We found that the fulfillment of these needs was being registered as empty-full feelings. “In reflecting upon our own feelings and facilitating the reflection process with our clients, we became aware that the two basic needs of acceptance and freedom-to-be-oneself were being constantly monitored by a feeling center in the gut area of the body. There is truly more intelligence in the gut than it has previously been given credit.
It is our hope that those of you in the field of counseling, psychology, education, and medicine will give this great reflection and understand the importance and implications for viewing human nature from the point of view of this basic theory on gut instinctual needs and feelings that we are presenting with a new psychology of the gut. We think this section well explains the important reasons one confuses the signal of emptiness accompanying the need for food with the emptiness accompanying other instinctual human needs and defines these instinctual needs quite precisely. The following is an excerpt from our book What’s Behind Your Belly Button ?, and is part of a section titled "Our Instinctual Needs", page 133-136 from Chapter 5. It isn’t a far step from the awareness of emotional eating to the understanding that our gut feeling of emptiness is not just a gauge of the need to eat food but also the need for more basic psychological needs. The gut is a brain, a center of intelligence, and has much more to tell us about ourselves than when we need food and when we do not. Doesn’t this affect us all? Of course it does and the answers may surprise you. So what will fill this emotional emptiness in the pit of your stomach? What are the instinctual needs that are often confused for the need of food in gut feelings of emptiness and fullness? What is the gut trying to tell us about our needs? These seem like such simple and important questions that we might wonder why more people are not addressing them.
Because it is not what will really fill this type of emptiness (emotional), we are not truly satisfied stuffing ourselves with food (even though it is enjoyable at the time) and we keep eating to attempt to fill it, often resulting in unwanted weight gain. When we feel emptiness in our guts, empty and alone, then we often grab comfort food to fill this emptiness.
It is very difficult to separate the feeling of emptiness in our guts caused by hunger from the emptiness that causes emotional eating but we need to learn how (and certainly can learn) to do this if we are going to be healthy and truly happy people. I think we all now can agree that there is a direct correlation between eating to fill emotional emptiness and overeating to fill what we think is hunger. Much has been written on emotional eating and dieting.
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