by KimMcLaughlin | May 18, 2017 | Uncategorized
Here is a blog post from my friend Fawn Gilmore Kraut. She helps single women discover love in their lives and release from what is not working. She has kindly allowed me to use one of her blogs to support all of you. If you are interested in a healthy relationship read on…
It was an honest but rather scary admission.
“He is like heroin to me,” she said again and again. I shuddered inside but was glad at what she was finally seeing. For some time, the symptoms had shown up like flashing neon signs in her language and behavior.
“He’s been under so much stress.”
Some of her ongoing excuses for his self-indulgent behavior.
“I still miss him. His good side.”
Good side? He routinely abused her physically and mentally for years.
“I am pretty sure that I am co-dependent!”
You think?!
“Help!”
It’s on the way!
This college educated, mother of three was addicted. Not to drugs, porn, or hoarding. Oh no. This unusually sympathetic mother had gotten herself addicted to the very difficult man she married – and she was far from alone on that score.
Relationship addiction is real. It can happen more easily that we realize. Known for his work with chemical dependency, Canadian physician Gabor Maté reveals that the source of an addiction is unresolved pain. The addiction is our coping mechanism to cover up the pain that lies awake in the shadows.
Unfortunately, the more we run from our pain, the more painful life becomes. Like an infected wound, our emotional pain operates in our body much the same as a physical injury, often becoming quite crippling.
Do you think you might be addicted to someone? Past relationship? Sibling? Even one of your children?
Well, here is some evidence that would indicate that you are a relationship addict:
- You call or reach out to the person practically every day. However, they rarely reach back.
- The person dominates your thinking. You can’t get them out of your mind.
- You can’t function until you have some kind of contact with them.
- You make excuses for their behavior. You are blind to reality.
- You don’t care what it costs you to be in the relationship. You even overlook the negative consequences of your actions on yourself and others.
- The relationship affects everything else in your life. It prevents you from moving forward and growing as a healthy human being.
If you are addicted, what is the answer?
According to Dr. Mate, the antidote to addiction is connection. And though you may feel like you’re “connected” to this person, it’s not a true connection if the relationship requires you to abandon yourself. True connection is only possible when we stop avoiding the uncomfortable emotions, and begin to embrace our full selves, and let others do the same. Being with our emotions, without judgment and without shame, can be scary. It means owning our story. Our mistakes, those times when we fall down. But when we do, when we are truly authentic with a person who holds space for us to be fully ourselves, we can begin the process of healing.
I know. Sometimes the pain has been buried so deep and for so long that you have no idea what it is or how to bring it into the light. In these situations, here is what I recommend to my clients.
First, remove the “drug.” Stop the behavior that you are using to cover up the pain. Practically, this can mean cutting off all contact with the person. I am talking, “cold turkey.” Without rudeness or blame shifting. You simply stop calling, texting or commenting on Facebook. Whatever the behavior has been, you stop doing it.
Second, you allow your emotions to surface with someone else, preferably a good friend or compassionate professional who has their feet on the ground.
The key here is that your emotions will lead you to the source of your pain, if you are willing to let them surface. Many times our pain is rooted in fear such as fear of abandonment, rejection, or being alone.
Finally, when you’re ready, you release, let go, heal and move forward. You acknowledge the pain and its memories for what they are and you begin to rebuild your life with a stronger, healthier, and more hopeful outlook. You are much stronger than you ever realized.
Addicted to someone?
The great news is that, if you are willing, you can be free from behavior that keeps you locked up in the prison of the past.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever been addicted to someone? How did you get through it?
Happy clients around the world call Fawn “Their relationship guru.” For single professional women, serious about creating an amazing life-long passionate love-affair, Fawn is their go-to expert to discover and claim their feminine power and attract great men who are ready to love, respect, and cherish them. Clients learn to radiate their unique confidence, love, and beauty in a powerful way that makes them irresistible to the men who are the perfect match for them. With confidence and joy — and with her inspired guidance and support — they learn to repel the men who only want to use them, and magnetize and inspire real, quality men into their lives to create real and lasting love for a lifetime.
Fawn spent most of her twenties and thirties with a series of dead-end relationships and broken hearts. When she was almost forty, after one last devastating heart-break, she decided she needed to start taking responsibility for her relationships with men and the pain she was creating. (Either that or become …a nun!) She began working with a coach who ever so gently asked her the questions that opened her eyes and her heart. Within a year, at the age of 40, she married the love of her life and they’re still going strong.
