I went to the nutritional psychologist for another appointment.  The amount I’m spending on this journey of mine keeps going higher and higher but I feel like I’m getting closer to the reasons I look for comfort in food. Today we talked about anxiety being the reason I need to have something in my mouth.  Chocolate is ok but when I’m really stressing it could be anything, as long as I’m chewing.

I expected the shrink to tut tut when I told him that but he said I wasn’t alone.  Most everyone who eats for an emotional reason does the same thing.  Some crave salty foods, some crave chocolate and then there are people like Oprah and me who visit the pantry door or the open fridge and wait for something new to magically appear.

So today he asked me if I was familiar with EFT or tapping.  I remember reading something about tapping a few years ago but I pooh poohed it thinking it was pretty nutty.  Well, that’s where we’re delving now.  We spent much of the hour today talking about E=motional F=reedom T=echnique.  The theory behind it is that it’s similar to acupuncture in that it works on the connection of your body’s subtle connections.  It’s been called emotional acupuncture.

The tapping comes in when you identify something you want to get rid of in your life, like a memory of your mother saying something really awful to you when you were 7 and you always remember it with a negative emotion.

According to my doctor, while tapping on acupressure points along meridians, or pathways of energy throughout the body, and being tuned in to a specific problem or issue, the mind/body energy system is “straightened out,” and the energy becomes available so we can heal.  That’s why it’s called EFT – emotional freedom technique.

You make a statement and then tap on the end points of the body’s meridians or energy pathways thinking about whatever it is that you want to work on.   I have no idea how it works or IF it works but since we did it in his office I haven’t stood in the kitchen looking for something to eat.  One day isn’t a cure, so we’ll see how it goes.

If you have had success with EFT, can you let me know?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 3:06 am and is filed under emotional eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.