THE PEACEFUL EATING WAY PODCAST
Night-Time Eating
Transcript
Hosted by Everett Considine. Recorded live in a Parts Work Practice from The Peaceful Eating Way™. Participants' names have been removed. This transcript was generated automatically and lightly edited, so it may contain small errors.
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Everett: Welcome to The Peaceful Eating Way Podcast. This is Everett. This is a live session with my Peaceful Living community about eating after dinner, and the Parts that drive it. You'll hear members share what they recognized in themselves.
So this is a topic, nighttime eating is like one of... It's probably one of the most brought up topics in coaching with people. And there's a, there's a, like a sister, the sister to nighttime eating is staying up too late, right? So there's, sometimes there's a correlation between the two.
All right, understanding and dealing with nighttime eating. And, and this is really not referring to dinner. Right? This is referring to the snacking or the eating that we do after dinner, after the kitchen is closed. And I'm just gonna go through these, and as I do, I wanna invite you to write down the ones that feel like, "Oh, yeah, I've got that going on."
And, and then we'll, you'll have a chance to share about that. So,
so let, let me just start. So the first one is the Comfort Seeker, right? This Part turns to food as a source of comfort and emotional soothing after a long day, and it may be driven by a need to alleviate stress or sadness, right? Just creating some comfort, right? So many of us, our Food Indulgers have just been, been one of the main forms of comfort that we've had our entire lives.
So, so do this instead. Support this Part by engaging in non-food related comfort activities, like a warm bath or reading a favorite book. Right. So if you have a Comfort Seeker... Do you have a Comfort Seeker? If you do, support this Part by engaging in non-food related comfort activities like a warm bath or reading a favorite book.
The Rewarder. This Part sees food as a reward for getting through the day or achieving a goal, feeling that a treat is deserved. This, this Part is really strong, I've found, in people with really, really overactive caretaking Parts. Or, and, and, and when I say overactive, strong, right?
And sometimes it's just because you're, you're in a phase of life where maybe you're caring for someone, right? You're, where you're having to do a lot of caretaking. Or maybe it's more pathological, right? You've got a Part that just drives you to take care of everyone else and not yourself, right?
But, but I found early on in my coaching, a lot of times when someone was talking... would talk about having a, a Part that wanted to reward them with a treat at night, that many times these were therapists, these were nurses, these were people that took care of other people and did not do enough self-care.
And so that Rewarder comes up and says, "Hey, you deserve this. You deserve this. Look at how hard you've been taking care of everyone else." So that's a very... So if you have a Part that's telling you you deserve a treat, that is, that's, that's, that's a time when you wanna actually look at, "Am I, am I working too hard?"
Right? Like, "Why am I so depleted? Why am I so depleted at the end of the day? What am I not... how am I not taking care of myself? How am I not taking care of myself?" 'Cause many of us with strong conditioning around taking care of others, we're also conditioned to neglect ourselves.
And so food just became this super easy, available way of feeling better. Do this instead. Find healthier ways to reward yourself and acknowledge achievements without relying on food. Stickers. Stickers. It's funny, you might be a sticker person, right? We all have inner children, and some of us are sticker people.
Like, we love gold stars or little happy faces. And so if your inner children like stickers, reward them. Get a calendar and put a sticker on it for every time you achieve something. The Rewarder. Again, if you have the Rewarder, it's probably a sign that you're neglecting your self-care.
You're neglecting your self-care. Oh, the Boredom Buster, right? The Boredom Buster. 'Cause this Part eats out of boredom, seeking stimulation and distraction during quiet evening hours. This is also a sign that someone doesn't have enough healthy stimulation in their life. They're, they're not actually doing the things that make them feel joyful.
They're not doing the things that get them excited. So if you experience a lot of boredom, it's good to get curious about, like, where's my excitement? Where's my joy? Right? And, and what you might find in that inquiry is that you have some really strong managers. Maybe you have a perfectionistic taskmaster.
You've got a perfectionistic caretaker. You've got some managers. Maybe you've got a good girl or a good boy manager. And, and those Parts have filled your life up with obligations that feel very important. And, and they have... they also don't allow you to do things that feel frivolous or joyful or exciting.
And so, yeah, if there's, if there's boredom, I also think boredom comes up as a result of needing connection, but being blocked to it, right? Because that's why everything seems boring, right? Like you don't wanna do anything because doing something isn't actually what you need. What you need is to connect with someone.