After years of informal coaching and transformational work, Fawn graduated from the prestigious Coaches Training Institute as a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach.
She is passionate about women finding real passionate love while being true to their authentic unique selves.
Learn more at www.fawngilmorekraut.com.
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7 Keys to Attracting The Man Who Will Love, Respect, and Cherish You
by KimMcLaughlin | Feb 22, 2017 | Podcast
Do you ever find that you eat more than you planned? Do you eat until you feel stuffed? Do you try diet after diet only to ultimately gain weight back? This might begin to make you think that there is something wrong with you and that you are doomed to struggle with food and your weight forever.
I want to help you see that this is not a moral issue, and you are not lacking willpower or the ability to change the way you deal with food. What you could be missing is the key to changing your relationship with food. By handling your relationship with food, you can put food in its place as nourishment only.
The key can be recognizing how your emotions are playing a part in your overeating. The emotional component is not helped by dieting or limiting food. Actually the opposite happens: you could ultimately eat even more by trying to limit food when you are eating for emotional reasons.
Doesn’t everyone eat for emotional reasons? Yes, at some point everyone does. The question is – does it bother you? Eating to manage emotions is a challenge for many people because it can lead to weight issues that cause many other problems. Food can become a way to nurture yourself, when its actual purpose is to nourish your body. If we look to food to satisfy our feelings this may result in an endless cycle of diet/restrict-binge-guilt.
To help you determine if emotional eating is problem for you, ask yourself these questions. Do you:
1. Eat large amounts when you are not hungry?
2. Eat so much you feel uncomfortably full?
3. Eat in isolation to avoid feeling embarrassed?
4. Eat and feel guilty, upset, or depressed afterward?
5. Eat more rapidly than others?
6. Eat to make you feel better?
Does the way that you eat cause you problems? Emotional eating can keep you stuck because it has a component that actually makes you feel good. However, the positive feelings (relief, calm) are only temporary (one minute to many hours) and there is a turning point where it becomes negative and you might find yourself feeling angry and guilty that you overate (again).
The conclusion is emotional eating does not work. It does not satisfy your emotions, and can actually hurt you. The way to begin to deal with your emotions rather than overeating is to:
• Notice when you are eating for emotional reasons: for reasons other than hunger.
• Acknowledge it to yourself. You cannot change anything until you recognize it and acknowledge it.
• Give yourself praise that you are now “getting it” and willing to do something different.
As you begin to notice and acknowledge emotional eating you can then start figuring out what to do next. Some ideas are:
• Begin to identify the emotions that are leading you to eat: sad, mad, anxious, bored, or lonely.
• After you notice the emotions then you can address them. You can develop a “toolbox” which you can draw upon. I have many items in my toolbox to help me take care of my emotions such as; journaling, taking a walk, talking to a friend, meditating, or working out.
• Develop more mindfulness in relationship to your emotions by doing a physical check in. Try taking a deep breath and feel the connection to your body, then ask yourself how you are feeling, and what you really need. I find this mindfulness keeps me in touch with my feelings and a positive way to address them.
Be careful not to go down the path of self-loathing for overeating “for so long.” I promise you this negative thought process will only foster a return to overeating for being mad at yourself for it. Now is the time for self-compassion. Realize that you have done the best you can, and now is the time to change. Seek out help through books, professionals, coaches, 12 step groups, and friends; anything to begin changing this pattern. I’m confident that you can make it happen!
Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor and Motivational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discover Your Inspiration.
Kim McLaughlin has been identified as writing one of the Top 50 Blogs about Emotional Eating by the Institute on Emotional Eating. Sign up for her free Special Report: Top Strategies to End Emotional Eating here.
by KimMcLaughlin | Sep 15, 2016 | Podcast
I get asked this all the time, “How do I know if I am an emotional eater?” It is a question that is personal and individual. It can be hard to know. I think of emotional eating as a puzzle with many pieces. Here are some of the clues for you to see what emotional eating is:
- Eating when you are not hungry.
- Using food to comfort yourself.
- Using food to help with situations that feel uncomfortable.
- Eating to overfull.
- Feeling bad about what you eat and your overeating.
