STRESS ADDICTION

Today, I'm going to talk about the effect of stress in the brain and the role that this plays in addiction. Hi, I'm Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. I help people to overcome comfort eating, but also toxic relationship. As I often do, I'll start with a quote from a client. Although this time, actually, I'm going to start with a lack of one. Because I've just noticed that a question on my quiz has literally never been answered there. The question is, what do you think comfort eating does for you? i. e., why do you do it? And nobody has responded. Obviously they received this form before they know me and before I've got to them. I've asked this question again on social media and nobody's answered there either, but I understand that. I know it's a bit of a public place to air how you feel, but please feel free to answer that question privately to me. I would love to hear what your response is. As an example, when I see clients, I ask this question, and they often say that they're using food to numb themselves, or as self punishment. Both of these are traditionally what I've used it for, too. Of course, it makes sense that you might not really know the reason immediately, because eating food on automatic does such a successful job of changing your state and taking away your brain power. So this question is something to start asking yourself. If you can get beyond the self critical way of asking this question, as in, What am I doing? What the hell is wrong with me? It's actually a really good question. What are you doing, and why? What apart from the negative effects do you get from comfort eating that makes it so irresistible? I talked last week about the chemical process of addiction in our brains, and I ended by saying that this is not the only factor that leads to an addiction. Because we don't all get hooked to the same degree. So here I'm talking about how emotions or stress contribute to reinforcing that cycle of chasing the dopamine experience. Research suggests that stress alters our brains. I will be talking about this more in a few weeks when I talk about panic attacks. But for our purpose in working out what causes addiction, specifically, stress also alters our reward system in our brains. What that looks like is people overemphasize the reward that they're getting in their brains and they underemphasize a bad outcome or punishment. Researchers have also found that people with high levels of blood cortisol, that's the stress hormone, Had poorer memory when compared with peers with normal cortisol levels. What all of this means is that not only is the pleasure we get from a substance or a behaviour increasing our chances of wanting more of it compulsively, but so does the experience of stress. This explains why stress addiction is so difficult to kick. It explains overthinking or compulsive negative or anxious thoughts and over productivity. All of these can also be an addiction and it certainly describes many of the clients that I see. I will talk more about cortisol later, but for our purposes today, cortisol is produced when there is a sense of threat. It shuts down non essential physical processes, such as the digestive system, and increases energy to functions that can help you deal with the threat. This looks like an energy burst and hypersensitivity emotionally and in the senses. Cortisol increases blood sugar levels and insulin resistance. So initially, with stress, the appetite is suppressed. But if the stress keeps going, the cortisol actually increases the appetite, so it may cause you to overeat. As Gabor Mate said, If someone is going to become an addict, it's because they were already at risk before they came into contact with that substance or the behaviour that made them feel good. Studies actually show that exposure to a substance doesn't predict addiction. In this study, tobacco was one of the most addictive, with 32% of the people carrying on after the study. For alcohol, it's only 15% of those people. It's really more that people lend themselves to addiction or compulsion, depending on emotional issues and stress levels. Gabor Maté quotes, Thomas Hoare to say. Unfortunately, all external means of improving our life's experiences are double edged. They're always good and bad. No external remedy improves our condition without at the same time making it worse". And this is true, isn't it? These addictions, these things that make us feel good, they always come with regret. Or post high discomfort. And sometimes they come with humiliation, self disgust, or the feeling that you've betrayed yourself. But even during the addiction, in the throes of satisfying a craving, or trying to satisfy a craving, isn't there always that feeling of, I just want a little bit more. So it never really satisfies us. Gabor Maté's book, which if you haven't read it, is a fascinating read, brings to light the fear of the emotional void. This means the dread of facing how we feel and the cycle of trauma that perpetuates the situation. On exploration of this question of what does eating do for you I see time and time again that it is fear or stress that pushes people towards addiction. This is what people need to be heard and seen in rather than squashed. What Gabor Mate says he's found, and certainly what I've found too, is that addictions or compulsions always originate in painful experience. This doesn't always seem true in the moment. Really commonly people find it hard to associate that pain with the momentary