And for whatever reason, your Parts have kind of cut that off. Your Isolator maybe has cut that off from you. And, and so you're bored. You could do a lot of things, but you don't want to because actually you need connection. I figured that out for myself. It's like, oh, if I'm feeling bored, it's 'cause I need connection.
And doing whatever just doesn't even seem interesting. Identify alternative activities that provide engagement and interest, such as hobbies or creative projects.
The De-stressor.
This Part uses food to manage stress and anxiety, especially when other coping mechanisms are not in place. I guess this is maybe similar to the Comfort Seeker, except this feels more like there's, there's like active anxiety, right? The Comfort Seeker, like, you maybe don't even notice what you're feeling 'cause you're so just enjoying being in the food.
But the De-stressor is like using the food. This is probably a little bit of a bingey kind of Part. Yeah, the De-stressor. I mean, the thing to always ask yourself when you've got cravings, or the cravings have gone to eating and you're actually mindlessly eating: what am I really needing right now?
Like, what am I really needing right now?
The last Witnessed Parts Work session we did, right? I kind of asked a version of that question of the person. She was dealing with really intense physical hunger when she shouldn't be hungry, and I asked her, "Well, if, if you were hungry for something emotional, what would that be?"
If you were hungry for something emotional, what would that be? And, and it was very clear there was a certain kind of love and attention that she just never got. And we, in the healing, we went all the way back into her childhood, and we could see how that hunger is for that. And the best, the best she could do was food.
Develop stress management techniques like meditation or gentle exercise, right? This is where you're feeling stressed in the evening. Maybe you, maybe you do an evening meditation, maybe you do some yoga, some stretching.
The Social Eater. This Part eats in response to social cues or loneliness, seeking connection or avoiding feeling isolated.
This Part eats in response to social cues, right? So this may, I, like, I call this Part the party girl or party boy, right? Like that Part that just wants to be part of, wants to partake, right? And be part of it. And it's interesting too here, the social eater might be eating because it feels alone. It wants to be with someone else, it wants connection.
It's feeling isolated. For single people, single people in the evening, loneliness or aloneness can really be a driver of eating. And it's like you can be a happy single person. You don't have to be a lonely single person, right? Just like you can be a happy coupled person.
There's lots of unhappy coupled people out there, right? They don't have to be unhappy coupled people. They could actually do their work and figure out what's going on and change things for the better, just like you could be a happy single person by looking at that aloneness if that's coming up, right?
And dealing with that. Like, well, how do I create more connection in my life? Do I need to work with my Isolator, right? Do I need to get out and, and connect with people and get involved in groups or whatever, right? Like, how do I do that?
Then the Rebel. Yeah, this is, this is a big one too. This is a big one with people that are on food plans that are very rigid, seem rigid, right? Or, or, or they need to be abstinent from certain things. And, and that can bring up a Part... This is also where I've seen people with really strong Caretakers, right?
Who tend to neglect themselves, right? Food, food has really been the only thing that they had that was just for them. That was like their little world, that's a private pleasure that has nothing to do with anyone else. And so it's, it's hard to give that up. It's hard to give that up, right?
Like, again, that question, what are you really needing? Well, you're needing autonomy, right? You're needing fun. You're needing pleasure. You're needing self-care. And, and this is, again, why having the really strong Caretaker and neglecting yourself, a lot of these different reasons for nighttime eating might come up.
But this is a really strong one. And the thing is that if you're in that position, and many of us in this community have been or are working our way out of it, where you're over-caretaking in your life, you're still neglecting yourself because that's just your pattern.
You need, you need to start to learn what it is that brings you joy and excitement in life besides food. Right? And, and if you... I've, I've done a lot of talks and master classes on basically recovering, becoming a recovered caretaker. And a lot of it has to do with being willing to give up all the things you're doing that don't feed your soul.
All the things you're doing out of guilt or obligation. Sometimes we can't give that stuff up, because we're just in the phase of our life where that's what's going on, right? But we need to make sure it's just a phase of our life, that it isn't our whole... It isn't gonna be the rest of our life, right?
And as you start to give up and let go of the things you're doing out of obligation, that you're doing out of guilt, that starts to free up time. That starts to free up time where you can start to take care of yourself. You can start to relax. You can start to reconnect with the things from your past that bring you joy and excitement.
And then you don't have to get joy and excitement from food.
So do this instead with the Rebel. Create a balanced approach to eating that respects freedom while aligning with health goals. Create a balanced approach to eating that respects freedom while aligning with health goals. Very important. The Habitual Snacker. This Part snacks out of routine or habit as a conditioned response to certain times or situations.