- Calling food good and bad.
- Feeling bad about your body and your weight.
Any of these signs by themselves are not necessarily indicative of emotional eating. You might be someone who engages in emotional eating, at times, and it does not cause you a problem. It is socially acceptable to overeat at holidays and family celebrations that happen sporadically. There are people whose overeating is the exception rather than the rule. They may find one or two of the above questions are a yes, but not many more than that.
Knowing if you are an emotional eater or not is helpful, because then you can begin to get a direction to end the emotional eating. It can be important to know if you are an emotional eater, because many emotional eater are prone to join on the diet bandwagon. I have seen this happen over and over again. Dieting is the socially acceptable way to manage food and weight issues. Right? Problem is if you are eating for emotional reasons, a diet does not help you.
If you find the answers to many of the above questions are a yes, you might be an emotional eating. If so, you do not need to worry. Now you have a name to the problem and that can lead you to a solution. Many of us have the same problem and there is a solution. Knowing there is a problem and naming it is the first step to the freedom that I know you are looking for.
Kim McLaughlin, MA is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in helping people with eating issues and eating disorders. If you are concerned that about overeating, weight or your use of food in general please contact her here. Sign up for her FREE Top Tips to End Emotional Eating here. Check out her website at www.FeedYourSoulTherapy.com.
by KimMcLaughlin | Apr 16, 2016 | Podcast
End Emotional Eating
Most people have eaten for emotional reasons at one time or another. It can be the go to thought when there is stress. I remember many occasions at work when one person would say to colleagues, “I am stressed – who wants to get something with me (meaning something sweet)?” We were all stressed and didn’t know how to handle it except by eating.
Eating to manage emotions over a long period of time can end up having some negative consequences. One of the biggest problems with using food to manage emotions is it can lead to weight issues, and with the weight comes many more problems.
Eating for emotional reasons is used to quiet any of a number of emotions such as: sadness, anger, frustration, loneliness, or boredom to name a few. Emotional hunger is not the same as physical hunger (the true reason to eat) and you are looking for food to satisfy the emotional need. We know that ultimately food cannot satisfy an emotional need because it is meant to satisfy physical hunger.
The starting point for emotional eating is to know if you engage in it. Truthfully, many people are unaware that is what they are doing, thinking they are simply overeating. The foods chosen for emotional eating tend to be those that you would consider comfort foods: high in fat, salt, and sugar. Here are some signs of emotional eating:
- Eating when you are not hungry.
- Eating when you are experiencing feelings.
- Eating in isolation.
- Eating and feeling guilty afterward.
- Overeating and not knowing why.
- Eating to make yourself feel better.
- Craving a food for no apparent reason and thinking you cannot live without it.
Emotional eating can be reinforcing since it tastes good at first and there are all the positive thoughts about how much you want or need it. The positive feelings (relief, calm) from emotional eating will last for only a certain amount of time (one minute to hours) followed by a turning point where you find yourself experiencing the following situations:
- Feeling guilty.
- Feeling ashamed.
- Feeling upset that you overate.
- Feeling a resurgence of the original feeling that triggered the binge.
- Feel upset that you have gained weight or that you might gain weight.
The ultimate end result is that emotional eating does not work to satisfy the emotion that sent you to the food in the beginning. Understanding this is the starting point to changing this behavior. Acknowledge it to yourself. Also give yourself praise that you are now “getting it.” You might feel the need to beat yourself up for doing this for so long. However, this thought process will not serve you in any positive way, but rather send you back to overeating for being mad at yourself for overeating (a circular process). The starting spot is acknowledgment and then self-compassion. Know you have done the best you can and now is the time to seek out strategies for making a change. Some good strategies are: reading self-help books, seeing a professional who specializes in ending emotional eating, or attending 12 step groups. The main objective is doing something now to begin altering this pattern. I know you can do it.
Kim McLaughlin, MA is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in helping people with eating issues and eating disorders. If you are concerned that about overeating, weight or your use of food in general please contact her here. Sign up for her FREE Top Tips to End Emotional Eating here. Check out her website at www.FeedYourSoulTherapy.com.
Do you ever find that you eat more than you planned? Do you eat until you feel stuffed? Do you try diet after diet only to ultimately gain weight back? This might begin to make you think that there is something wrong with you and that you are doomed to struggle with food and your weight forever.
