As busy women, we can play so many different roles in a single day that sometimes it feels like we’re constantly changing costumes. We’re mothers, partners, daughters, friends, employees, business owners, carers, organisers, peacekeepers, problem-solvers and the person everyone seems to come to when they need something. We move from one role to the next without even thinking about it, adjusting our energy, our words and sometimes even our personality depending on who is standing in front of us. And somewhere amongst all those roles, there’s a question we rarely stop long enough to ask ourselves…. How many of these roles am I genuinely being myself in… and how many am I just playing the part I think is expected of me?

Maybe you’re the easy-going friend who never makes a fuss, the capable woman at work who always has everything under control. The mum who keeps everyone else’s world running while quietly running herself into the ground, the partner who says she’s fine when she isn’t really. Massive kudos if you feel like this applies to you, you’re probably very talented at reading a room and figuring out which version of yourself will keep everyone happy, avoid conflict, earn approval or make life easier. But the thing is, when we’ve played these parts for long enough, it can become difficult to tell where the role ends and we actually begin. What do we want, what do we need? What are our thoughts?

Not only that, constantly performing different versions of ourselves and suppressing what we really feel takes energy. Swallowing the “no,” pretending we’re okay, keeping everyone happy, meeting expectations and pushing our own needs further and further away…it all takes energy. And those feelings don’t simply disappear just because we’ve become good at ignoring them either. They accumulate as frustration, resentment, loneliness, boredom, overwhelm, restlessness or that strange sense that something is missing even when life looks perfectly fine from the outside. And when we finally feel stretched too far, or we get a moment alone at the end of the day, food is often the quickest way to soften everything we’ve been carrying. For a few minutes we don’t have to perform, we don’t have to give anything to anybody. We can simply escape.

That’s why changing emotional eating isn’t always about changing what’s on your plate. Sometimes it’s about becoming curious, how many roles do you play and how much of your genuine self you get to be in each role? Where are you shrinking yourself, where are you saying yes when you mean no? Where are you performing “fine” instead of acknowledging how you really feel? And where could you begin allowing a little more of the real you to show up? It’s not like we want to stop being the mother, partner, friend or professional, we just don’t want to over-function to the point that we disappear inside these roles. And the more space you create to be honest about what you feel, what you need and who you really are, the less you’ll need food to provide the comfort, freedom or relief you’ve been denying yourself everywhere else.