Stuffing

No, I did not fall off the planet, but I did pick up a writing project that has kept my proverbial nose to the grindstone. Not sure I have much nose left, but at least the project is done.

Today, I’d like to talk about stuffing, and not the stuffing from inside a turkey, but the stuffing that we do with our feelings, which more often than not, creates so much emotional pain that we turn to food for comfort. Emotional pain is often invisible, not at all like placing our hand on a hot burner. When we cannot see what is causing our discomfort, we find a distraction. Distractions take many forms and are as diverse as the food products in a grocery store. Just as food has a purpose, to stop hunger, distraction too has a purpose, and that purpose is to stop the invisible pain, pain that we often don’t even know is there.

How do we find out what’s bothering us? Before we can do that, we have to acknowledge that we are bothered by something. That is, we have to admit something exists before we can begin to look for it. This takes being conscious of our automatic behaviors. For example, if every time your sister calls, you reach for bag of M&Ms and devour them while chatting, that is an automatic behavior, and those M&Ms represent a distraction. Pay attention to your behaviors and look for patterns and automatic reactions to certain events. Write them down. Link the cause and effect. After you’ve done this, then you can begin asking yourself questions to find the reasons behind your behaviors.

In the above example, one question you could ask is why do you feel that you need chocolate for comfort while talking to your sister? What program is running in the background of your brain that triggers the craving for candy? Sometimes the answer is easy; sometimes you will never know what the answer is. And it doesn’t really matter, because you can stop the automatic behaviors by following these steps.

1. Become aware of the automatic behavior – grabbing M&Ms
2. Become aware of the preceding event – your sister calls
3. Determine what behavior you would rather occur – grab a stuffed animal instead
4. Begin the process of creating a different habit – have a stuffed animal by each phone in the house, and every time your sister calls, pick it up and hold it tight instead of reaching for the M&Ms.

The new behavior won’t occur overnight, but stay focused on the new behavior and you will be able to establish it. Albert Einstein got it right when he said that imagination wins over willpower every time. Try imagining doing something different when you feel the need to overeat rather than attempting to use willpower to stop. Go buy a Teddy Bear.