By Malynn Kuangparichat, Psy.D., J.D.

Ever come home from a long, stressful workday and head straight for the pantry? You don’t even remember how you got there, but suddenly, you’ve scarfed down an entire bag of chips (not the snack-size bag!) or devoured a pint of ice cream in less time than the Phillies pitcher throwing the first ball of the season. I know I’ve been there, at least once (okay, maybe several times).

Though emotional eating offers a temporary sense of relief, it’s just a band aid that doesn’t solve the emotional issues, can cause physical health problems, and often leaves you feeling worse in the long run.

The good news is that there are healthier ways to cope with emotions that don’t involve food. By learning Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, skills like mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation, you can break free from the cycle and start managing your emotions in more effective, fulfilling ways.

If you’ve ever found yourself eating away your stress, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, or even excitement over a small victory, you’re not alone. Ready to stop snacking on your emotions? Let’s dive into how DBT skills and some self-compassion can help you cope without turning to food for comfort. No calorie counting required!

What is Emotional Eating?

Emotional eating is when you use food to cope with emotions rather than eating for physical hunger. Common unhealthy coping habits related to emotional eating include binge eating and overeating. 

While we’re focusing on emotional eating in this blog post, there are other unhealthy coping habits that may feel comforting in the short term, but can reinforce negative emotional patterns, lead to physical or mental health problems, and prevent us from addressing the root causes of our distress. 

Some other common unhealthy coping habits include: excessive drinking or substance use, binge-watching TV or social media, overworking, compulsive shopping or spending, avoidance or denial, over-exercising, or withdrawing from social interactions.

You may feel guilty because you don’t know why you can’t stop stress eating and you don’t know how to stop using food as a coping mechanism. You are not alone in your struggles. 

The emotional cycle of stress, discomfort, coping, guilt, repeat is a pattern that many people fall into when trying to deal with difficult emotions, but it often leads to a cycle of negative emotions and unhealthy behaviors.

In order to break the cycle, you need to first have awareness of your emotional triggers. From there, you can learn DBT skills to manage emotional eating and other unhealthy coping habits. And just as importantly, you can practice self-compassion which is about treating yourself with kindness, understanding, and acceptance instead of self-criticism. (For more on self-compassion, you can read about my journey to self-compassion and how to increase emotional resilience with self-compassion.)

How to Overcome Emotional Eating

First, reflect on the times you’ve caved into emotional eating. Ask yourself what in the past has caused you to stress eat. 

• Was it after a stressful work day? 
• Were you feeling lonely and didn’t know what else to do with yourself? 
• Did you eat out of boredom?
• Were you feeling anxious about a big work presentation, your parent-in-laws’ visit, or holiday gatherings?
• Do you stress eat when you’re feeling down about yourself or a situation or frustrated when the kids are fighting?

Once you’re aware of your emotional triggers, then you can empower yourself with DBT skills for managing emotional eating and other unhealthy coping habits.

4 DBT Skills to Overcome Emotional Eating and Unhealthy Coping Habits

DBT is a combined form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) as well as Buddhist practices for mindfulness and acceptance strategies.

The design is uniquely intertwined as it helps you to develop acceptance as well as mindfulness. In other words, you can better understand yourself in a situation.

Another part of the DBT process is expanding on your thought process where two, three, or four truths can co-exist. It helps our clients to change their black and white thinking, which is where they can be on one side or the other, and where one is true and the other is wrong. 

While going through the DBT process, this expanded thinking gives you the ability to hold truths in a different way, where two things that seem contradictory can both be perceived as likely.

In our practice, our clinicians use DBT skills often because they’ve found it effective in their personal lives on top of seeing results of practicing DBT skills for their clients as well.

When it comes to overcoming emotional eating, we’ll talk about the four different skills related to the DBT therapy approach: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotional Regulation, and Interpersonal Relationships.

Mindfulness

First, mindfulness works on acceptance and willingness from our clients to invest in their own therapy and self-improvement. Mindfulness is focusing on the present moment without judgment. When you practice mindfulness, you can break the cycle of emotional eating by paying attention to hunger cues, food choices, and emotional well-being. 

One way to practice mindfulness is the “Raisin Exercise” where you tap into your 5 senses and eat with awareness. It’s a great tool for interrupting the autopilot mode of eating (like when you mindlessly snack while watching TV or eat quickly without tasting your food because you’re trying to tame the chaos of meal times with your kids), and it’s also helpful for combating emotional eating by slowing down and tuning into the present moment.

Distress Tolerance

Distress tolerance is the “oh no” or “don’t give in” kind of strategies that help prevent us from doing an urge behavior. These strategies prevent us from taking action that we know isn’t effective and is unhelpful like turning to food or other unhealthy habits to cope with our emotions.

