"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Clearing Emotional Pain

All of us have felt stuck at one time or another in emotional pain, in reaction to childhood wounding or as a response to our brain having imprinted a traumatic memory. We all can stop hurting in the present, however, through understanding why the process of intense emotion happens, how it effects us, and what we can do to eliminate its impact.

Protecting Your Inner Child

The disordered eater within you is really your inner child that’s doing her best to get by in life—a particularly big job if there was trauma in your past. That’s because the traumatized part of you fears experiencing past pain more than just about anything else in the world. And that part of you will use anything, food or purging, to avoid feeling it.

Feeling Overwhelmed

Clients often complain that they feel overwhelmed without really knowing what the word means. What do you actually mean when you say you’re “overwhelmed? More importantly, what can you do to feel better or change the situation?

Early Trauma and Eating Problems

It’s heartening to see my perceptions from 30 years of working with troubled eaters validated once in a while. This is the case with a recent article in Psychotherapy Networker entitled “As the Twig Is Bent: Understanding the health implications of early life trauma” by Mary Sykes Wylie. The article discusses the correlation between early trauma and health issues, including some related to obesity.

Stop Replaying Bad Memories

One of my goals as a therapist is to help clients unearth childhood memories so they can better understand themselves in the present. With other clients, especially those who’ve experienced trauma, my goal is to help them let go of powerful, hurtful memories. My focus depends on where they are in the emotional healing process

Rapid Resolution Therapy

I took a workshop in Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT) which is designed to put the past behind you, especially if you’re a trauma survivor. I’m blogging about RRT to alert you to its existence, not to promote it. After a one-day seminar, I claim to be neither an expert nor to know enough about it to say that it is reliable, effective clinical treatment. However, disclaimer aside, it’s worthwhile to understand the principles behind it.

More on Trauma

As we learn more about the workings of the brain, it’s evident that childhood trauma often plays a crucial role in the development of lifelong emotional—and emotional management—problems. They manifest themselves not only through eating, mood, and anxiety disorders, but in addictions and unhealthy relationships. The greater your understanding of how trauma affects your sense of self, the better your chance of making changes in adulthood to overcome early dysfunctional influences.

Healing Old Wounds

When people come to me for therapy, it’s most often about eating and weight (although I treat the gamut of mental health and relational issues). Clients generally recognize that their poor relationship with food is rooted in childhood dysfunction, but may not know what to do with that information. In fact, understanding the dysfunctional events in one's history and connecting to the emotions they evoke are two different animals. Clients frequently become stuck because they have difficulty facing the past or doing whatever is needed to heal from it. Don’t let that be you.

Trauma and Food Problems

Traumatic childhoods, those that involve chronic neglect, emotional/physical/sexual abuse, or sudden abandonment by a parent, make it harder to recover from eating disorders. These occurrences which happened decades ago continue to have major reverberations in our current lives and often get played out in difficulties with food, self concept, relationships, and impairment of effective life skills.

Stress and Carbs

Just when we think we have our heads on straight about the dangers of carbs, we get thrown a curve ball. Like the September 2008 article in Mind, Mood, & Memory published by Massachusetts General Hospital entitled “A Carbohydrate Cure for Stress.” Carbs a cure for stress? Hmm. That’s sure food for thought! I thought that carbs in response to stress were the devil in disguise.