The Comfort Fallacy

Ah, "comfort food".  Most of us have certain foods that bring on that feeling of warm contentment and happiness. It's these foods that we turn to when we're feeling really depressed, or particularly stressed, or even lonely and bored.  What your comfort foods might be differ greatly from person to person.  A few of mine:

Chicken and Dumplings. Fettuccine Alfredo (complete with a large slice of garlic bread.). Enchiladas. Chicken Noodle Soup.  Chocolate.  Mmmmmm.

My mouth is watering just looking at this picture.

Just thinking about comfort foods can make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  They provide a nice pick-me-up to get you going again when you've had a particularly hard week, or even a rough day.

Except for addicts, like me.

For me, these foods have become a crutch. A way to shove aside the emotional issues and avoid dealing with them because they are too scary and too painful to face. And over time, the crutch becomes a shield, an attempt to keep any of those experiences from ever hurting me again.  But at the same time, the shield is also keeping me from enjoying my life in the full, wonderful way that I could be. Don't get me wrong - I have a wonderful, loving husband.  I have fabulous beautiful children.  But I know that I'm not present for them fully the way that I should be, and I can't allow myself to continue on in this way.

What's funny is, I've come to realize that each of those foods listed above is directly connected to one of the issues I've avoided dealing with all along.  So while I'm eating it, it may make me feel good for a short while, but it also invariably brings up a painful memory that I don't want to deal with. Which makes me need something else. So I move on to the next food.  Same thing. So I grab something else. It goes on and on until I'm in full binge mode, desperately trying to fill some hole or mask some pain in my soul instead of turning and facing the issues.

I hope, by now, you've realized I write all of this in the present tense.  I make no false claims of being someone who is healed from her past.  I make no false claims of having even begun to heal.  The truth is that I hope this blog will be a healing journey for me.  I'm about to do the scariest thing I've ever done.  I'm going to face my demons.  Publicly.  Not only because I need your support, but because I hope that maybe, just maybe by doing things this way I can help someone who is like me, or help stop someone before they become like me.  The next few posts will deal with my listed foods one by one, and the memories associated with them.  Some of what I'm going to talk about may be painful to read (it will certainly be painful to write), and I advise you to read with caution.

Until next time, lovies.