Distress tolerance gives us a distraction, in a way, to help us get off of that emotional wave and help us get through those sensations that we feel in our body. These skills are especially helpful when you’re feeling overwhelmed by emotions but need to manage your reaction in a healthier way, such as in moments of panic, emotional flooding, or when you’re struggling with strong urges like binge-eating, overeating, or constantly grazing or snacking throughout the day.

You can try these 2 distress tolerance techniques: TIPP Skills (Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, Paired Muscle Relaxation) and Self-soothing with the five senses (touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste).

The next time you feel the urge to open a packet of cookies, you can use TIPP or Self-soothing in the moment of emotional intensity to help bring yourself back to a calmer, more centered state.

Emotion Regulation

Third is emotion regulation which teaches about emotion identification which helps you identify a behavior that is not validating what you need in your life. By managing emotions in a healthy way through using opposite action or building positive experiences, you’re learning to recognize and label emotions before reacting impulsively, walking straight to the pantry, and demolishing that bag of chips.

You’re not just creating a new habit through DBT skills. You’re helping to validate you, your environment, the future that you want, and the values that you want for your future. 

Interpersonal Effectiveness

Lastly, interpersonal relationships is the fourth and final module in the DBT process. Interpersonal effectiveness helps you be effective in your communication by communicating your needs in an assertive way with others so that it doesn’t contradict what you value or what you want out of your life. 

When you improve your communication with others, you reduce emotional stress that may lead to emotional eating or other unhealthy coping habits like excessive alcohol or substance use, binge-watching TV or social media, and impulsive spending.

This looks like setting boundaries, saying no, and asking for support when you need it.

Create a Plan for Lasting Change

We’ve used DBT with our clients to help their behavioral capabilities because of the strong ownership developed through the 4 DBT skills or modules (Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness). DBT improves their motivation because it’s so unique to every single person, and this includes hardworking, smart people who want to overcome emotional eating.

The program itself ensures that you develop an environment that’s going to validate what you want for the future which is yet another way it enhances your overall mental health and well-being.

When looking at the outcomes we’ve seen with our clients and conclusive data from empirical research, we’ve seen such a high reduction for ineffective behaviors that would have initially created more struggles for these clients. 

One of the biggest keys for our clients is recognizing and noticing that some behaviors aren’t serving them. Through mindfulness, awareness, and acceptance strategies, they benefit from higher self-awareness through the DBT approach. 

If you’re looking to overcome your struggles with emotional eating, then start with setting realistic goals, build a support system through therapy, groups or loved ones in sustaining change, and track and celebrate progress (focus on progress, not perfection). 

Track your food and emotions through journaling to identify patterns and celebrate each and every success along the way. There will be setbacks along the way, and that is okay. 

Change is gradual and setbacks are a natural part of the process. 

Be patient, be kind, and be persistent with yourself in the process of changing your relationship with food and your feelings.

I’m inviting you to take the first small step in incorporating one DBT skill or self-compassion practice into your daily routine, so you can start to overcome emotional overeating and manage your emotions in a healthier, more fulfilling way.

More Resources

End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop a Healthy Relationship to Food, By Jennifer Taitz, PsyD

*Disclaimer: The contents of this blog does not constitute a clinical relationship or replace the need for professional services.

Contact Us

Here at CCWB, we value our clients and acknowledge the courage it takes to seek professional mental health support.

Chester County Well-Being (CCWB) provides a range of mental health services to ensure we meet our community’s needs. We serve individuals, couples, and families in the Chester County area. Reach out to us here.

Our specializations include:

• Stress Management
• Addiction & Recovery
• Therapy for Depression and Anxiety
• AD/HD
• Work and Career issues
• Parenting Support
• Family Counseling
• Couples Counseling
• Conflict Resolution
• Grief Counseling

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All our clinicians provide safe and secure teletherapy sessions to anyone residing in PA. Additionally, we provide telehealth options for residents of other states, depending on the clinician. Simply head to our About Us page, and click each clinician’s “read more” tab for telehealth details.

Telepsychology services are provided by Dr. Kuangparichat and Dr. Stern to clients who reside in a state that participates in PSYPACT. Find out if your state is on the list of participating states HERE.

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About the Author

Malynn Kuangparichat, Psy.D., J.D. is founder and psychologist at Chester County Well-Being.  

She has a collaborative approach that results in highly tailored evaluations intended to meet her clients’ unique needs. She focuses on an individual’s strengths, which are integrated in the practical, personalized recommendations identified by the findings of an evaluation. 

In her free time, she enjoys running, spending time with family and friends, and getting ice cream or doughnuts from the local shops.