"I'm a SINGLE Binge- Eater. Will I ever FIND LOVE?"

SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Underground Confidence with Shelly Treacher. Today I'm going to talk about being single and finding love. Because feeling alone, loveless, or partnerless in life can be another cause of comfort eating. It also brings its own specific challenges to the comfort eater, so it deserves at least one podcast of its own. According to the Office for National Statistics in the UK, by 2019 the number of people living alone had increased by a fifth over the last 20 years. I know that many of those will be choosing to be happier alone, especially men apparently, according to the stats, but given that we are social creatures who need co-regulation and community to survive happily, that's also a lot of disillusioned, lonely and unhappy people, who probably have struggled with communication and partnership. Most of us worry about how we look when we have a date and whether we will be found attractive. But the single comfort eater may be dealing with a large dose of body hatred as well. So there are extra challenges you might also be facing, like not being able to find something good enough to wear, the fear of sweating too much, being out of breath, or worry that any seats just won't be big enough. These are all signs of the self-critic and make the dating process all the more terrifying for the single comfort eater. As if it isn't hard enough. Here are some of the things that people say about being single when they find me. I'm trying to get back into the dating world. Even before lockdown this was a struggle. I'm becoming frustrated with being messed about or going for wrong sorts. And here's another. And then lastly here's another one. It feels like partnering happens to everyone else except me, and that the universe is actively against me being happy, despite the intense and repeated efforts that I make. You can hear the frustration, the confusion, the loneliness and the pain in these comments, can't you? Maybe you can relate to one of them or all of them even. When I work with people, what I hear that they covet the most is trust in relationship. Trust that another person can be relied upon to be there as a source of support. But this tiny five letter word is where it all goes wrong for us. As hard as it might be to get your head around this, this issue of trust and how we come to it can be the reason why it's so difficult to find support, love, or partnership in the first place. Sometimes comfort eating is even a deliberate attempt to keep people away, which is a fear of intimacy, rejection or abuse. And I can relate to some of this. I'm fifty one, I've never had children, and I was single or unhappily dating for a long time in my life. And it's only now that I'm in a good relationship that I can look back and see the whole of what was going on for me. It was complicated. But the gist of it was that I was scared. Scared of being alone, scared of having to start again, and scared of having no meaning or purpose in my life without a primary relationship. So I attracted and gave time to difficult relationships. And conversely I was also so scared of being overtaken, exhausted or objectified by others, that I also put up barriers to getting close to people. Like the last quote I just mentioned, I felt I was predestined to be alone. Clearly now that's not true. I'm not alone. Now I would change the wording slightly. Not to say that I was predestined to be alone, but that I was pre programmed to be alone. But that with a few gradual and developed tweaks to my programming, I changed my destiny. It's kind of the same with comfort eating, people tend to lose heart quickly when the latest attempt to be healthy fails. We can find ourselves believing that we are just not meant to be like other people or to succeed in life, which is so painful. So we close up, give up, and seek immediate comfort. Concerning the single person, that might be another disappointing or even harmful date or relationship, as well as a box of cakes. One of the things that helped me to change my thinking as well as my dedication to self-awareness and insight about the effect of our relational history was something called the calling in the one process. So I want to introduce this to you today. I think my whole world began to shift when I heard the author, Catherine Woodward Thomas, urge us to ask ourselves, what is the contribution you are making to your situation? The author herself claims that her life changed and indeed her illustrious career began when her friend asked her what she was avoiding by keeping herself single. These are great and enormous, thought provoking questions. I put my success and happiness in any area of my life partly down to this way of thinking. When I want to expand my reach to people in my work, I have to recognise that it's my fear and confidence that might stop me from doing that. So I have to face it. When I want to change my comfort eating habit, I have to recognise that I'm probably upset about something that I didn't want to face. So I have to face it. Likewise, it's the same with intimacy and love. When I'm feeling lonely and I want love and connection, there's usually something I need to connect with in myself before I can feel connected with others. Again, I