The strange wisdom of unhealthy habits
What if choosing the donuts saved your life
Maybe the very things that you do, that you hate, are the very things that keep you afloat.
What if the very things that kept you looking disorganized, the underachiever, the does-good-but-could-do-better, are the very things that saved your life from slipping into so much pain your own body couldn’t handle it?
What if those times when you were fantasizing about someone you couldn’t have saved you from the emptiness of your existence at that moment, emptiness you had no solution for, and the focus on someone else, on this magical, shiny object, was both the source of pain and a strong antidepressant?
What if you could only remove yourself from the obsession when you could grasp a solution, a new way, another way to face your pain and place something in that place that appeared empty?
What if choosing the donuts was wise?
What if choosing to eat to numb yourself out was the only way to survive, to escape pain, to flip the switch from fight or flight to rest and digest? What if instead of punishing yourself for not doing better and adding more to the pain that caused seeking refuge in the first place, you asked yourself what food did for you as a wise survival strategy?
And it could be food, it could be binge-watching TV series, it could be giving relentless advice to other people as a way to escape the chaos from your own life and feel that you do have some competence.
What if choosing the healthy habits wouldn’t have saved you at that time? And all habits can become unhealthy. One can run for too long, one can meditate for too long, one can only write and never live.
What if instead of adding pain and shame to what you’ve done to wisely save yourself, you remove some of it?
The “unhealthy habits” are sustained by shame, by unmet needs, by loneliness, by pain.
What if you think like a strategist and simply acknowledge that at that moment, that was the best solution, and that some solutions are better than others for you? What if you don’t add to the pain? Instead, you slowly discern what you actually need and you slowly, and at a sustainable pace, remove the substitutions for something real