Distracting ourselves

Joe stands at the refrigerator, grazing on whatever he can find. His girlfriend broke up with him a week ago, and he hasn't gotten over it yet. The week would have been deeply sadder--too sad--but he's managed to distract himself much of the time with his old friend, food. .

Do you eat to distract yourself? All of us reach for diversion from the intensities of life. Sometimes feelings are too strong for too long, and we need something to help us escape temporarily from the pain. But if overeating is your only form of distraction, you probably have a problem--you're overweight and unhealthy as a result.

You might be thinking you really should face your feelings instead. You might be believing that it's not okay to distract yourself from the raw, intense feelings of the human experience. If that's what you've been thinking, these beliefs are false and unfounded.

Psychologists tell us that humans need to take strong feelings in small doses. We visit a feeling, then leave it, then visit it again.

When we experience intense feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, fear, embarrassment, worry, anxiety, or just about any other strong emotion, it is hard, and even unhealthy, to stay in that emotional peak for any extended period of time. You know this if you've ever grieved the death of someone close to you.

When a loved one died, did you spend every waking minute of every day grieving? No. More likely, you grieved within the brief fissures and cracks of a busy schedule. You allowed yourself to ponder and cry in the short quiet moments. The rest of the time, you were eager to be diverted by shopping, cooking, work, and all the business of life. Those things were a relief amidst the sadness. You even welcomed light moments in which you could laugh, temporarily forgetting your terrible loss.

So, what makes us think we have to face everything in its full intensity all the time? Who knows. Perhaps a therapist or friend overemphasized feeling feelings. We thought they meant full throttle all day. But nobody ever meant for you to do that.

If you're believing that distraction is somehow illegal, then your normal human need for distraction is bound to manifest in another way. Eating seems easily justified as a necessity of life rather than a distraction, and so we legalize it as our one means of distraction from intense feelings.

After all, we have to eat, right? And so we teach ourselves to turn again and again to overeating. It's self-reinforcing, too, because overeating numbs our nervous system a bit, serving as a fine suppressor of those intense feelings.

We don't have to be grieving a loss to have intense feelings. Even the ordinary frustrations or mishaps of the day can create strong, sometimes overwhelming feelings. And some folks feel feelings more strongly than others. Perhaps it's this inborn trait in yourself that got you into this predicament in the first place. Maybe you're the kind of person who feels all feelings quite intensely. And you've been depriving yourself of needed distraction!

What to do? If this sounds like you, it's time to legalize distraction as a form of coping, and get more creative about it. Pick something that really works for you as an individual, not what works for other people. Choose some diversions that you perhaps once allowed yourself, but then shut out because you thought they weren't okay.

They don't have to be terribly productive, either. Remember, these are meant to replace all that time you used to spend unproductively overeating, so why must your new diversions suddenly be ultra-productive? Sometimes we just need to waste some time.

Here are just a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

1. Read consumer magazines, flipping through the pages without really concentrating. Those tiny little columns and two-paragraph articles are especially light and breezy.

2. Watch the Cops show on TV, (so you can feel superior) or old episodes of Star Trek on Spike TV, or some sappy emotional movie on Lifetime (feelings someone else's feelings instead of your own can serve as a distraction for some folks.)

3. Watch the stupidest soap opera you can find, or that television tabloid called Extra, the one that manufactures or sensationalizes the news.

4. Read true crime.

5. Clean something in your house that's already clean. In other words, allow yourself some of your old obsessive behaviors if they comfort and distract you.

6. Go for a drive around the neighborhood instead of exercise. (It's still better than overeating, right?) Isn't it amazing how hard we are on ourselves? As soon as we seek an alternative to overeating, we think it must be something that's a value-add. Not true! Why must we exercise? Why can't we go for a stupid drive in the car?

7. Find your area of expertise, (we all have several) then join a message board on the subject. Perhaps you know a lot about refinishing a basement because you just finished yours. Join a message board about home repair, and then, when you need distraction, help out others on the board.

8. Play pool or video games.

9. Listen to music from the good old days (whenever that was). Mine's Todd Rundgren or Led Zeppelin.

Your ideas may be very different from the suggestions above. But what's important is to find distractions other than eating. Maybe the stupider the better. You can also get some ideas by talking with others on the Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board. I'll be there too.

Why must we always replace a destructive behavior with self-improvement? Take the pressure off. Sometimes we can replace it with something neutral. Consider this meditation for today. Maybe repeat it several times out loud so you can hear it:

"I'm not going for self-improvement. I just want to stop this stupid addiction to food."