Stuffing doesn’t just happen with turkeys.

You see… many people stuff their feelings on a daily basis. They hide their emotions by keeping them bottled up inside. They don’t speak their truth.

Stuffing your emotions is a direct reflection of the events that shaped them. This can lead to stuffing your emotions with food, drugs, alcohol, compulsive spending, underachieving, under-earning, anorexia, bulimia, or any other multitude of addictions.

This addictive behavior keeps you in fight-or-flight and overwhelmed.

Stuffing your emotions means you are repressing them. The most common way people stuff their feelings is with food. We are an overwhelmed, overweight society. We stuff our feelings with sugar, trans fats, GMOs, and other foods that taste good.

Many people carry excess weight on their bodies because they are chronic stuffers.

Beware…This addiction can shape-shift from food to other addictions.

BUT if food has been your drug of choice, start by uncovering where your chronic stuffing began.

If you’re a food addict, it’s likely that your addiction started with your mother or grandmother.

What happens is… food addicts secretly eat with one of their parents. They are told not to tell their other parent. They start to eat sweets together. They lick the bowl and pan together. They make cookies, sweets, and treats, and this soon becomes a way of life.

As an adult, food becomes the reward system have a stressful day.

Many people also white-knuckle the emotions they stuff. They make it until the end of the night, and then they relapse right before they go to bed. They believe they deserve it because they have been good… They deserve a treat.

Controlling the Outcome

Another situation that leads to stuffed feelings is anxiety about controlling an outcome. This is why people experience avoidance. Controlling an outcome can lead to a fear of flying. It can lead to fear of driving across the bridge or anxiety about driving on a freeway. I have coached many clients who have these anxieties.

If you fear flying, you have is anxiety about an outcome that has not happened. If this is you, commit to letting go of the cause that creates the effect.

Look at why you do what you do.

Control is an illusion. You are not in control.

When you are trying to control your control… you are out of control. When you let go of control, it liberates you.

BUT if you have challenges seeing the other side of recovery…

…it’s because you are in control of the emotional state that you continue to repress, stuff, and hold on to.

An addict always wants a little more. This is why so many people have challenges letting go of an addiction.

The addiction is their identity.

When you are emotionally addicted to a set of feelings, then you are in control of those feelings. Letting go of those feelings would change your identity. Letting go means you have to be responsible.

For you to be responsible… you have to be accountable.

Most of society has challenges with changing their identity. Being an addict is a way of life. Your ego will do everything in its power to keep you in a place called familiar. This is why so many people are stuck in avoidance.

If you are a chronic avoider, you will fall behind in many areas of your life. You will fall behind on your taxes.  Your mortgage is late and other situations fall to the wayside. If this is you, then avoidance allows you to stay in control of these situations.

Are you having an aha moment?

Are you starting to understand why you do you do?

If you are, this is the point where you can decide to let go of control.

Letting Go

Let me be clear.

There is no control. You are not going to be able to control what time the plane takes off. OR what happens once you get on the plane.

When you let go, you gain command of your emotions. You start to be in a more relaxed body. That is when you are in the energy of joy, love, bliss, enlightenment, prosperity, and reciprocity.

You step into flow rather than stay in resistance.

You no longer fight with yourself. You don’t wrestle over how you are going to get something done…

…OR worry about outcomes that have not happened.

Breaking the Cycle

Addictions are a result of unresolved issues held in your body. An addicted brain will recreate the same situation repeatedly to fulfill a feeling.

That’s the cycle. When you break the cycle, you are no longer the mind-body connection to the events that led to your addictions.

Here is an example…

You get into an argument with your boss who continually berates you. You want to quit, but you fear you won’t be able to replace the income. You stuff your emotions of anger and resentment. When you see your boss the next day, you remember the argument.

You relive the event in your mind.

The same feelings arise. You stuff them down and continue to work in a job that is not serving your emotional well-being.

The fear of leaving what is familiar is too high, so you stay and suffer.

To get rid of the negative feelings, you may drink wine every night. You might go to the vending machine for a chocolate bar to get a hit of serotonin and dopamine during your workday. This is how an emotional addiction shape-shifts into a physical addiction.

Physical addictions are rooted in emotional addictions. To break any addiction, you must address the cause that creates the effect. That is how you break the cycle.

You get to the point where you decide.

You commit.

You say, “I’m so done with this!”

You commit to no longer stuffing your emotions. You say how you feel. You let go of controlling the outcome. You break the stuffing cycle.

This is a breakthrough.

When you practice the repetition and experience of breaking through, it becomes a habit. Letting go becomes a habit. Relapsing is not an option.

You create a new mind-body connection that frees you from the past.