25 April 2021- HABITUAL PATTERNING

Today I have seen more clearly than ever how if someone acts in a way which upsets me, or if I have a thought I find unpleasant I head straight to the fruit bowl, sweet packet, cake tin etc to stuff something in my mouth in an attempt to push the unpleasant feeling down.

Rationally, yes, I have been aware of this habit pattern but now that I have related my emotions to the need to eat, hopefully I will be able to control it.

When driven by my emotions in such a robotic way I feel I abdicate my humanity in the sense that part of what makes us human is the ability to feel our emotions in a heartfelt way and to choose whether or not to act on them.

Therein lies a problem, however, because in order to be able to do this we need not only to be aware of a habit pattern and choose NOT to indulge it, we also need to refuse to allow the rational mind to ‘talk’ us out of it by telling ourselves we ‘ought’ NOT to do ‘it’ but this will be the last time, just once won’t hurt etc etc.