We think the craving is the problem.
The chocolate is the problem.
The chips are the problem.
The nighttime eating is the problem.
So we try to get rid of the craving.
We use more discipline. We make rules. We decide that this is the week we’re finally going to get it together. We promise ourselves that after dinner, we’re done.
And then 9:30 comes.
We’re tired.
Maybe we’re finally alone.
Maybe the day has been a lot.
And somehow we’re standing in the kitchen eating the very thing we promised ourselves we wouldn’t eat.
Then comes the familiar conversation:
Why did I do that?
What’s wrong with me?
Why can’t I just stop?
I’ve heard some version of that question from so many women.
And after years of working with women around cravings, the body, hypnosis, somatic work, and the unconscious mind, I’ve come to see the problem very differently.
I don’t think the craving is necessarily the problem.
I think it may be information.
Valuable information about what is happening inside you.
What you’re feeling.
What you’re ignoring.
What you don’t know how to say.
Or what some part of you may still be protecting.
And once you become curious about that possibility, the entire conversation begins to change.
What if your craving has a history?
Think about a seven-year-old girl whose parents are fighting.
She can feel the tension in the house, but she doesn’t have the emotional language to understand it.
She’s scared.
She’s sad.
She’s overwhelmed.
Maybe she cries.
Maybe nobody comes.
Nobody sits beside her and says, “You’re safe.”
Nobody helps her understand what she’s feeling.
So she finds something that does.
Maybe it’s ice cream.
Maybe it’s popcorn.
Maybe it’s something sweet.
Maybe it’s something crunchy.
Maybe it’s simply the thing that gives her a few minutes of comfort when she doesn’t know where else to put all those feelings.
The food doesn’t stop her parents from fighting.
It doesn’t change what is happening around her.
But it changes her experience of what is happening.
It soothes her.
It distracts her.
It comforts her.
It gives her somewhere to go.
And that matters.
Because a seven-year-old isn’t sitting there thinking, I’m developing an emotional eating pattern that I will carry into adulthood.
She’s simply discovering:
This helps.
And the unconscious mind is very good at remembering what helps.
Then she grows up.
Now she’s 40.
Or 55.
Or 66.
She’s built a life.
She may have raised children, built a career, become a successful businesswoman, become a therapist or healer, studied the nervous system, practiced yoga, meditated, gone to therapy, read every book she could get her hands on.
She may know more about herself than she ever has.
And yet sometimes, late at night, she still finds herself reaching for the food.
She isn’t even sure she’s hungry.
She just knows she wants it.
And afterward she feels disappointed in herself.
This is where I want to interrupt the story we tell women.
Because we tend to look at the adult behavior and forget the history.
We see the woman eating the food.
We don’t see the little girl who may have once learned that food could make an unbearable feeling a little easier to carry.
And I’m not saying every craving began at seven.
I’m saying some cravings have a history.
And if yours does, trying to remove the behavior without understanding what created it can leave you fighting the same pattern over and over again.
What if the behavior is doing a job?
This is one of the questions I ask myself when I’m working with a woman who tells me she can’t stop a particular craving.
What is this behavior doing for her?
Because behaviors that repeat usually aren’t random.
Something about them is working.
Maybe the food is comforting her.
Maybe it helps her come down after holding herself together all day.
Maybe it gives her a moment where nobody needs anything from her.
Maybe it helps her numb something she doesn’t want to feel.
Maybe it creates a sense of safety.
Maybe it gives her a form of pleasure she has been denying herself everywhere else.
Maybe it became a way to belong.
Maybe it became a way to turn inward when nobody came.
And this is where I think the language of “self-sabotage” can sometimes be too simplistic.
We look at the behavior and say:
“Why am I doing this to myself?”
But what if some part of you is actually trying to do something for you?
What if the behavior once protected you?
What if it helped you survive something emotionally that you didn’t yet have another way to handle?
That doesn’t mean you have to keep the behavior.
Quite the opposite.
It means you may finally have a way to understand it.
And understanding changes the conversation.
The women I work with aren’t lacking information
This is something I see again and again.
The women who come to me are often incredibly knowledgeable.
Some are healers.
Some have studied the body.
Some have spent years learning about trauma, wellness, nutrition, meditation or personal growth.
They know what they’re supposed to do.
They understand that vegetables are good for them.
They know they should move their bodies.
