The Brain

I have a guilty pleasure.  Or guilty pleasure isn't exactly right, because I don't feel guilty about it per se.  I just don't normally advertise this particular hobby because I guess I feel like it would invite judgment and disparaging comments.  Anyway, so I enjoy listening to audio psychology books.  And I don't mean self-help books, although I like those too, but I mean actual psychology books, like students use when they are studying psychology.  Not that I understand the more technical ones, but there are plenty of psychology books out there that describe findings in fairly laymen terms.

The reason I am so interested in psychology is because I have suffered from chronic depression since I was a teenager.  I didn't put together until very recently that the primary sources of my depression were:  1.  Negative thought cycles; ruminating; mentally judging and chastising myself; catastrophizing; etc. - and  2. Anxiety fed by a barrage of worries and fears.  The combination of the two have led me to have difficulty socializing; difficulty making and achieving goals; and difficulty trusting myself and the world enough to do challenging and novel things. 

Added to those genetically inherited traits, I grew up with a mother with the same issues, which meant my childhood was filled with negativity, fear and anxiety.  So, not only am I genetically inclined toward being pessimistic, with a poor outlook and high fear but I have learned behavior that reinforced these traits.

So, not surprising that I eventually turned to food and tv or reading as a forms of escape and self-soothing.  I was a finger-sucker as a child, so I was primed for oral self-soothing.

However, that's not what I learned that was so inspiring to me.  What I recently learned is that the brain is highly trainable.  I mean, I had already read/heard about changing the pathways in the brain by thinking a certain way or learning new things, but I figured that while one could make some changes to the brain, primarily it was all pre-set.  Like I am super short and I can't change that.  But, I was apparently wrong, because apparently one can effect a substantial enough change to actually redevelop emotional traits.  How cool is that?  I don't have to be forever pessimistic, depressed and anxious!!

Not that I can just take a pill or snap my fingers and voila! instant change.  Like everything we do that is worth doing, it takes time and tons of practice.  For me, it means actively pursuing positive thoughts, making non-judgmental observations, recognizing thoughts and feelings without reacting to them and practicing meditation, particularly compassion meditation. 

I already know how effective simply monitoring my thoughts can be because I have been practicing redirecting negative thoughts for the past year and a half and I do notice a significant change.  I haven't had a moderate relapse of depression in over a year, which is a huge accomplishment for me.

The point of all this is that I can use the same simple mental practices, with patience, to assist in my recovery from binge eating.  Today, I had a conversation with a client and afterward I felt like it hadn't gone well.  I hadn't prepped myself well enough before the call, hadn't collected my thoughts, and hadn't received a reaction I had been expecting, which threw me off further.  I felt awkward and clumsy and after I hung up I started worrying about the client complaining to my boss.  This is a brand new job for me, so I'm even more paranoid than I would be normally. 

I spent the rest of my workday catching myself ruminating about the conversation and having to redirect my thoughts, but I was having difficulty really letting it go.  After work, I was so hungry and I decided that I deserved Taco Bell.  It's Friday and I've been doing well with my eating and I'd just got through a difficult week at work...

This is the time to stop and really think about what I'm doing.  Obviously, food is not a reward; it is a punishment when used for emotional reasons, because it hurts me for a long time after.  Secondly, I wasn't eating fast food because of a long work week or because it was Friday or because I was hungry, I was choosing to self-soothe because I was still feeling upset about my earlier conversation.  I was reverting to old patterns, and I didn't even recognize that until long after I had finished the food.

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind not to berate myself.  And I didn't way overdo it (I had a soft taco and a bean/cheese burrito with a diet pepsi).  Maybe it was even a good thing, because it gave me the opportunity to really observe the process...something happens to make me feel uncomfortable and I find a way to justify self-soothing with food.  I've been reinforcing that habit for 20 years, so it's going to take longer than a few months to establish new responses to uncomfortable situations.

Furthermore, if my practice with letting go of some of my anxiety works, which I believe it will, I won't be so easily upset or feel so uncomfortable for what really amounts to a non-event.