And a lot of times I think that one of these other causes might be really what got us going with the nighttime eating, but then it just becomes a habit, just becomes a habit. We're all creatures of routine, and these kind of sneak into our routines. So, yeah, so break or adjust these habits by implementing a new evening routine.
Interfere with the patterns, right? Bookending is a wonderful way to break habits. It's a wonderful way to break habits. And you don't even necessarily need to do it all that long. You might, you might put some bookending in if you're really trying to break a habit that you don't wanna come back.
You might bookend for a while, a long time, or just add it as part of your habit stack. And bookending, in case you don't know what that is, an example of bookending would be announcing to a buddy that the kitchen's closed, right? Just had dinner, brushed my teeth, closed the kitchen, not going back in there tonight, or not gonna eat anything else tonight. And then before you go to bed, you just confirm, right?
Made it through the evening without a hitch. And, and then that's bookending, right? You've bookended what you're trying to focus on.
Break or adjust these habits by implementing a new evening routine. The Nighttime Planner. This Part uses evening snacking as a time to plan and think, often consuming food mindlessly while engaged in these activities. Yeah. Again, a lot of us were trained to graze,
and so we've got habits around putting something in our mouth while we're doing something else. Which is, like, talk about the ability to consume a lot of calories without realizing it, right? Like eating while you're doing something else, right? Like unconscious eating.
Unconscious eating.
So do this instead. Practice mindful eating and separate planning activity from snack times. Planning activity from snack times.
The Emotional Indulger. This Part indulges in food to mask or suppress emotions that arise in the quiet of the evening. This is really what's going on, I think, with a lot of us. Everything gets really quiet. Everything gets really quiet, and then the feeling, our feelings that are kind of bubbling beneath the surface start to rise up.
And we've been avoiding them all day, so we wanna keep avoiding them all night. So we just reach for whatever, right, to distract us. Yeah.
Again, right? What am I hungry for? What am I actually hungry for? Great question to ask yourself when you're wanting to reach for the food. What am I actually hungry for?
Work on emotional awareness and expression to address feelings without resorting to food. Right? Journaling. Right? Imagine, imagine like you do some meditation in the evening, you do some stretching, you do some journaling, right? Like, imagine how many of these Parts that would take care of. Right? Like, "Oh, what's going on?"
Maybe, maybe allow yourself to feel some feelings. What's going on while you're journaling?
Maybe reach out to someone, send someone a text or an email, or if you're in the same time zone, you could chat. You might, you might, if you were single, you might find some other single friends or friends that are up in the evening to have some regular conversations with.
Maybe even schedule a call at a certain time once a week and talk to different friends on different days, right? Like, what, what kind of difference would that make in the evening? Another scenario, and this happens with me, partners a lot of times go to bed at different times, and the, and the partner that stays up usually really feels like that's some free time.
Like, that's, like, that's their time, and it's also their, like, unsupervised time. Right? So, I don't think this Part really came up in this list, but we've got, we've got those little kid Parts that are like, "Woo-hoo, mommy and daddy are gone. I can do whatever I want. I can stay up as long as I want.
I can eat whatever I want. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah." And so, those, those... And, and again, what are you actually needing? What are you actually needing, right? Like, how can we get strategic about our life and make changes in our life to, to shift things like this?
The Nutrient Seeker, right? This Part may seek out food because of a lack of sufficient nutrients during the day, leading to genuine hunger or cravings. This probably happens for a lot of people that eat crap. Right? Like, I, I do, I do think there's an element of cravings that... A lot of us, I think most, maybe all of us that are watching this, like, eat really well, and we eat lots of vegetables, and so we get lots of nutrients.
But, but if you're in a phase, right, you're in the ditch, or you're just really eating a lot of crap, your, your body may be hungry for nutrients in the evening. That, like, that could be a real, a real thing. Like, that hunger is real. Your body's actually needing nutrients.
And so that's, that's why it's so important to eat well, right? Ensure balanced meals throughout the day to meet nutritional needs and reduce evening hunger. Ensure balanced meals throughout the day to meet nutritional needs and reduce evening hunger. Eat lots and lots of vegetables, more vegetables than you think you can.
So I'm gonna go through and just read these names again, and just contemplate for a moment, like, is this a Part that I have? The Comfort Seeker. Right? Turns to food as a source of comfort and emotional soothing.
The Rewarder sees food as a reward for getting through the day or achieving a goal, feeling that a treat is deserved, right? This is usually a person that's very depleted and doing a lot for other people. The Boredom Buster eats out of boredom, seeking stimulation and distraction during quiet evening hours.
