Anxiety - An Eating Trigger

The other day a client was struggling with a decision. It was driving him to compulsively eat. His anxiety level spiked because he was afraid of making a wrong decision. It seems like one of the biggest emotional eating triggers around. So how do you handle it?

Then I remembered an old but still very relevant book I had read many years from Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway. Jeffers says, "Lighten up! Whatever happens as a result of your decision, you'll handle it." She also says, "There is no such thing as wrong decisions because whatever we choose will give us the gift of a valuable experience if we are open enough to really learn from it."

My addition to her thoughts is that it is probably more of the feeling of the fear itself that locks one into anxiety. We need to allow ourself to experience that uncomfortable feeling of fear and then deal with it appropriately. Only then can you overcome it and compulsive eating. "You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. Remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind."  - Dale Carnegie