Overeating Is an Abandonment Issue: How to Heal it

HUNTINGTON, N.Y. - Nov. 29, 2022 - PRLog -- Food is primal satisfaction. Eating is reflex, our first reflexive gratification. The flavors and textures of food hit the palate and create an instant sensation -- mostly pleasure -- quicker then any drug could do. Its succor and nurture help assuage abandonment fear, a primal human emotion that impinges from within whose roots tug all the way back to birth trauma.

As adults, we are supposed to be the CEOs of our lives, fully engaged in setting and achieving goals for ourselves, in charge of giving ourselves a good life. This involves the ability to delay immediate gratification in the service of achieving long range goals. If the goal, for example, is to become a doctor, lazing around all day instead of studying only may feel good in the short term, but defeats the purpose of getting through med school. Likewise, if the goal is to lose weight, gorging on pasta may feel pleasurable while it's going down, but forfeits the more sustaining pleasure of being able to zip up our pants.

Grabbing for feel-good relief at the expense of our important life-goals is a form of self-abandonment. If our confidence and sense-image depend on trimming down, but we keep stuffing ourselves with brownies, then we're abdicating our CEO responsibilities, failing to take good care of ourselves, abandoning our hopes and dreams for a cheap thrill. What causes us to forsake ourselves?

1) Low Self-Esteem: The key symptom of low self esteem is the tendency to succumb to immediate gratification -- a buy now, pay later attitude. We don't hold ourselves in high enough regard to put ourselves through the rigors of med school or diet and exercise. We're just not special enough, not worth it.

2) Abandonment Issues. Low self esteem is a product of unresolved abandonment -- those unattended needs that hearken all the way back to childhood when we felt left behind, diminished, not good enough, rejected. The universal abandonment wound is cumulative and festers beneath the surface where it silently generates self-doubt and reduces our self-esteem quotient.

3) Low Sense of Entitlement: We aim low and put up with having less because we don't feel important enough to put forth the effort to attain the body-beautiful or fulfilling career. So we go for second best and grab for quick fixes that forestall our loftier goals, creating a vicious cycle in which food becomes the soother and reward -- an addiction.

4) Abandoned Inner Child: When our Inner Child feels empty, needy, or insecure, we stuff the feelings with food instead of loving ourselves enough to forgo immediate gratification in the service of achieving long-range success.

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