The De-stressor. This Part uses food to manage stress and anxiety, especially when other coping mechanisms are not in place. Again, some meditation, some stretching, a warm bath. The Social Eater. This Part eats in response to social cues or loneliness, seeking connection or avoiding feeling isolated.
The Rebel. This Part pushes against perceived restrictions or diet rules, wanting to reclaim freedom and autonomy by eating what it wants when it wants. The Habitual Snacker. This Part snacks out of routine or habit as a conditioned response to certain times or situations.
The Nighttime Planner. This Part uses evening snacking as a time to plan and think, often consuming food mindlessly while engaging in these activities. The Emotional Indulger. This Part indulges in food to mask or suppress emotions that arise in the quiet of the evening. Again, if you find yourself mindlessly eating, ask yourself, "What am I hungry for?
What am I hungry for?" And can you give... That's one of the things we can do in Parts work. If you have a Part that's feeling alone, you can actually be with that Part from your Authentic Self. Like, you, you don't even... You can actually be the connection that you need in that moment. The Nutrient Seeker seeks out food because of lack of sufficient nutrients during the day, leading to genuine hunger or cravings.
But who would like to share? Like, which of these Parts did you notice in yourself?
Participant: Hello. Well, two main things that I was struck by. One was, I have the Comfort Seeker, and I think it's actually linked to... In the last, in the last three weeks I've become really aware of the rebel that won't go to bed, and just how strong that is. She got created nine years ago, and she's really protecting me from a whole lifestyle that she does not want me to do.
She's really, really forceful. And so sometimes the, sometimes I eat in the evening as part of the will-not-go-to-bed, will-not-go-to-bed. What excuse have I got to stay up? Well, I could eat something. So there's, there's that.
Everett: Thanks.
Participant: Hi. I was looking through it and it looked like I had three of them. Can you have more than one?
Everett: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And there's... Yeah, and you may have ones that aren't even on this list. It's just, it's designed to kind of open up your thinking about this. What did you notice?
Participant: Well, I noticed...
Let's see. I noticed a De-stressor, using food. The binging Part got me because if I... I've noticed when I have done this, I am listening to a newscast that usually my husband has on, and I am not really thrilled with what's happening, so I'm going through and eating anything I can find to... to calm.
Everett: That makes so much sense, right? Oh my God. Yeah.
Participant: And then the Rebel, which is probably part of the De-stressor. Or the... What is it? The, yeah, the De-stressor. Both of them are working hand-in-hand. Yeah, why not have this? Maybe if I eat this I'll feel better. No, this isn't working. Maybe I should try this.
So just going right down the line of thinking. And then Nudge. So I guess all three of them are just ganging up at the same time. So my solution is to leave the room immediately when... I agree with what's happening in his newscasts, it's just that it gets me emotional. And so...
Everett: Sure. Yeah, we have different levels of tolerance for that, right?
Participant: Yeah.
Everett: Yeah. Cool. Thanks. Did that feel complete?
Participant: Yes.
Everett: Thank you. All right. Yeah.
What else? What did you notice? What came up on your list?
Participant: I think like everybody, I probably have had all of these at one time or another. Comfort Seeker, De-stressor. But to me the biggest insight that came out of this was that it has become a habit, and that so much of what you said gave concrete suggestions for breaking up that evening routine.
Finding a buddy, journaling instead, doing something different. And I think that's, I mean, that's really the key because, I mean, and I even have alternate activities to eating, but then I'm in the habit of eating while I do them. So it's, it's reading, watching TV, journaling, I can eat at all times.
So it's breaking that habit that I, that I need. And this really made it clear, so thank you for that.
Everett: You're welcome. Hmm. Yeah, so much of the game is just mindfulness.
Participant: Yes.
Everett: It's just being conscious, being aware. Like, and then, and, and then you don't... The thing about things that are unconscious is they're unconscious.
Like, we can't see them, right? Until, like, maybe you do something like this.
Participant: Yeah.
Everett: Right? And then I list something off and you're like, "Oh, heck, I do that."
Participant: I do.
Everett: Right? And, yeah. And then once you, once you're conscious, then you can start to work with it, right? Like, and again, if you come from Self, if you're then curious as opposed to critical about it, right?
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Everett: Then, then you'll just move forward and make progress. And if it's hard or you can't do it, you'll reach out for support, right? Yeah. You'll get through it, for sure.