craving. Sometimes this will be a habit playing out and sometimes it is the apparatus in the brain that I've been talking about. But there will usually be pain relative to it somewhere. Sometimes it relates to pain in the moment, like if you've just had an argument with your partner. Or something difficult's happened. But often, this moment relates to much earlier pain. Pain that you carry with you. The stories I often hear of, and the stories that often unfold when we explore this, is of early neglect, or a constant drip feed of criticism or control. The brain development in the womb and in childhood is the single most important factor in determining whether someone becomes an addict or not. I've talked a lot about attachment theory in my previous podcasts. In a nutshell, It's about how much attention our primary caregivers paid to us. And what kind of attention. What I've talked about in my podcasts is the effect of neglect or emotional abuse, which is a major cause of comfort eating or any addiction. We do also have an environmental influence on us many ways in society, and a genetic one. A lot of this trauma that we're talking about can be passed on ancestrally. If you've experienced neglect or criticism from one of your primary caregivers it's quite common that they probably experienced it too. And then you might see it way back in your ancestry as well. There's some evidence to suggest that we even carry this genetically. And if our primary caregivers or their primary caregivers coped by using a substance or behaviour, then it's likely that we might be inclined to do that too. All of this is especially true if we're emotionally triggered. And this is where the solution lies. It's not an easy thing to stop yourself doing the thing that makes you feel better in some way. My work focuses almost entirely on finding something else to make you feel better. This is what I'll be talking about next week. And incidentally, if you follow me on social media, you'll see that I give tips like this all the time. But particularly every Friday, I'll be giving you a self regulation exercise. This week was about mobilisation. Which I'll just explain to you now. If you find yourself in a collapsed or a shut down state, which people often are when comfort eating, you might be in freeze mode. Which means you don't want to move or breathe. One way to come out of this is to start to mobilize your body. The exercise I gave on social media was to press a wall. This activates your muscles and gets your body and your mind connecting again. So you become more embodied and feel more comfortable. That movement might be too much, so you can go with something your eyes. You could just move your eyes. You could blink slowly or start to move a finger. And then when you're ready, you could nod your head. Maybe you want to try this next time you find yourself eating too much. Check whether you're in a freeze state and see if you can just stop for a moment to acknowledge what's going on in your body. To finish with Gabor Maté, he says, this evasion of emotional pain and the fear of the unknown depths of our emotions, often prevent individuals from truly living and experiencing life's vibrancy. Today, I started by encouraging you to ask what eating does for you. Why you overeat and what the benefit is to you that's hard to give up. I talked about how stress alters the reward system in our brains. I told you that cortisol, the stress hormone can increase our appetites. I explained that all of this was a precondition for addiction. Then I spoke about avoidance and the fear of pain or of the emotional void. I moved into talking about how our earlier emotional life and relationship development Influences us towards seeking external comforts. I also mentioned the influence of genetics, the environment, and our ancestry. I concluded that working with your emotional triggers, understanding the emotional life that has caused you to seek comfort, is the way to recover. And then I finished informing you that I produce self regulation tips every week on social media, on Fridays. And I gave you a self regulation tip to try. And that is what I'll be talking about next week. Before I go, I want to inform you that the podcast format is changing slightly. In trying to practice what I preach to you, I've been working out the best formula for myself. To be able to sustain doing this podcast on a long term basis. For the moment, I'll be experimenting with producing three podcasts on consecutive weeks, and then having a week off. there'll be three podcasts each month. And then I'll have a break for a week. So next week I'll be here, finishing this series on addiction. Then I'll take a break. And come back to talk about one of the major causes of stress eating, anxiety. I'll be talking about what a panic attack actually is. Thank you so much for listening. As I say, if you want to answer that question of why you find eating so difficult to give up and what it does for you there is a post in my Facebook group. Please come and join us. That's Comfort Eating Recovery support group on Facebook. But you can also message me privately. And if you want to go deeper, if you're struggling to understand why food is such an issue for you, And you'd like more help in learning how to disconnect and change those habits, Please look up all that I have to offer under Underground Confidence On the web, in the app store, or on social media. This is Underground Confidence with Shelley Treacher. I'll see you next Wednesday.