Emotional Tolerance: How to Develop Your Ability to Hold Space for Discomfort & Stop Compulsive Eating

Emotional tolerance refers to your ability to sit still with discomfort instead of reaching for food, or anything else, as a buffer. Tolerance for negative emotion helps you become the eye of the storm instead of getting swept into compulsion.

When you feel lonely, for example, and you find yourself reaching for a bag of chips to fill the void, emotional tolerance helps you sit still with the edginess instead of buffering with those chips. This isn’t to say that chips are bad! All foods are equal. But in the realm of stopping compulsive eating, the goal is to stop the urge to eat without hunger — and emotional tolerance is the ticket.

Within Psycho-Spiritual Wellness, my approach to stopping compulsive eating far removed from dieting, I refer to emotional tolerance as the #1 skill, because it really is. Master this, and you’ll unlock enormous potential for making peace with food.

Let’s start by discussing why many of us lack emotional tolerance to begin with (hint: it’s not your fault; no one teaches this in school) and then I’ll share my favorite tool for harnessing this skill.

Why We Often Lack Emotional Tolerance

When you think of “emotional skills” what comes to mind? If you’re anything like me ten years ago, nothing immediately comes to mind and it even sounds a bit strange — and that’s precisely the society we live in today.

Emotional awareness and emotional tolerance are vital yet often overlooked skills. Many of us were raised in environments that solely promote happiness while also discouraging the expression of sadness. “Never let them see you sweat.”

When your emotional skillset is limited, it can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as compulsive eating. The desire to eat without hunger is often an impulsive response to an uncomfortable emotion such as stress, depression, and sadness.^[1] Low tolerance for discomfort (formally known as “distress tolerance” in clinical research) is significantly associated with emotional eating.^[2]

If you want to address emotional eating, don’t turn to a diet, which merely focuses on food and exercise. Instead, turn to your emotions to directly address the root of the issue and discover an unexpected doorway into growth and authenticity.

Emotional Awareness Precedes Tolerance

Understanding your emotions on a moment-by-moment basis is the essence of emotional awareness, which is a prerequisite for emotional tolerance.^[3] Emotional tolerance is the capacity to willingly experience the full spectrum of your emotions. You need emotional awareness in order to tolerate your emotions in the first place.

However, achieving emotional awareness can be challenging, especially if you were raised in an environment where showing vulnerability was discouraged, like “no crying allowed in this house.” Research shows that emotion-related self-regulation progresses rapidly in the first few years of life.^[4] If your parents did not create an environment for this skill to unfold, don’t worry. Research also shows that you can play catch-up with this skill later in life. (That’s what I did.)

However, the blunting of emotional awareness isn’t just a familial issue; it’s perpetuated by societal norms that equate happiness with success and worthiness. This societal pressure is perhaps the most evident in romantic relationships, where many people express a singular desire: “I just want to be happy.”

However, this pursuit of happiness and only happiness is flawed. Life is an intricate tapestry of emotions, and negative feelings are an integral part of the human experience. The relentless avoidance of unhappiness only serves to intensify it — “what you resist persists” — creating a cycle of unhappiness, resistance, and compulsion.

How Emotional Intolerance Leads to Compulsive Eating

There’s a strong connection between negative emotion and overeating.^{[5], [6]} Yet when people think of emotional eating, they often think of common scenarios like stress eating or boredom eating. However, the reality is that emotional eating can exist under seemingly unrelated thoughts like “I just love food too much” or “I just need more willpower.”

From personal experience, I can advocate that something as seemingly superficial as food addiction is still motivated by an uncomfortable emotion — it’s just hidden deep beneath the surface.

I will never forget the day that I stumbled upon this revelation. It was about two years into my journey of giving up dieting, and I found myself craving candy after lunch. I shrugged it off as sugar addiction and didn’t think much else of it. I also thought that I just loved candy more than the average person.

However, I was just delving into emotional work at the time, and out of flippant curiosity I sat down to dive into my emotions to see if something would pop up. Within two seconds, I burst into tears. I was sad and I had no idea. This is why, when someone tells me “yeah, it’s not an emotion, I just really like food” it can be difficult if not impossible to illustrate the emotion underneath. You need to witness the connection for yourself, and the following tool will help you get there.

How to Develop Emotional Awareness & Emotional Tolerance

Enhancing your emotional skillset is pivotal in addressing compulsive eating, and this is where my Stop, Drop, & Feel technique comes into play. This simple yet effective method, similar to urge surfing, is designed to foster emotional awareness and tolerance — and it can also help stop a binge in its tracks when you practice and sharpen these two emotional skills.

Here’s how it works: whenever you feel an urge to eat without hunger, pause and engage with the Stop, Drop, & Feel. This involves taking a moment to connect with your body and genuinely asking yourself what emotions you’re experiencing.