Junk Food for the Soul

Each of us is a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, underexercise, over-TV, undersleep – many and varied forms of junk food for the soul.
-Julia Cameron

Did you see yourself in that quote? I certainly do. I don’t do drugs, and I don’t drink alcohol, but most of the rest of them apply to me. And I agree, they are junk food for the soul. They are the greasy potato chips of time. If you’re hungry, you may decide to snack on some greasy potato chips. They taste good, at the time. They don’t satisfy your nutritional needs. They add unhealthy things to your body and increase the amount of calories you’ll have to burn off. In the long run, and sometimes in the short run, they don’t do you any good. But they taste good for a moment. And the above activities may distract you from your life, from your misery, from what you don’t want to think about, but only for the moment, and in the long run, they do you more harm than good.

If there is one thing that you should take away from this blog it is this: You are good enough. So many of the problems in this world are caused by people having low self esteem and doing nothing about it or trying to put others down to make themselves feel better. “I may suck, but at least I’m not as bad as him!” It doesn’t change the fact that you think you suck (which you don’t), but you don’t have to have it at the front of your mind.

You are good enough, and you deserve a good life, and you deserve a good future, and you can affect the Future. You can change it, you can give birth to it, and you are an active part of it, whether you are active or not. What you do or don’t do affects your life and the lives around you, and that is what gives birth to the Future.

You are good enough, and you deserve better than the junk food for the soul. It isn’t easy to wean yourself away from these things, that is true. It will take time, practice, and patience. And you will have minor stumbling blocks along the way. As long as you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and continue on, you will do fine. No one does a diet perfectly, not a food diet or a junk food for the soul diet. There will be days that you need “just a little something”, but take it from someone who has been there. The longer you go without your “fix” and the more you are aware of your desire and the results of the “fix” (and you can choose to be aware), the less you’ll find that the “fix” will give you what you desire - distraction. Now, some people will take that to mean that you just have to increase the intensity of the “fix”. If one drink no longer does it, then have two. If going out partying two nights a week isn’t enough, go out five. If several hours in front of the TV isn’t fixing your life, then there must be a talk show on channel 57 that will address just that topic. But it doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t give you what you want. What you want is the pain to stop. What you want is for your life to improve. But what you’re getting is just a rest stop on this trip called life. You’re just getting a small break. The pain and the quality of your life will still be there when you get back, if they haven’t gotten worse. A drug addict can’t improve his life with more drugs. A TV addict can’t improve his life with more TV. A sex addict can’t improve his life with more sex. All it will do is provide a short period of time when you think that you aren’t thinking about it. But are you really not thinking about it? With any part of your brain? Or is it always at the back of your head, waiting to speak to you if you don’t drown it first in whatever your choice of addictions is?

You deserve better than junk food. It may seem comforting and the only thing that understands you and can bring you pleasure, but it doesn’t really bring you pleasure. It numbs the pain, and that is all. Compare to the pain you feel, numbness is a blessing at times, but you deserve better. You deserve real pleasure. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to feel great. And you can’t get that from anyone or anything but yourself.

Doing what needs to be done in order to get to the pleasure, in order to eliminate the pain in your life, is a scary thing, but you can do it. You are strong enough to take the next step. That step may be the teeniest, tiniest baby step of all times. It may be a millimeter or a nanometer or perhaps just a hair’s breadth, but you can do it. You can do what you need to do next.
Is sugar your fix? Is that what you use to numb the pain, to distract you from what is wrong in your life? It was for me for a long time. I got a wake-up call from my doctor just about a year ago, and I’ve been changing my life since. That which used to taste incredible to me is now too sweet, and I welcome the change even as I mourn it. I miss enjoying the sweet candies I used to love, but I’m glad my body is healthier and is looking for healthier things to eat. (Red grapes, by the way, can be incredibly sweet and are much healthier for you than candy bars.) It took the wake up call from my doctor, though. I thought about getting back to a healthier weight for years, but I didn’t do it until I had to. It may be true for you, too. But, you can prepare yourself for the “have to” event, just as I did. You can prepare yourself with thoughts. You can think about what kind of changes you’ll make if you have to. You can think about what the “have to” even will be. For me, it was weighing 60 pounds more than I’d like to. All the way up to that point, I didn’t have to in my opinion. But that weight combined with my doctor’s warnings were enough. I had to at that point. What will it be for you? When you weigh a certain amount? Or your pants or dress size is a certain number? Or you get winded walking up a flight of stairs? What will be your “have to” event? Whatever it is, however far off into the future it may be, be sure to have one. People have literally died from not having a “have to” event. They just let it keep going and going until it was too late.