Participant: I had a... There, of course all these things are very salient for me. But what I realized was that I, you, you understand, like, for example, the Comfort Seeker.
So I'm used to, I have the habit of eating for comfort. I can choose while I'm going into this mode to say, "No, I, this is, this is not what I really need. What I need is to relax, so I'm gonna go lay on the floor and put my legs up the wall or something." But there's still, but it's not this... None of these, like, make this huge change.
Maybe they do, but for me they don't. They don't make this huge shift of suddenly it's gone. Oh, now I'm gonna do this. There's always a, a mature decision that has to be made.
Everett: Mm-hmm.
Participant: You always have to say, "Okay, and now I'm going to go in and put my legs up the wall." Or I'll say, "Nah, I think I'm just gonna go ahead and do this."
So the little kid versus the adult that's gonna go do what's healthy, and that difference there, it's like you have to make a decision to put on your big girl pants. This doesn't solve everything. You still have to make the decision, which is why we need this connection here, why we all need to be together and talking about this.
Because we all know that this is the right decision, it's the healthiest decision, and it's the decision that makes life better for us. But that little kid that's used to doing what she wants...
Everett: Well, the thing I think you're pointing to, right, which is true, which is, sometimes recognition is liberation, and we're able to see something and then change something. But maybe most of the time it's not.
Like, we can analytically understand that we have a Rewarder that's telling us we deserve a treat when we get home. But the truth is you're still showing up home totally exhausted and depleted, and in that moment you can have an understanding of that and you're still gonna follow the old pattern. The old Parts, the protective Parts are gonna come up because...
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Everett: ...you haven't made the changes in your life. And, and a lot of this is addressing emotional situations or material. Like, maybe directly emotions, or, or dealing with the emotions around changes that, like, we're really gonna have to make in our life in order to feel better.
Participant: Yeah.
Yeah. And which is why this Parts work is so important. It's not enough just...
Everett: Yeah.
Participant: ...to go and be here and have this all identified intellectually, and we go, "Yeah, that's exactly it," and, "Okay, here's how I need to think," because it's up here. And we're all pretty intellectual as it is.
Most of us know everything there is to know about eating well. So that's why the Parts work differentiates this. Because when you actually identify the Part and then go into it, it's no longer intellectual. It's totally...
Everett: Yeah.
Participant: ...body centered and emotional, and that's when healing can take place. That's when change can occur.
Everett: Yeah. Yeah, that's the power of Parts work versus thinking about Parts or just analyzing things, right? Yeah. Like, we actually create, we actually...
Participant: Yeah.
Everett: ...we change our inner world.
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Everett: Yeah. We actually change our inner world. We build relationships. We bring love and connection.
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Everett: Yeah.
Participant: Yeah. And it's interesting because it's easier just to satisfy my intellect.
My intellect likes to know this stuff.
Everett: Yeah.
Participant: It knows a lot of it already. It likes to see it in different forms, and then I... It's like your mind, your brain, if you just think about it a lot, you still go to bed tired because it feels like you did something, but you didn't actually.
It was just up here. And the Parts work itself, the actual work that we do with you, Everett, with each other, is hard. It's not unpleasantly hard, but it requires effort and it requires time. And it's kinda easy sometimes to step back from the actual Parts work, this is just me talking, and just go through these courses, listen to this material, get my, "Yeah, that's it," but not go into the depth.
And if I don't do the Parts work, the actual work, then this is an intellectual exercise that's fun and interesting and reaffirming and doesn't change anything. I need to do the work.
Everett: I really hear you giving yourself a lecture right now.
Participant: Yes, I am. I am. I need to do the work.
Everett: So I support you in that.
Woo-hoo. Do the work. Be someone that does the work. Be someone that does the work.
Participant: Do the work, yeah.
Everett: Yeah. Anyone else wanna share?
You can just unmute and talk or raise your hand. If not, we're...
Participant: Hello, everybody. When you went and mentioned the title for this day, immediately I felt the resistance, and I could feel a number of Parts that didn't even want to hear about this topic.
And so when I was... And I identified the Parts, and what was there was that they don't want to change. They don't want to have information that says that change is needed, even though certain Parts know that that is the right thing to do and the best thing to do.
Underlying it all is this resistance to change. And it comes up in that Rebel, that Emotional Indulger, the Comfort Seeker. And so I would like to ask that question. How do you deal with it when you've got a number of Parts that are sort of just blocking out wanting to, to go through the change because they know it's an enormous change that has to happen?
That, that is my question, because that's what I'm getting from these Parts. It's, it's, yeah.
