The Regulation of the Emotion of Anger via Emotional Eating and Healthier Options

 

“If the anger occasioned by mistreatment by another is hidden, one’s treatment by the other is unlikely to improve.”

               

 Suggestions for Class

            1. Please read the quotation above carefully. It is super important and should be center stage in your work on your anger.

               2. Please look at the following two Youtube clips:

                                                         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n5MqKLitWo  -   James Gross on emotion regulation

                                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IC7Vwi69XQ -      Roy Baumeister on the self-regulation of emotion  

                3. Please consider the questions below:  we will be referencing and answering these questions and others over the next several sessions.

                4 . Have a look through the articles below.  Many of them are excellent.  

           Opening Perspective

1.       Where does anger fit in our course on treatment issues in weight management?

           

I will answer this one.  Anger fits within our considerations of emotional eating.  We have moved from our initial general exploration of emotional eating types and purposes to our recent consideration of emotional eating and shame.  We looked at shame as obscuring more acute emotional states and at emotional eating of shame as a process that obscures and displaces the shame.  Now we begin consideration of the connection of emotional eating with specific emotions. I have selected anger because it tends to be a particularly frequent underpinning for emotional eating:  anger you can't recognize; anger you recognize and can't keep conscious; anger you want to modulate in intensity; anger you want to express through eating; anger from others - causing you to want to hide or soothe. We will spend a number of sessions on this important topic.  Welcome.

         

2.       What is anger?  

I will answer this one, too.  But please consider whether you have an answer as well.  Anger is an acute emotional response of not liking something – that involves an appraisal of events and the assignment of meaning to them.

Now consider the following questions and topics.  Again, we will be going through them in class.

 

3.       Is anger different than hostility, aggression and violence? State vs Trait

 

4.       Anger and energy – the physics of anger

 

5.       Anger as a primary vs secondary emotion

 

6.       Identifying anger – somatic, emotional, cognitive recognitions

 

7.       Modulating anger – appraisal and reappraisal

 

8.       Processing anger – channeling to engagement

 

9.       Anger and Physical and Emotional Health

 

10.   Functional vs Dysfunctional Anger

 

11.   Venting/Ruminating/Distracting/Deflecting/Processing

 

12.   Expression vs Suppression

 

13.   Anger and pain

 

14.   Anger In vs Anger Out

 

15.   Where’s the beef?  Anger and eating!

 

a.       Eating to suppress anger

b.      Eating to repress anger

c.       Eating to modulate anger

d.      Eating to express anger