EMOTIONAL PAIN AND EATING

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychological therapy tool that I employed regularly when practising psychology. While some clients found EMDR confronting, I found it to be highly successful in desensitising painful memories. During EMDR it is common for clients to see pictures of past events. Usually, amongst all the pictures that flick through the mind, one or more stands out and stays in focus. It is then kept in focus and processed. As it continues to be focussed on, the presenting stressful picture or emotion begins to fade until it is entirely gone, leaving the client free of that emotional pain. Sometimes we are completely unaware of why we are feeling uncomfortable. If this is the case if we focus on the emotion and keep focussing on it and allow it to do its worst, after a relatively small amount of time it will fade away to insignificance. When emotional pain is felt, many of us take to drinking alcohol or eating excessively to comfort ourselves. These are only band aid solutions. They are destructive and don’t solve anything and most of all they allow the destructive emotional pain to continue to exist.