What is a Porous Boundary and Why Does it Affect My Weight Loss Resolution?
A person who feels too much often senses the need to eat because her experience of the world is too much for her. It’s not that she simply loves the taste, texture, smell, and sight of food, which provides a sensory experience. It’s not that she’s experiencing hunger pangs, or even that she’s addicted to food, although that may be. Diets don’t work for her because they don’t address her powerful need to feel grounded in herself, separated from the confusing, distressing emotional turbulence around her. Food serves that purpose.
The stress of remaining in the moment, without knowing what you are sensing and how to be separate from it, is deeply discombobulating for someone who feels too much. The pain and discomfort is intolerable, and you will do anything to escape.
If you’re highly sensitive and empathetic, that has a profound influence on your weight, as well as your thought processes and your moods, which affect your eating habits and your relationships with others
I know what this is like because I have felt this way with disturbing regularity: filled with confusing emotions that were upsetting me. I didn’t recognize that many of those feelings weren’t even mine. Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Why don’t diet books or courses teach us about how taking on other people’s “stuff” affects us? In our culture, we don’t talk much about empathy, so when you’re sitting there feeling guilty for downing a huge portion of junk food, you’re not likely to think about this whole “empathy” and “sensitivity” thing. But ah, if you did, what you would learn!
The preceding is an excerpt from my new book, Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much. If you know you take on the feelings of other people but don’t know how to stop it and manage your porous boundaries, let me help you. Access free chapters and order my book here.
Love and blessings,
Colette Baron-Reid
Intuitive Counselor
