Is Fat An Emotion?
By Ph.D. Sherrie Campbell. Posted on .
Let’s be honest. There is nothing that can make us feel more down about ourselves than not feeling good about our bodies. I am all for inner beauty and being high frequency, but what we look like largely impacts the way we feel about ourselves. If we do not feel good about our physical self it is difficult to fully express a happy emotional self. Our self-hate will be experienced in our energy. We are a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual being. The physical is the first level with the others proceeding up the hierarchy. If we do not love ourselves at the very base then subsequent levels will be impacted.
Food and weight are pertinent topics because they create emotional problems for many of us. Anyone who is worried about their appearance will have some sort of a conscious relationship, good or bad, with food. I believe there are six core emotions: mad, sad, glad, afraid, ashamed, hurt, and I add the seventh to be FAT. I view fat as an emotion. When we feel fat it induces an emotional state of frustration, low self-worth, shame, lack of self-control, hopelessness, helplessness, fear and anger. Food is what we see as the culprit of stealing our power. How can something inanimate have such a power over us?
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Food is a “frienemy” (friend/enemy). A wise man once told me “the tongue is like a two-year-old.” We battle often between our two-year-old tongue and our stomach. I will use Freud’s id-ego-superego theory to explain this battle. The id is the set of uncoordinated, uninhibited drives based on pleasure only; the ego is the organized, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralising or parenting role.
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The tongue is the id. Oh, does it love pleasure and instant gratification! The tongue loves food, nachos, cheese, chips, ice-cream, chocolate you name it. It loves pleasure, taste and excitement. Who doesn’t love the way chocolate melts in their mouth or the crunch of something salty? The tongue always says YES, but like any two-year-old it does not know when enough is enough. Even when we are full the tongue still wants to pick at whatever is in front of us because it tastes so good! It wants more, more, more!
The stomach, which is likened to Freud’s ego, is attempting to establish control and authority to say no to the two-year-old, who keeps feeding it. The stomach will say “we have had enough; I am full down here, please stop eating!!” We don’t hear these warnings but we can feel them physically. At the first sign of fullness bells and whistles go off when the stomach has reached its capacity. Herein begins the conflict because the tongue does not listen (like most two-year-olds) because it is all so yummy! Once we are beyond full-capacity the stomach will get violent and more severe with the warnings. The stomach begins to hurt, pants begin to feel tight, or the ability to breathe comfortably is labored. Often the tongue heeds no warnings and keeps on eating!!
