Today is Tu B’Av in the Jewish calendar. It’s kind of like a Jewish Valentine’s Day. But different. One, cuz it’s not very well-known. Two, cuz it’s entirely differently. See Wikipedia page here.
How apropos hat we are currently in a theme on my blog of relationships! (Not planned, I promise!)
Ok, well today, I want to talk about my relationship with physical nourishment. I’m gonna start with food. Then a bit later I will connect it with physical intimacy…
Recently I’ve sometimes been eating with the intent to push down my emotions.
It happens more so with cookies, cereal. Not to mention, I’ve also had a recent aversion to eating cold items. So I am gonna be making myself some nourishing soups and stews this upcoming week, cuz my body is craving warmth and connection.
I’m happy I’ve recognized my need for hot, nourishing foods. Hopefully it will assuage my recent apparent desire to eat extra carbs and sugar to alleviate painful emotional memories.
I notice:
I am eating this way as a means to deal with unsettled feelings in my body. I have a trauma, a pain, inside, and I am using the food to push down the pain; to try to avoid it.
In this way, my eating has an underlying feeling of aggression, of forcefulness.
Maybe it’s the lack of control of, of feeling like a victim to my trauma.
Feeling like even if I was an active player in the situation, I didn’t actively choose to feel this shitty afterward.
And all the more so, for sexual experiences which really did occur to someone against their will. Oyyyy.
This sense of being out of control. This feeling of anger.
I feel out of control so I try to take back control; be the doer, the enforcer.
Agressively shove food in my mouth:
Even if the aggression is only subconscious, and appears as innocuous uncontrolled eating.
I think aggression underlies it.
Looking back at my life, I didn’t have a pattern to eat mindlessly as a way to cope with painful emotions. If anything, I’m more of an eat-less-when-depressed kinda gal
That being said, my relationship with food is for the most part an emotionally healthy one.
But in the case of physical intimacy, I’ve had a deep-seated pattern. And to this day I still struggle with managing an emotionally healthier outlook:
How to be physically intimate in a way that is ALSO emotionally nourishing.
Mindful Nuggets 