Each of us knows someone in our circle who has a rather peculiar relationship with food. Sometimes, it’s the desire to fill a void (emotional eating), sometimes, an excessive control over everything one eats (orthorexia), and other times, an overwhelming appetite that raises questions (binge eating).
In cases where a person loses control over their eating habits (we speak of episodes or even uncontrollable food rages), could they have been born this way?
Is it simply the pleasure of eating that explains this insatiable craving for food, or could there be something else influencing their behavior?
Upon closer examination, we notice that this person experiences an irrepressible urge to eat, far beyond the usual desire-pleasure mechanism, leading instead to a feeling of “If I don’t eat, I feel unwell.”
But what exactly is wrong?
Here, we are dealing with a need that goes far beyond eating to live and likely conceals something deeper, more urgent, more essential—an existential condition, in fact. After all, existential questions come first, even before what we call “vital” needs.
When food becomes a drug
Food, then, is meeting an existential need. But which one? (If you think it’s the same for everyone, you’re in for a surprise! Each person, each case must be examined carefully to uncover the real underlying cause.)
That said, existential needs are relatively easy to identify: they all revolve around an individual’s integrity, dignity, right to exist, and capacity to be.
But wait—what does all this have to do with food? And why on earth do I always feel like eating?
What are the reasons for food obsession?
In the case of a recently treated patient (Zoé L.), food is described as “comforting,” “predictable,” “never disappointing,” and “keeping its promises.” Some of you may relate, while others might find these descriptions of food strange. This same patient considers that if she is prevented from eating, she is being “deprived of something she is entitled to.” It is a “privileged, intimate, and legitimate moment.”
We are far from eating simply for nourishment, and this description strongly reminds us of the existential need mentioned earlier.
But then, how can one stop being obsessed with food?
There is no relief until the specific existential need is identified and eradicated (one healing session is enough).
In Zoé’s case (once again, the same symptoms can stem from different issues, so it is not possible to establish a general theory, only to observe coincidences), the vital need revolved around individual freedom: her space for freedom had been reduced to food. During her childhood, an obstruction to her personal sovereignty (awareness and enjoyment of her power of being, in complete freedom) had developed in all areas of her life… except food!
How does one get to this point? It is, of course, a personal trajectory, shaped by family history (psychogenealogy played a key role in her case), which conditioned a certain state of being around the age of six and persisted into adulthood.
What treatment for binge eating and food compulsions?
Here is the question that interests us: how to heal?
It is clear that there is a distortion in the relationship with food when it carries stakes that do not actually concern it. One cannot treat the symptoms (all forms of food compulsions) without addressing the root cause of these dysfunctions. In this particular case, it was about personal freedom—diminished and confined to the realm of food, the only possible space of freedom, which had become so crucial, so vital, so essential!
The good news is that a single healing session was enough to deactivate the underlying process. Not only did this person regain a balanced relationship with food (which, I remind you, was merely a consequence of the real issue—a symptom, so to speak), but from that day forward, they also discovered the full extent of the freedom they had unfortunately been deprived of for so many years!
… Or how health (what appears to us) reveals what we truly are (what remains hidden from us)…
Don’t wait any longer—take control of your health, believe in healing, whatever it may be, and give yourself the means to get better. You have the power to heal—take it.