Escaping, Stuffing and Releasing

Someone said something that hurt your feelings, but you do not want to say anything because you want to avoid possible conflict.  So, you stuff those feelings down inside of you.  Whenever you see this person, those feelings come back, and you pretend everything is fine.  You just keep stuffing how you feel.  Soon you become numb to feelings and have developed a habit of pushing down all feelings.

 Sometimes these feelings attempt to come to the surface, so you put food on top of them to keep them hidden.  You have become an emotional eater.  You eat your feelings instead of naming them and dealing with them.  You have become afraid to admit your feelings out of fear of being looked down upon or rejected by others.  You fear others will see you as weak or will belittle you for being so sensitive. 

When you eat your feelings, you are punishing yourself and causing other health problems.  You develop a habit, and food becomes an escape from dealing with life and the emotions connected to the problems and situations of life.  You may stuff your feelings down inside by a variety of addictions – alcohol, drugs, porn, smoking, food, gaming, gambling, media, or shopping.  These are just a few ways to escape dealing with life. You use an outside source – something that is a possession, object or something you can see – to deal with internal feelings.

Anytime life seems hard, or something triggers emotions and feelings that you do not want to deal with, you escape to your method of dealing with life and it becomes an addiction.  It now brings you comfort and a false sense of security.  You don’t deal with anything in hopes that it will go away.  It never goes away so you just keep turning toward your addiction because it is familiar and no longer requires thought.  It has become a habit and an uncontrollable urge to retreat or escape life.  You become dependent and lack control over it.

You may not regard yourself as an addict.  You still function well in life and take care of the necessities of daily living.  You work.  You interact with your family.  You attend church and are involved in your community.  Life feels normal to you.  There is a part of your life that you compartmentalize – how you deal with feelings, emotions, and the hard things of life.  You just escape from them and stuff them deep inside you hoping that they never see daylight.

You are not an addict as society defines an addict, but you rely on another substance to get you through the tough stuff of life.  Want to do something different and retrain your brain?  Your brain has developed a way of thinking that escaping and using these negative addictions are natural and just who you are.  This is distorted thinking and not true.  It is admitting first that you do escape and stuff and desire to change this habit.  Then, it is naming feelings and being aware of how you react and allowing yourself to feel these feelings.  Then, it is finding healthy ways to release them and not stuff them down inside of you.  For instance, anger is a physical emotion that needs to be released physically.  You can punch a pillow, a punching bag, use pool noodles to beat up something, and then let it go.

It is changing your stuffing and escaping to releasing and letting go.  Pray and let it go.

Elaine J. Sturtz

Living In The Different