work to create a new type of relationship…but the parent is relieved and overwhelmed with gratitude in knowing that their child is alive and healthy and that they can see them again.
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.
Karly- I am new to this site and also just signed up for the Untangled program. I saw this topic and just had to read about the night eating. The way you explain the anticipation of separation from food at night causing anxiety and then we eat to soothe the anxiety makes perfect sense to me. I never thought about connecting this to feeling alone or separated in some way from my parents when younger. But my parents were emotionally separated from me. My father was always that way and when my sister died when I was 11 yrs. old, my mother became that way and totally emotionally dependent on me until she died at 87. Now unfortunately I am married to someone just like my father. So I spend most all my days feeling terribly alone although I have wonderful friends and a very good job I love.
I am so glad I found this website and will be starting your Untangled program. I hesitated to even try another program but something u said in your video clicked with me and now having read this article, I am feeling very encouraged! Thank you so much!
thank you SO much for this information You have filled in the gap in my recovery My thanks to you for all of the work that you had to do to have this awareness and then the bravery to share it with anyone anywhere who looks for it
This really helped me a lot. This has been an issue that I have struggled with for a few years now. I am very much an emotional eater and I’ve never had anyone describe me in such exactness. I often go through the cycle of binging, and then starving myself for several days, and I found it helpful to read your tips on how to recover for a binge. There is nothing worse than waking up the morning after a binge and thinking ahead at how hungry you will be upon starving yourself for the next 72 hours. Anyways, thank you again,
Deb
Although Ican easiy overeate t when I am stressed out, often I find myself overeating when I am not,, when nothing particularly unsettling is going on. the aposting about night ningeing helped me to begin to understand why ending a meal can be so difficult, even if there is apparently no heavy duty emotional issues going on.for me.
Food is profoundingly associated wtih getting urgent needs met and has been for an entire lifetime.. Ending a meal therefore means releasing that nurturing.
It means letting go of something so profoundingly comforting and so of course something inside of me will resist.
Thanks for the insight building.
Do you think it would help my children to avoid similar compulsions later in life by using this ‘belonging/ love’ hand on heart exercise with them (they are 5 and 2 years old), or is it something we have to do for ourselves only?
I think it would be something fabulous to teach young children – to let them know they always have a safe refuge within themselves.
My children were taught a beautiful exercise of doing something similar when they were little – 3 and 4 – at their Montessori school. They would put their hands on their hearts, close their eyes, and sing a little song, “My heart tells me what to do, what to do, what to do. My heart tells me what to do. I listen to my heart.”
I highly recommend the work of developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld for tools to create this belonging, this refuge, in the hearts of our children.
http://www.gordonneufeld.com/
His work underpins much of what I teach and changed how I see, understand and care for my children – and myself.
Hope that helps! Karly
First of all excuse my second language English. I am new here and this is my first reply. This article was so powerful and eye-opening for me, it was me. I always wondered why do I eat at night, why so much. Most of the time I eat so fast that I don’t even get chance to taste the food, I just need that overstuffed, heavy feeling in my stomach, and I keep eating and eating until I feel sick and my jaws hurt.
Now I know the answer, I had too many separations and goodbyes thru my life and sometimes I never had chance to really say good bye, this is it! I was raised by selfish grandmother because my mom had to work; daddy was never an emotional guy; bad kindergartens; bad schools, war, life as refugee, moving to another country leaving my parents behind, early marriage and first kid, moving back home, losing mom, brother, friends, love, me!
It is good to know that there is hope.
Thank you so much
Hi Lucija,
I’m so glad this article nourished you and helped you understand the motivations behind your night eating. It sounds like you have had many, many losses. I am sincerely sorry. I hope your tender soul can grieve for every one.
Welcome to our community – I’m so glad you’re here.
XO, Karly
Hi – I’m new here, but really loved this article. It seemed to strike a real chord.
It’s fascinating also that it’s western nations that have the obesity epidemic, and we’re the ones who separate from our babies so early.
Hi Fit Mamma,
That’s a fascinating correlation – I hadn’t thought of that before. It rings true for me. I’m reminded of a TED talk by Brene Brown where she said we’re the most overweight, addicted society in the history of the world … I would add to that list disconnected. How many of us deal with chronic loneliness on a regular basis? I hear about it so often, and have also experienced it myself.
As my mentor Dr. Neufeld says, “We are creatures of attachment.” We so need to feel belonging, on the deepest level, to feel at home in this life, in our world, and with ourselves.
So glad to have you here! Welcome to our beloved community.
XO, Karly
Karly,
I so needed to read this: I put my hand on my heart, close my eyes, and tell myself, over and over, “You belong to me. You belong. You belong on the earth. You are safe with me.” It’s so powerfully healing. It’s a form of self parenting, reassuring that scared small part of me that she is safe, that I will never leave her, and that she belongs. I feel my body relax as I feel calmed by this self love.
I have been feeling exactly that way: alone and separate lately…a result of my not nurturing my relationships with friends and family and my anxiety has been fired up lately. Not sure why but just is. I will definitely try this. Just reading about it makes me relax !
Kathy B
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This is so completely in sync with my life experience. I feel incredibly soothed by your words Karly. I have lived this experience with such a deep hole in my heart, especially when I have had goodbye’s, and separations. One of my favorite events is when my beautiful 22 year old daughter comes to visit. Except when she leaves on Sunday evening, I have felt that I would die of a broken heart. I now have been given such tenderness to love myself through it without sugar or compulsivity. I am so grateful. With love and care.
Hi Mimi,
I’m sensitive to separation too. Just the other day I was going on a walk and I felt the sadness of separation of leaving my youngest son for an hour! It’s a sadness of loss. I feel loss acutely.
When we feel deeply, and love deeply, I think we grieve the losses deeply too.
I agree – that to love this about ourselves and care for it is an act of kindness. In caring for it, we drop the judgment and we don’t make ourselves wrong. What freedom.
I’m so happy that this post helped you find self compassion and understanding, as writing it did for me.
XO, Karly
I LOVE this! This was particularly moving and so on base for me.
For more information on the developmental roots of food suffering, I greatly encourage you to study the work of developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld, one of my teachers and mentors:
http://www.gordonneufeld.com/
The Power to Parent course is a great place to start.
http://www.gordonneufeld.com/products/dvds
What an awesome way to explain this now I know everyithng!