Placating my nervous system

There’s a reason why some days I can calmly ignore the pack of Mr. Kiplings Cherry Bakewells and other days, however hard I try, I end up devouring the whole pack. The days when I win are usually the days when it’s easy. The days when I win are the days when I never even get as far as the ‘shall I, shan’t I’ debate. If I start the ‘shall I, shan’t I’ back and forth I’m very likely to lose. And even if I win, I’m kind of worn down by the debate to the point that I know if I have the debate the following day I will lose. It’s like I won the battle but lost the war. I love the days when I raise a quizzical eyebrow at the cakes and serenely walk away.

So the question becomes, why is that some days it’s easy to resist and other days it’s near on impossible. The reason is both subtle and obvious. The days that I effortlessly turn away from the cakes, the chocolate, the sweets, the meal deals are the days that I am feeling calm. The days that I succumb are the days that I am stressed, bored and jumpy. My poor food choices may not be a solution to my nervous state but they present themselves as such. They act as a delicious distraction from my nervous state both in the eating and in the anticipation of eating.

Here’s the issue. In that moment I see the junk food as some sort of solution to my current predicament. So why wouldn’t I pursue it. It is not a food choice, it’s a get me out of this feeling choice. Viewing it as a food choice will not bring about my overall desired outcomes. I’m not thinking about diabetes and weight gain and possibly early death. The truth is I’m not really thinking at all. I’m jangling. My nervous system is the controlling force not my mind.

Junk food is like a toxic partner. We seek them because of their toxicity. Taming the bad boy is not the goal. Reeling in the chaos that prevents us looking inwards is the goal.

This is how my poor food choice days typically play out. I wake up knowing that I have some serious issues to deal with at work. I’ve slept poorly because these issues have been running through my mind all night. I’m not sure but I think I fucked up and the issues are down to me. I figure these issues could cost our clients tens of thousands of pounds. I feel a sense of shame that I’m not good at my job, that I overlooked a key point, that I wrote the code on the premise of an assumption that I never clarified. I had meant to confirm my assumption was correct, but it felt like such a minor and obvious point and by the time I was going to raise it the project was already too far down the line. I didn’t want them asking why I’m raising the point now, so I didn’t raise it at all. I let it slide. It’s like if someone calls you by the wrong name and for whatever reason you don’t correct them. After a while it becomes too late to correct them because you don’t want to inflict the low-level embarrassment on both them and yourself.

I need to know if the work issues are my fault so I can a) fix it and b) formulate my mea culpa in a manner that mitigates my blame to some degree. I wake up early feeling a little sick. I half-formulated a plan during the night and now it’s time to act on it. I’m honing the plan in my mind as I wake. There’s no time for my morning meditation that normally sets me up nicely for the day. Meditation is the last thing I need as I have to remember the plan. The plan plays on a loop in my mind so I don’t forget it. I need to focus on the plan not my breathing.

By mid-morning the situation is resolved one way or another but I still feel super jumpy. The problem wasn’t as bad as I thought and it looks like my colleague Jimmy was actually responsible for the issue. It’s amazing how often there’s an issue that appears related to my latest code changes but isn’t actually due to my code changes. It feels like someone has grabbed me by the solar plexus and squeezed and all sorts of unpleasant stuff has leaked out into my system. I feel like a beer but it’s only 11am. If I walk into town there’ll be a bunch of people drinking beer in the Wetherspoons despite it being only 11am. When I see them I pity them and envy them in equal measure. It’s an option but I pass this time. There are some Kipling cakes and crisps downstairs. I’ve got a massive craving for them. I don’t bother with the whole ‘shall I, shan’t I’ debate. I devour them all. I didn’t know why I needed them I just had a craving. I must have known they wouldn’t satisfy my nervous system because even as I grabbed them out of the cupboard I was looking around for whatever other shit food I could eat afterwards. Anything will do but it has to be shit. I don’t even have to like it.

I’m one of those people that once I get on a negative path I keep going. If I make poor food choices today, I’ll probably make poor food choices tomorrow. It can sometimes take weeks for me to break out of the cycle. It’s often said that this kind of negative loop is due to a kind of self-admonishment whereby you hate yourself for negative behaviours and that self-hatred causes you to engage in more negative behaviours. That might be the case for some people but I’ve never been convinced that is the case for me. I tend to go pretty easy on myself. I now think it’s the case that the negative behaviours further negatively impact my nervous system and so I continue to try to fix or placate my nervous system with more negative behaviours.

Mindfulness is important because it helps us recognise and understand behaviours. But my typical mindfulness activities of meditation and journalling just don’t fit the bill in those high stress moments. They take too long and my system knows that my focus needs to be on the stressful situation not on meditation. This is where I’ve started to lean on deep breathing. It’s quick and it barely distracts from the task at hand and crucially it tempers the stress and the jangling.