Tending precisely to your emotional hunger

In her book Mindful Eating, pediatrician and Zen Buddhist teacher Jan Chozen Bays writes about the different kinds of hunger. This includes heart hunger, the emotional hunger you feel when you have unmet needs, experi-ence internal turmoil, and struggle with difficult feelings.

​Tending to emotional hunger is not about getting you to eat less. Eating is a valid and sometimes effective way of self-soothing. But eating for emotional reasons should not be your only or main way to care for your tender heart. And eating when your true need is to express anger, to feel unconditionally accepted, or to be authentically seen and heard will never satisfy you.

Learning to detect and respond to emotional hunger is about meeting your actual need. There is a saying: “No amount of what you don’t need will ever be enough.” I think of this when working with clients who wonder why they continue to suffer, or magnify their suffering, when they self-medicate difficult emotions with food.

True self-care requires an ample supply of coping skills to settle, soothe, and tend to what dysregulates your nervous system. Mindfulness helps you develop self-literacy to consistently detect, interpret, and respond to your ever-changing needs. This increases confidence overall and in ways specific to your Intuitive Eating practice.

​Learn to triage whenever your heart is signaling the need for attention:

1. Begin with the body: Are your basic needs being met?

2. Assess your emotions: Are your basic emotional needs being met?

3. Identify your acute need in this moment, whether related to or

influenced by numbers one and two above or separate.

​4. Cope through intentional and nonharmful distraction, mindful

soothing, deepening personal exploration, and asking for help.

Journal prompt: Take an inventory of your sensations, thoughts, and emotions when you contemplate “meeting your emotional needs more precisely.” Can you imagine that it is not a way to eat less? Can you imagine that it is a way to deepen your self-literacy? How do you feel about getting to know your true needs better?