Accepting our emotions means not immediately trying to change them or run from them.  Why would you anyway if they are appropriate to the situation? Negative emotions may not be fun at the time – but experiencing the full range of emotions is what it is to be fully alive and human. And anyway, we only recognize something as feeling good, thanks to also having experienced the opposite. It is normal then for human beings to experience a range of different emotions, on a continuum from very negative to very positive, very sad to very happy. (It is the extremes of these continuums which are generally considered pathological, and especially so when someone gets ‘stuck’ at an extreme, eg in feeling very sad.) So if you feel lonely because you are indeed alone at the moment, then it’s OK to feel that. Or if you feel a bit guilty at having said ‘no’, then that’s also fine. Or if you feel nervous about an important pending meeting, that’s also OK and in fact totally normal. The same principles apply to around us - if it is appropriate for your child to feel sad because a pet guinea pig died, then we should allow them to feel sad. Saying something to try and make them feel immediately better is often more about our own needs than it is about theirs – and it potentially teaches them from a young age that it is not OK to feel any negative emotion. Again - as long as all of the above emotions are to an appropriate intensity given the circumstances. In such cases we should be prepared to put up with the discomfort of ‘sitting with’ the emotion, rather than immediately trying to make ourselves feel better by burying the negative emotion under food (or through other means such as alcohol, over working, over exercising etc). A word that we hear all over the place at the moment, is mindfulness. Very simply, mindfulness is a way of paying attention – in the present, and non-judgementally. People practice mindfulness to get their minds into the present – with their bodies. You can be mindful in tying your shoelace, in listening to your child, in eating, or in giving a work presentation. But we can also be mindful of our emotions – notice them, and avoid the temptation to pass judgement on them. In other words, I’m not a bad person for feeling angry – I’m just feeling angry. Or I’m not weak for feeling sad – I’m just sad. It sounds simple and obvious, yet the society we live in seems to push us ever further from mindful living. We are constantly bombarded with multiple sources of information, with images of what we should have, how we should be etc.  It encourages us to be constantly looking to somewhere other than the present moment. But if you want to be truly fulfilled over time, and certainly if you want to put an end to comfort eating, then becoming more mindful, understanding and accepting of our own emotions, is a Very Important Thing. * There is plenty of information on mindfulness available on the net, including the details of training courses in all the main centres.