Why do we eat when we aren’t hungry?
Comfort.
Why do we reach for the phone when we are bored?
Comfort.
Why do we watch a movie when we are sad?
Comfort.
Why do we pick up a cigarette when we are stressed?
Comfort.
Why do we pour a drink when we have had enough?
Comfort.
AKA: Quick dopamine hits.
All roads lead to comfort to avoid the thing or avoid the feelings. Don’t get me wrong, this is ok. But you will avoid the thing and it will keep coming back around until the comfort thing becomes uncomfortable. Then you might switch it to something different. Then it might show up as never ending problems. It might even show up as an injury or illness. Because the things that we are avoiding are there to be seen, not be avoided. So they will keep showing up until they are.
Now this is in no way to scare you. It’s actually quite the opposite. It’s to encourage you to question why you do the thing every time, ask yourself what you’re avoiding and once you find the answer, observe how quickly you no longer want the comforting. Whatever you are avoiding doesn’t want to show up in a bad way. It doesn’t want to hurt you. It wants to show you that this part of you exists and wants to be seen. It’s pretty simple if we really think about it.
So why do we avoid it? Because it’s too uncomfortable. We are creatures of comfort. We love comfortable, soft, warm things that keep us safe. We enter the world this way, if you think about it. We are born into a beautiful, warm, comfortable womb that is carried by our mothers who love us dearly. Like please tell me what gets more comfortable than that? Then we are ejected out into the world, away form our little bubble. It seems like we are constantly trying to re-create the comfort of the womb before ejection into the unknown.
But we were ok right? We are most of the time, ok. We survive. But we forget the survival, we forget how it felt to step into it. What we usually remember is the pain and we try to avoid it again and again at all costs.
But what if we could change the mentality to sit through the pain and move through it so that we can grow and not keep circling back again and again to the same spot?
Well we can and we usually will but it often takes longer than needed.
I like to call this training for pain. Pushing yourself a little harder each time to be present and mindful of what is really happening before I reach for the comfort. If there’s really nothing, then I simply enjoy that moment of comfort that my body needs. But most times, there’s something.
For me, it usually starts with exhaustion or tiredness and then I reach for the phone or the food. Whichever one is in arms length wins. But what I have tried to do lately is talk to the avoidant part of me and ask her, ok what’s up? I can then usually back track to when the tiredness kicked in and why. More than likely, I didn’t set a boundary somewhere or I did too much of something my body really didn’t want to do.
This is my process, yours could be different. I encourage you to make up your own process.
So this week I encourage you to become the observer. See if you can catch yourself in those moments. Watch yourself, see if you can catch the feeling deeper. Dig in and find out more. You never know, you might just find yourself quitting a habit you've had for way too long.
Don't forget to also give yourself grace. We are humans here. This is very normal. It is also ok to escape sometimes. I do it still, even when I am aware. It's ok. Tell yourself it's ok, I know it's there and sometimes that's all you need.
Comment below, what your quick hits are when you're 'feeling' into something. Mine is definitely my phone, food and binging Netflix.
Adelina x
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