They know eating a bag of chips at 10 p.m. isn’t going to make them feel better the next morning.
And yet knowing isn’t always enough.
That’s what interests me.
Because if knowledge were enough, none of us would ever repeat a behavior we had already decided we wanted to change.
We wouldn’t stay in relationships we know aren’t right for us.
We wouldn’t keep saying yes when everything inside us is saying no.
We wouldn’t keep reaching for the food we don’t actually want.
We wouldn’t keep abandoning ourselves in the same familiar ways.
The conscious mind can know one thing while something deeper is operating from another set of instructions.
And that’s where I became much more interested in the unconscious mind.
I stopped asking women to fight the pattern
For a long time, our culture has taught women to fight themselves.
Fight the craving.
Fight the weight.
Fight the appetite.
Fight the emotion.
Fight the body.
Control yourself.
Be good.
Try harder.
But what if fighting isn’t the answer?
What if curiosity is?
Instead of:
How do I stop this?
What if we ask:
Why is this here?
Instead of:
Why can’t I control myself?
What if we ask:
What is this behavior helping me do?
Instead of:
How do I get rid of this craving?
What if we ask:
What is this craving trying to tell me?
Those are very different questions.
And sometimes a better question is the beginning of a completely different kind of change.
This is where my work begins
When a woman comes to me with a craving, I’m not interested in simply telling her to stop eating the food.
I want to understand the pattern underneath it.
I’ve spent years working with hypnosis, somatic practices, breathwork, yoga, and deeper forms of emotional and unconscious exploration.
And what I’ve learned through that work is that sometimes the most important moment isn’t when the woman stops craving the food.
It’s when she suddenly understands why she needed it.
That moment can be surprisingly powerful.
A woman may come in saying:
“I don’t understand why I keep doing this.”
And then something clicks.
She remembers something.
She recognizes a feeling.
She sees a connection.
She realizes the behavior had a purpose.
And suddenly she isn’t looking at herself with the same judgment.
She’s looking at herself with understanding.
That is the aha I’m interested in.
Because once you can see the pattern differently, you have a different place from which to change it.
Your craving may be telling you something you haven’t heard yet
Maybe it’s telling you that you’re exhausted.
Maybe you’re lonely.
Maybe you’re angry.
Maybe you’ve spent your entire life being the strong one and food is the only place you let yourself receive comfort.
Maybe you’re still protecting a much younger version of yourself.
Maybe you’ve learned to turn inward because at some point, turning toward someone else didn’t feel safe.
Maybe you have spent so much time taking care of everyone else that the craving is one of the only moments that belongs entirely to you.
Or maybe your story is completely different.
That’s the point.
It’s yours to discover.
I don’t want to tell you what your craving means.
I want you to become curious enough to find out.
And this is where I think we have been solving the wrong problem
If you have spent years trying to eliminate a craving without ever understanding what created it, you may have been trying to remove the messenger instead of listening to the message.
That doesn’t mean you need to dig endlessly into your past.
It doesn’t mean you need to blame your childhood.
It doesn’t mean every behavior has one neat explanation.
It means there may be more information available to you than you’ve been taught to look for.
Your body.
Your emotions.
Your patterns.
Your memories.
Your reactions.
Your cravings.
All of them can become places of inquiry.
And sometimes, when you finally understand what a pattern was trying to accomplish for you, you no longer have to fight it with the same force.
You can begin to change the relationship.
What if you could finally understand your own craving?
This is why I created the Craving Root Mapper.
I’m not going to walk you through the whole process here.
I actually don’t want to.
Because I want you to experience the discovery for yourself.
I’ve created a short, approximately 20-minute training inside my SKOOL community where I explain how I think about cravings and why I believe so many women have been trying to solve the wrong problem.
Then you’ll have the opportunity to use the Craving Root Mapper with your own craving.
The one you keep thinking about.
The one that shows up at night.
The one you’ve promised yourself you won’t eat anymore.
The one that seems to have more power over you than it should.
You don’t need another lecture about willpower.
You don’t need another diet rule.
You don’t need to beat yourself up one more time.
You may simply need to understand what is underneath it.
Watch the 20-minute training.
Then map your craving.
That’s where I’d start.
Because your craving may not be the enemy.
It may be information.
And you may be surprised by what it’s been trying to tell you.
Love,
Monica