What do a pigeon and a pony have to do with you and binge eating? Keep listening!

Welcome to The Done Bingeing Podcast. This is the place to hear about how you can pair the emerging brain science about why you binge with powerful life coaching to help you stop. If you want to explore an evidence-based, non-clinical approach to end binge eating, you’re in the right place.

It’s time to free yourself. You have more power than you know. To find out more, go to www.holdingthespace.co and click Programs.

And now, your host, Internal-Family-Systems-Level-3-Trained and Master-Coach-Certified Martha Ayim.

Hey friends! The holidays are happening!

Tis the season to be jolly, we’re told, so you know what? Let’s talk about that.

Why?

Because this season really can be jolly, where feelings and festivities align.

I had so many Christmases where I felt much love, much togetherness, and was left enthralled.

Maybe you’re feeling that right now.

Maybe you feel dazzled by the twinkles, radiant with the spirit, and awed by the harmony in the songs.

Maybe you feel spellbound by the stories, secure amid gatherings, and delighted by kids unfettered.

Maybe you feel touched by the generosity, appreciative of the abundance, and deeply moved by a stillness within.

Maybe you feel loving toward dear ones and tender toward those you don’t even know.

Maybe you feel nourished and enlivened, hopeful for the future, and restored in the present by it all.

This is the bliss:

• of being met and seen
• of feeling fed and satisfied
• of feeling rested and renewed
• of sensing congruence, communion, and freedom and
• of trusting your experience, deepening your meaning, and playfully opening to the wonders of discovery

It can happen in this season or in any other.

In this peaceful vibrancy, where fundamental needs are met, our feelings show it and so does our eating.

Let’s break that down even more clearly by taking inspiration from the Centre for Nonviolent Communication’s needs and feelings inventories. They’re published on their website www.cnvc.org.

Here are the 7 areas of needs covered in their Needs Inventory:

• connection
• physical well-being
• honesty
• playfulness
• peace
• autonomy
• meaning

Their Feelings Inventory offers that when these needs are met, we may experience 11 areas of emotion:

• affection
• engagement
• hope
• confidence
• excitement
•  joy
• inspiration
• exhilaration
• gratitude
• peace
• renewal

When our these needs are not met, the Feelings Inventory offers that we may experience 14 areas of different emotions:

• disconnection
• disquietedness
• confusion
• fear
• annoyance
• anger
• aversion
• embarrassment
• tenseness
• fatigue
• vulnerability
• sadness
• pain
• yearning

These lists aren’t comprehensive or absolute. The Centre for Nonviolent Communication offers them as a springboard into deepening our exploration into ourselves, our relationships, and our needs.

Why is this important?

Because when our needs are met and our feelings reflect that, we are far less likely to binge.

When our needs aren’t met and our feelings signal that, we are far more likely to binge.

So I ask you this:

How are you feeling?

If you’re feeling an emotion that points to an unmet need, what is the need?

Is there a way you can meet that need for yourself, at least in some way?

Is there something you would like from others, even a little bit?

Are you willing to listen to, take care of and possibly stand up for you?

Whether the message comes via an emotion or a physical sensation, whether it comes via smoke signal or carrier pigeon, whether it’s bobbing in a bottle close to your shores or galloping in on the pony express, are you willing to listen?

Many presents have been and will be opened during this season, some will meet needs, some will tickle delights.

One of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself is your commitment to you?

The question is: will you open it?

That’s it for Episode 68. Thank you for listening! Remember, I’m here for you. You can imagine me all wrapped up in a bow—but nothing too sketchy, ok?

Let me be a gift to you.

You know in your bones that something profoundly important awaits on the other side of bingeing.

And I know in my bones that the passion of my life is to help you get there. Let’s talk.

Go to www.holdingthespace.as.me/free30 and get on my calendar today.