Reclaim Your Inner Rebel
WHAT IS AN ARCHETYPE?
These are the many and varied personalities (Archetypes) inside of us that make us who we are and drive every one of our behaviors, including our food behaviors. Exploring our Eating Archetypes is a powerful way to help us with our food and body challenges.
Think of an archetype as a distinct personality inside of you. It’s a unique and specialized voice. Every one of us actually has many different voices inside of us.
For example, in some situations, part of you may show up like a Parent: nurturing, responsible, demanding, strict, mature, etc. In other situations, a part that’s more like a Child may show up: impulsive, silly, curious, etc.
Some other archetypes are: The Champion. The Perfectionist. The Teacher. The Best Friend.
Some of us have the archetypes of: The Healer. The Gambler. The Artist.
And the list goes on and on. Each of us is a unique combination of our Archetypes.
Each of these personalities or Archetypes shows up at certain times. When you’re with your best friend, the Best Friend archetype in you will be present. When you’re in a classroom, your Student archetype shows up. When you’re in any kind of competition, the Competitor archetype in you comes out.
Why is this all important to understand as it relates to food behaviors and Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating is perhaps the most frequent and familiar of the eating challenges that many of us face. We turn to emotional eating when we’re stressed, angry, anxious, bored, lonely, or simply not feeling good about life.
And while there is clearly a large part of us that doesn’t want to emotionally eat, we still find ourselves soothing our emotions with food. We still eat emotionally, even if we are fully aware of the negative consequences of emotional eating (bloating, low energy, guilt, shame, fear of weight gain…. and the list goes on).
So, we might be left wondering:
What’s driving my emotional eating? How do I empower myself to stop?
There can be many, many reasons behind emotional eating: from nutritional and physiological causes to emotional and psychological factors.
THE INNER REBEL
In this article, we’re going to explore one of the most common drivers of emotional eating - The Inner Rebel Archetype. It’s one of the hidden “eating archetypes” that can take over, and start running the show.
The Inner Rebel is the voice or personality inside of us who loves to break the rules, refuses restrictions, and wants to do whatever it likes (often subconsciously). It’s also the part of us that’s innovative, courageous, and is willing to tell it like it is.
What’s also interesting is that the Inner Rebel archetype is often the part of us that goes against our own best intentions when it comes to food and diet. So if you ever say: “I don’t know why I sabotage myself,” the Inner Rebel is often the reason why. This is one of the voices within that just loves to break our own well-intentioned food rules.
Once you understand how this hidden personality works and what it wants, you can begin to take control of your eating choices in a more empowered way.
You can be on the road to finding more peace and freedom with food.
The Psychology of the Rebel Eating Archetype
The Rebel is the part of us that’s radical, authentic and brave. It fights for what’s good and is courageous enough to go against outdated rules that simply don’t work. The Rebel fights the good fight and stands up to dogma, hypocrisy, and corruption.
The Rebel in us also helps bring in new ideas and new ways of seeing things in the fields of business, politics, science, and medicine. They forge a new path. (think Einstein, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King to name a few).
When it comes to FOOD, the more mature Rebel in us can inspire us to go against what we were taught, try new diets or nutritional systems, get out of our own nutritional ruts, and simply be willing to experiment and explore.
But the immature Rebel within us is often the one who:
Goes against our own best nutritional intentions
Sabotages our dietary efforts and plans
Breaks our own food rules, even though we wish otherwise
… and therefore contributes to our unwanted emotional eating challenges.
When you say to yourself, “I know what I’m supposed to do, I just don’t do it,” the Rebel is often the reason why. In those situations, your inner Rebel has stepped in and is happily making all the food choices.
So why would the Rebel do this? And why does it even exist in the first place?
Well, remember that it’s the Rebel’s job to rebel.
That’s its nature. TO REBEL.
So, when the Rebel takes over and makes food choices that go against your best intentions, it could be because:
A part of you is tired of your own intense and impossible-to-follow dietary rules.
You’re sick of dieting, negative self-talk, and you just want to have some fun with food.
You’re being too hard on yourself when it comes to your own food rules and you need to find a middle ground.
You just want to say NO to everyone - to your parents, to your doctor, to the experts, and to all the people who have judged you around weight and diet – including saying NO to yourself…
The Hidden Wisdom of Your Inner Rebel
The Rebel has some excellent reasons for its rebellious nature when it comes to food. The Rebel is operating from a hidden wisdom and has a message for us that we need to hear.
If you’re being too rigid around your diet, if your food rules are too extreme, or unreasonably difficult to follow, then those rules actually need to be challenged.
When The Rebel within you says “NO” to your own overly intense nutritional and dietary rules, the Rebel is actually doing its job.
And it’s time for you to start paying attention.
It’s time to listen to it more deeply.
It’s time to examine your rules and restrictions around food and to notice when you’re being too hard on yourself.
Here’s what I mean:
When it comes to emotional eating, we turn to food to regulate our unwanted emotions. You might be bored, anxious, stressed, angry, depressed or sad – all of which are feelings that we don’t enjoy.
One of the key strategies that humans learn at a very young age is to turn to food to feel better and manage unwanted or uncomfortable emotions. Eating brings an instant release of pleasure hormones. Eating takes us out of the physiological stress response, and into a relaxation response.
The Inner Rebel instinctively knows these things.
And the Rebel may drive us to eat when we’re feeling fed up and stressed out. It could be stress from our own dietary rules, or the rules we are trying to follow from a book we’ve read or an expert that we’ve turned to. It could also be stress from other areas in life that feel too rigid, or make us feel like we’re missing out on some pleasure or fun.
So we’re using food to help us manage the difficult emotions caused by our own self-chosen rules.
Can you see the irony here?
Here are some practical suggestions to help you manage unwanted emotional eating caused by the Rebel acting up against your own food rules:
Ask yourself:
Do I need to lighten up and change my rules around food – or other rules in my life?
Am I being too much of a perfectionist around diet or life?
Am I setting myself up for failure by having high standards and asking too much of myself?
Is there more of a middle ground for me when it comes to diet?
How can I loosen up and enjoy eating or life a bit more?
Do I have self-judgments and self-attacking thoughts about food and body that would cause the Rebel in me to stand up and rebel by driving me to eat foods on my “bad list”?
The beauty of getting to know the Rebel archetype is that you can begin to see how it’s actually trying to help you learn something about yourself. It has a good reason for its supposedly bad behaviors.
As you are going through this journey, be sure to keep tap into the hidden wisdom of our Rebel.
What is the Rebel within trying to teach me? What is it asking me to learn about myself, and my relationship with food?
Jessica Kishpaugh is a Holistic Nutritionist & Emotional Eating Coach, Owner of LoYo Wellness in Wyckoff in Bergen County, NJ and Founder of The LoYo Method coaching program that focuses on helping busy women heal their relationship with food through the power of food psychology and behavior habit changes. Jessica specializes in nutrition psychology, emotional eating, binge eating, overeating and mindfulness stress reduction.
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