OPINION: ‘Eating our feelings’ not the way forward

The cat picked its way stealthily through the leaves and across the glassy, wet pavement. It stretched athletically through the November morning as watery sunshine brightened the perfect corner of Ireland west.
The cat was hunting for breakfast and this scribe was washing the dishes at the sink – both of us were determined to complete our tasks smartly, swiftly and with the least effort possible. Of course the feline was going about its business much more elegantly than I, and that movement, intent and focus magnetised my attention.
The sleek black cat had spied a bird in the grass and fervently believed breakfast was on the menu.
I didn’t want the cat to succeed. I wanted to hit the window and alert the little bird but I was going to be too late. As my hand moved towards the glass the cat gathered itself for a predatory pounce and the bird seemed doomed.
However, in the blink of an eye, wings fluttered momentum arrived and the bird shot into the air like a rocket leaving Earth for the heavens. As the cat dived through the ether it realised breakfast would have to be deferred and initiated an emergency landing.
Of course, the feline recovered composure immediately and continued about its business with an air of nonchalance, but the interaction began a process in my mad mind where food and mood danced through my thoughts.
The words of a fond friend flowed freely to the forefront of my thoughts. “He was eating his feelings,” she once told me when describing the impact trauma had on a mutual friend. It had taken me some time to get my head around her comment, but on mature reflection (as former politician Padraic Flynn once said) it made perfect sense.
When we’re happy we eat joyously, when we’re sad we sometimes tend to eat or not eat at the other end of the scale. A close acquaintance almost gave up eating entirely when dealing with trauma and another friend spent his days (and a lot of his nights) seeking solace in food when much of his life was falling in around him. He was most certainly ‘eating his feelings’.
The human seeks comfort wherever it can be found. When sadness, grief, desperation, post traumatic stress or loneliness arrive we sometimes find it hard to speak about what’s going on behind the mask and when there’s nobody to talk to we often gravitate towards food or drink to fill the void.
A study from the National Library of Medicine in the USA says “PTSD (post traumatic distress disorder) symptoms further increase the risk of binge eating and coping-motivated eating.”
Professor Rachel Yehuda, Director of Traumatic Stress Studies at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York says: “People with PTSD have such a hard time focusing on the present and future because they are preoccupied with traumatic memories or trying to avoid traumatic reminders. Sometimes that means they don’t plan well for future meals and as a result may get very hungry and overeat or overeat compulsively.”
What that has to do with a cat hunting for breakfast on a November morning in Mayo remains to be seen, but the actions of the feline and the smart bird brought the wise words of my friend careering to the front of my thoughts.
She’s right. We often eat our feelings and sometimes drink our feelings too which inevitably lead to even more grief, upset and sadness. Life is wonderful, but it has a way of grinding one down at times and on those occasions we need to breathe, survive and be like the bird – fly away from danger.
Easier said than done at times, but we have to stop internalising our trauma and find a way of living the next phase of life in the best way possible. The cat and the bird both survived that morning meeting and moved on to new adventures. Maybe we should all follow their example.