Everett: Yeah. The, the, the Internal Family Systems perspective, right, is we really honor the protective system. So we really honor those Parts that are in resistance, right? Like, other approaches would be like, "Well, just push through it and you can."
So, so it's, so this approach is more about getting curious with those Parts and maybe, and maybe doing some Parts work with the resistant Parts themselves, and not necessarily trying to push through them, right? Like, have a conversation with that Part, or, "Get on my calendar and we can do some work around this," right?
Like, get a, get a good facilitator that can help you work with the resistant Parts. And so that's one approach, right? One approach is just to, like, get curious and maybe slow things down. Now the other, now you might be doing Bright Line Eating, right? You might be doing something that's really important for your health to do, even though you have all this resistance, right?
So you wanna get all the support that you can, and you get external... Like, you get as much support as you can in order to do that. And, and then you might ask yourself, what are the emotions I'm trying to avoid? 'Cause that's probably the bottom line with what's going on, right? Those Parts don't wanna interfere with your eating because your eating is the way you're coping with some strong emotions. And, and if there's...
And if that feels complicated or hard to get to, that's a good, that's a good time to get a therapist.
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Everett: Right? Like, actually get someone you can talk to weekly where you're just gonna, you're just gonna start to deal with the emotional side of your life, right?
Participant: And then you... So I know I have a, a very strong taskmaster.
Everett: Mm-hmm.
Participant: And I have a strong need to win. My, my Parts make it so that I can't do anything but fail. They make it so difficult to succeed. So I know about those Parts.
Everett: Yeah.
Participant: And my taskmaster then comes even stronger on having more routines, having more objectives to, to complete.
Everett: Sure.
Participant: All these kind of things. So there really is a strong need to succeed, to win, to, to be on that opposite side, and I'm structuring myself so that I don't do that. So I see, I see the changes that I have to make there, but then there's that, I just don't want to, to dismantle all of that, because it gives me a lot of comfort to have that structure and that system in place.
And what I'm looking at is that whole system being dismantled.
Everett: Well, this... So, so one of the things that can happen in personal growth work, or, or even when we just have ideas of transformation, right? We, we imagine... Like, I always wanted to be doing what I'm doing, like leading groups and kind of out front and sharing wisdom with people, but I was terrified.
I was terrified of it. I thought I would become this kind of target, just based on other experiences I had in the past. So I had all this subconscious resistance to it, right? And, and, and, and there was, like, a fear. There was basically a fear of becoming like a teacher that I had who, like, really blew it, right?
So the fear was, like, oh, I'm gonna become that, and then I'm gonna implode. And, and so it was like this fear of this thing that I was imagining was gonna happen in the future was creating all this resistance. And then once I got into, well, like once I started to dismantle all that, what I realized is transformation is always gradual.
It just is. We wish, we wish it would happen overnight, right? But it doesn't happen overnight, right? Like, we wish we'd lose all our weight in six months, and instead it takes two years or whatever, right? And so, like, this is where I would kinda go, is I would say you don't have to dismantle... Nothing's gonna disappear that you really need.
You're not gonna become a different kind of person. And maybe this is more specific to what you're talking about, 'cause I also had fears of letting go of my taskmaster, 'cause I thought if I did, I would just become a blob, right? Like, the opposite would happen. And the thing I've noticed is, as achievement-oriented people become Self-led, right, which is actually start to lead from their Authentic Self rather than these, like, intense workaholic kinds of Parts, they don't lose their achievement orientation.
You're never gonna lose your... That part of you that wants to do better, be better. That might come into balance. You might learn how to do that in a way that's not self-destructive, right? But you're not gonna, you're not gonna lose your secret sauce. Yeah. Right?
Participant: Thank you. Thank you for saying that.
Yeah.
Everett: Yeah. So maybe that makes... The reason I said that is maybe that's kinda what you're dealing with, is some imagining of something that's gonna happen if you go through this transformation that you don't want. That's Finish Line Anxiety, by the way. That's one of the definitions of it, right?
Participant: Mm-hmm.
Everett: Are you gonna lose... Are you afraid you're gonna lose something that you have? Are you afraid that you're gonna gain something that you don't want, right? So...
Participant: Thank you so much for your comments. Very well, well spoken.
Everett: Yeah.
Participant: Thank you.
Everett: Great question. Yeah.
Thank you for listening to The Peaceful Eating Way Podcast. If something landed for you today, take a minute to write it down before you move on. You can find more of this work, including the free Food Trance quiz, at everettconsidine.com.
