Why Self-Sabotage *Always* Makes Perfect Sense.

“I can’t stop snacking at night,” my client told me, frustrated.

She assured me that this habit wasn’t about physical hunger, and that it didn’t matter how much she ate earlier in the day, or even how much she ate for dinner. 

It didn’t matter what dinner was, or what time she ate dinner, or even which snacks she kept in the house—every single night, approximately 20 minutes after finishing dinner, my client would find herself standing in front of the fridge or snack cupboard, grabbing one thing after another, more or less snacking non-stop until she went to bed. 

“Out of control” or “compulsive” eating is one of the most common reasons people reach out to me for coaching, and 99% of the time their stated goal for working together is to make it stop.

This is understandable, of course. 

We humans generally don’t like to feel “out of control” in any area of our lives, and diet culture has spent decades convincing us that our weight and health come down to simple personal choices and willpower, so it feels especially egregious to feel out of control around food! 

When someone who is already struggling with body image issues or a desire to lose weight finds themselves struggling with compulsive eating, they often experience a whole bunch of guilt and shame about it, often thinking of their behavior as “self-sabotage,” or feeling like “failures.” Compulsive eating episodes may set off intense anxiety about weight gain, episodes of crippling body dysmorphia and insecurity, or self-loathing for being “bad,” “unhealthy,” or “undisciplined,” all of which make a person essentially worthless and unlovable, according to diet culture. 

People dealing with this also tend to experience a lot of inner conflict and confusion, because they’re constantly telling themselves they should stop, but then don’t (or can’t) stop, and they don’t understand why they can’t just control themselves. 

And on top of the mental and emotional distress that compulsive/binge eating can cause, eating past fullness can also lead to distressing physical discomfort too, including bellyaches, bloating, and other GI disturbances, as well as blood sugar crashes, headaches, and sleep disturbances!

Given all this, it makes perfect sense why people who struggle with compulsive eating tend to come to me in the hopes that I will help them stop doing it. After all, they’ve identified the problem (compulsive eating) and they’ve identified the solution (stop compulsive eating)!

My clients are often rather surprised when I tell them that I won’t actually be trying to help them stop binging.

Not because I think they should keep doing what they’re doing, or because I don’t empathize with their distress. I understand perfectly well why they’re upset, and I share their ultimate goal of breaking free from a pattern of compulsive behavior. 

But as a body neutrality coach and expert on behavioral change, I also know that there is absolutely no point in trying harder to stop compulsive behaviors without doing the depth-work required to understand why it’s happening in the first place.

This is, perhaps, the single most powerful and effective tool in my coaching tool belt, and it’s what makes me extremely good at what I do: 

No matter what my client is thinking, feeling, or doing, I always assume both intelligent design and positive intent.

My goal is always to help my clients get underneath their problem, and address or pull it up by it’s roots.

Without this level of depth, trying to solve a problem or change a behavior tends to only work temporarily (if at all), and in my experience coaching someone to make different choices without understanding the root of the pattern tends to be more like rearranging or redecorating the problem to be more palatable, rather than actually solving it. 

If we go back to my client who wants to stop her mindless nighttime snacking, for example, other coaches might be tempted to solve the problem on the surface-level that it exists, by suggesting things like:

• Keeping a food diary, tracking macros/calories, or otherwise trying to bring more self-awareness to what they eat each day.

• Pausing when the urge to snack hits, and engaging in mindfulness practices or distracting techniques until the urge goes away.

• Reinforcing their reasons and motivations to not snack, by doing things like creating verbal and visible reminders of their goal, connecting the new behavior to core values and priorities, or associating the old behavior with negative feelings and experiences.

I could go on and on, since there are literally endless ways to dress up this kind of problem solving, all of which are just different ways of telling someone to “try harder,” and none of which are likely to actually lead to consistent, sustainable, or long-term behavioral changes.

This is why depth-work is so important, and why it’s so important to hold every single one of our thoughts, feelings, desires, urges, and behaviors with a high level of regard and respect—even (and perhaps especially) the ones we want to change!

Assuming intelligent design and positive intent forms the foundation upon which my entire coaching practice is built… and while I hold this approach with an almost religious level of reverence and awe, I will often sum it up casually for new clients by saying “we never do shit for no reason.”

The truth is that all of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are expressions of both intelligent design and positive intent, because our brains and bodies are only ever trying to help and protect us. 

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying their strategies are always particularly wise or effective. 

Our brains and bodies are often working with inaccurate or impartial information, and they’re way more focused on our survival than our ability to thrive, so their strategies can be… suss.

I often tell my clients that our brains are often trying to protect us the same way a panicky chihuahua tries to protect you from the delivery guy, or the way a helicopter parent tries to keep their kid from ever experiencing discomfort, and in the process ends up raising an anxious kid with no resilience. Or that our brains are often trying to help us the same way a toddler tries to help their mama bake cupcakes, leading to both a ton of other messes for her to clean up, and a fully ruined batch of batter.

In order to do the powerful depth work required for productive behavioral change, we need to be able to hold the nuance of this dichotomy, and acknowledge both the positive intent and the negative outcome. One doesn’t cancel out the other, and we can’t effectively address our problems without honoring the existence of each. 

Without acknowledging the negative impact of our own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, we can’t get support around or work to change them. But without acknowledging the positive intent of those same thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, we end up splitting ourselves into factions who are engaged in a power struggle and working against each other. 

When that happens we lose access to our wholeness, and we need access to our wholeness in order to do the healing work required to make deep and lasting changes! 

When we lose access to our wholeness in this way, diplomacy goes right out the window and we have no choice but to start a war. We choose a “side” to support (ie: the one that agrees with our conscious goals) and instruct it to go forth and conquer the other side. 

This plan might work, if it weren’t for the fact that both sides of you carat the brain’s survival coding, so when the other side—the one your “chosen side” is trying to defeat—realizes you’ve declared war on it, it will naturally pour every bit of its energy into fighting back. 

This is how we end up in decades-long wars with ourselves that drain our life force and destroy our sense of secure identity.

If you launch a war against the part of you who uses snacking to soothe or comfort itself, for example, you might succeed at not snacking for a few weeks, followed abruptly by the worst binge of your life. Why? Because while your conscious mind might think your plan (to stop compulsive eating) is best for all parts of you, the part of you who engages in that habit thinks you’re trying to take away something it needs to survive. 

Plus that other part of you is still you, even if you’ve rejected and disowned it. So it shares your value for liberation, and won’t allow itself to be oppressed, controlled, or destroyed. 

Both parts of you are fighting for survival, but the presence of war has made it so that survival is now defined as winning; as dominance over the other side. And if living under white supremacist patriarchy has taught us anything, it’s that nobody wins when one side defines success as dominance over the other.

In order to actually and sustainably change this behavior, you must let go of this win/lose mindset, and re-integrate both factions of yourself into wholeness.

And that begins by assuming intelligent design and positive intent to everything you think, feel, and do.

By holding every single one of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with a high degree of regard and respect—and by approaching everything that we do and are with non-judgmental compassion and curiosity—not only will you restore your identity to wholeness, but you’ll also have a much better chance of making the changes needed to fully thrive.

Looking for support on how to do this? I’m currently accepting new coaching clients, so hit reply to learn more, or apply for coaching with me here!

Big hug,

Jessi