have to face it, painful and opposite as it might seem. Self-love and love of another really do go hand in hand. What I've discovered over the years is that often what's in the way of finding a supportive, loving partnership is the underlying core belief that we don't deserve or cannot have this kind of relationship. This can lead to a lifetime of putting up with difficult or toxic relationship, instead of asserting effective communication or boundaries. Finding love, I believe, involves finding everything in your power to change that belief. Firstly, by discovering any external influences on your self-esteem, both in the present and historically. If you're feeling the sting of loneliness, did you have a conversation recently that triggered you? Is there an old critical voice in your head? As I've talked of many times, if you're unhappily single, it's likely that your history with abandonment in some way gets triggered when you feel lonely. So you need the opposite, to normalize and have compassion for your human experience and feelings. You need to accompany yourself or the part of you that feels lonely. If you're putting yourself down for feeling lonely, being needy or being not good enough, there is a part of you that is already really hurt by all of that. So be gentle and compassionate to that part. Make way for how you feel there. Get a blanket, a teddy bear, a hot water bottle, and ask yourself all about it. Another step is to validate yourself. An important aspect of finding love is to shift from external validation and trying to get others to love you or love from other people to internal validation. By asking yourself what your contribution is to being unhappy, you can take control of your situation and invest in what you think of yourself rather than what someone else might think of you. I know this is a major shift, but no one can do it for you. You have the power to forgive and to change yourself, your beliefs and your connection to love. And then you might start to work out who you need to let in and who you want to release, who to open up to and how. If you want a kind, supportive relationship, you have to learn to receive kindness and support through staying alive to what you can let go of and what you can embrace. I've seen people's whole relational life change dramatically through these processes, myself included. Something almost mystical happens when in this place of self confidence and self love. Have you ever experienced that? I experience this as an opening that happens inside me. It seems to open a portal to connection. It may be that we are open so we notice things more, or it may be that we create a space for something new to come through. But either way I've seen it happen thousands of times, both for myself and for others. This openness and internal connection leads to external connection somehow. That's not to say that this is a magic formula. It actually has been for some people and it might be for you, but my experience is that bigger shifts take time. Because much like learning to replace comfort food with real comfort, it can take time to undo firmly entrenched beliefs and attitudes about trust and people. The calling in the one process is something I've now been through at least 15 times in my life. Not anymore to find a partner, but to reconnect with what creates deeper connection, real kindness, and love. Because what else is more inspiring? I'm gonna end today on some of the last thoughts that Catherine Woodward Thomas has in her book. She says, love is not a goal as much as it is a journey. It isn't suddenly realized simply because you have your beloved in your life. Love is a verb, not a noun. It's not something tangible. Love will always require of us more than we initially intended to give, for it will take no less than everything we've got. Love rarely behaves itself, complying with our preconceived notions, our list of demands, and our constant desires that it show up a certain way. Rather, it insists that we rise to the summit of what it is to be human, constantly stretching ourselves beyond what we had previously believed to be our limitations. The fulfillment of love is not to be found in the future. The fulfilment of love is always to be found right now. I'll leave you with that thought. Thank you so much for listening today. Next week I'll be giving you a revamp of my first ever podcast about what emotional eating actually is and how it's more than willpower that you need to stop. If you want to go further with any of this, my stop comfort eating group is now closed for the rest of the year, but I am taking intakes for January. Let's get them in as soon as possible. My Calling in the One group is also looking pretty full. As I speak, there is one space left. I do not know if that will still be free by the time the podcast air, but please be in touch because we can always start a new one. And please do carry on sending me your comments and questions. I'm starting to think about Christmas now, so I'd be really interested to hear how you're feeling about Christmas, and maybe what you're worried about. I'll see you on Wednesday for my regular weekly podcast, if not before, for a spontaneous biked podcast. Thank you for listening. I'll see you soon. This is Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence.