Unpleasant or unwanted emotions are dealt with primarily three ways – resisting, lessening, or processing through them. “Experiential avoidance” is the psychological term for ongoing attempts to suppress or avoid unwanted internal experiences including emotions, thoughts, memories, and bodily sensations. Life coaching refers to this as “buffering” negative emotions. The dictionary definitions of buffer include lessening or moderating the impact of something (verb), or something that prevents two things from harming each other (noun). We can use either definition in this case. When we “buffer”, we are using something that immediately gives us a boost in serotonin to distract us from the negative emotion in front of us. Instead of feeling anxious, mad, sad, frustrated, bored, irritated, or depressed, we turn to something that will give us an immediate positive hit.
Common buffers are:
· Food
· Alcohol
· Illicit or prescription drugs
· Shopping
· Social Media
· Excessive phone use
· Binge watching tv
· Video gaming
· Gambling
Each of these things can be done in moderation with no problem. We all need to eat, shop, and communicate with each other on our phones. These activities become a problem when we are using them to excess, and they are having an overall negative impact on our lives. Negative results include obesity, addiction, debt, poor relationships, poor work performance, and increasing isolation and depression.
So what to do? First of all, if you find you are using any of the above (or any other means of self-medication) to excess, just become aware. Ask yourself the following:
What am I doing currently? This may sound like a silly question, but often we find ourselves a couple slices of cake or an hour into social media before realizing what we are doing.
Why am I doing this?
What was the trigger today?
What emotion was I starting to feel that I wanted to avoid or lessen?
Why would that emotion be a problem?
What overall thing in my life do I need to start to address or change?
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