Perhaps it’s alcohol, a very insidious thing. It physically addicts you just as its effects mentally addict you. But you are stronger than it. The big leap would be to cut yourself off cold turkey, but that’s not the only step you can take. Maybe you can limit the amount of money you spend on alcohol or the number of drinks you have in a day or the time of day you begin drinking. Maybe that’s too much for you, too. Maybe you need to start with your thoughts, also. Don’t tell yourself “I will stop after this drink” if you know you won’t. Don’t make promises to yourself that you won’t keep. It’ll just make you feel worse later, and you don’t need that. Instead, before each drink, think. Think, “I choose to drink this.” Do just that. Make yourself mindful of your drinking. Don’t just pour yourself another beer or grab another wine cooler or order another scotch. Think. Just for half a second. It won’t delay your drink enough to matter to your addictions, but it will matter tremendously for your strength to stop. You can be insidious, too. You don’t want not to remember how many drinks you had the previous night. Don’t let the alcohol control you. It’s your life, your body, your money, your time. You get to do with it what you want, and don’t let alcohol change that. Just think. Even just once in a night. Let that be your next step. It doesn’t seem like it’ll do anything, but thoughts are insidious, too. It’s amazing what you can do with them.

And that works for everything else, too. That’s one of the reasons why people who go on diets are encouraged to write down everything they eat in a day, because they don’t realize it. Their actions bypass their thoughts. By writing it down, the dieters realize how much they eat and when and what. It brings food to their consciousness.

You may ask “But how does that apply to sex or bad relationships? Certainly people know when they’re having sex!” That’s a very good point. But have you ever known anyone who couldn’t tell you how many lovers they’ve had? Or someone who wouldn’t be able to tell you the first and last names of everyone they’ve had sex with? They were there, of course. This was a part of their lives. They should be able to remember. But they don’t, because the actions weren’t important enough for them to think about, or rather their actions were too important for them to think about. If they thought about what they were doing, then they might stop, and they didn’t want to stop, because stopping meant feeling the pain, and that was the point – avoiding the pain. Or someone who is always forgiving their spouse or significant other? Who couldn’t tell you really what the fight was about the previous night that you heard through their walls? Who wouldn’t be able to tell you the number of times that the other person insulted them or broke a promise or whatever form of abuse they choose? Because they don’t want to think about it. If they thought about it, they’d have to do something about it – even if that something is to choose not to do anything. If they don’t think about it, they don’t have to make that choice, and the choice is painful. Acknowledging the truth about their relationship is not something they want to do. If they thought, they’d have to feel the pain, and they don’t want to do that.
But that’s the sneaky thing about pain. It’ll stay with you until you feel it. Until you acknowledge it, it will stay with you either in your mind or your body. How can it stay in your body, you ask? Ulcers. High blood pressure. Weakened immune system due to stress. Others have theories about how the body stores memories, and some of the stuff is rather fascinating. Pain is sneaky, and it demands attention, and the only attention it will accept is for you to feel it, either directly or through problems you have. Have you ever had a memory that will not go away? And it’s something you don’t like? Pain is making you remember it. It wants the attention. Unfortunately, when you give it attention, that memory doesn’t always go away. If that’s the case, then it’s usually a sign of something deeper, something more problematic, something even worse that you don’t want to face. Is that memory part of a pattern? Did someone break their word to you in the memory, and it keeps coming up because you aren’t seeing that this is an isolated incident? Did you break your word to someone in the memory, and it keeps coming up because you’re afraid that your integrity is crumbling and the memory is a warning sign? Sometimes, the same memory or the same pain or the same thought will keep coming up because it’s the tip of the iceberg, and that’s a scary thought, but just as you don’t have to take all the steps at the same time, you also don’t have to tackle the iceberg all at once. You can chip away at it until its icecubes that melt in the sun. Icebergs take a long time to make, and they can take a long time to dissolve, but how much better will your life be at the end of the iceberg? How much worse off than you are now will you be if you ignore the iceberg?
If you cannot quit or cannot reduce what you’re addicted to, then think about quitting and reducing. And if you cannot think about that, then think about thinking about it. Make a date with yourself. “Next Tuesday at 6:30, I will think about going on a diet/not having sex with strangers/not watching so much TV/etc. for five minutes.” Remind yourself of this date every so often. Keep the date, as best you can. Maybe you can’t make the full five minutes. Maybe you’ll only make one, and that’s with your mind wandering to other things frequently. That’s okay. You’re thinking about it more than you had previously. Make another date. Make it for another five minutes. See if you can last the entire time this time.

And if thinking about quitting or reducing is too much and if thinking about thinking about it seems too weird, then choose. When you turn on the TV, at the start of each program, think to yourself, “I choose to watch this next program.” “I choose to spend the next hour watching TV.” When you grab the ice cream from the freezer, think, “I choose to eat this ice cream.” When you get dressed up to go out and nail yourself some tail, think, “I choose to have sex tonight.” Make your actions conscious choices, not unconscious addictions. Choose to do these things, because you want to, not because you need to. Regain your power. Even that hair’s breadth of a step is still a step. You can do it. You are worth it.

You are an amazing person. You just need to un-bury yourself from beneath the junk food in your soul.