Controlling Emotions

As I mentioned in the last part, food for me is a way to cope with emotions. I also mentioned that it is time to find new ways to deal with them.

Emotions are part of a three-way-street; cognition, emotion and behaviour. They interact with each other, and influencing one can influence the others. Now, I think that the behaviour can’t change right away as it is a result of our emotions and attitudes. Emotions are a result of our attitude, so that might be difficult to change as well. Doris Wolf agrees with me that the easiest place to start changing is the attitude, the cognition. It’s sort of like the inner talk you have with yourself, the way you judge a situation.

Example:
The other day we were just sitting and watching telly when I felt like eating something. I said that I was going to make a slice of toast. When I came back from the kitchen I had two slices of toast with butter and ham on a plate. My boyfriend said “oh, two ...”. I got really angry at this. I thought “how dare he! How dare he tell me what to eat, how much to eat! I’ll show him that he can’t tell me what to do, that I’ll do just what I want.”
So, I ate the two slices of toast, was still feeling angry with my boyfriend but was also angry with myself because I knew that really he was right.

It later came to me that if I’d stopped myself at the first negative thought, the first “how dare he”, if I had stopped myself then and made a conscious effort to evaluate the situation differently, then the story would have been another.
Instead of the above, I could have thought “well, actually, he’s right. I’m not really hungry to begin with, this is just because I’m bored and want to nibble on something. Really, I don’t need anything to eat, and even if I did I could have made a better choice of food. I know that he’s just looking out for me, and when he says things like that he is thinking of my long term happiness, where as I am, at this moment, just trying to satisfy my immediate desire.”

Had I thought that, I might have felt much more peaceful and calm in the situation. I might even have been able to put the food aside and not eat it. The conversation, and in fact the rest of the evening, would have gone much happier for both of us.

I don’t think it is easy to change the way we judge situations. But I think that over time we first start to realise that we have judged a situation in one way and that it might have been more helpful if we had judged it in another way. Then, after a while, we start to realise that we ARE judging a situation in a certain way, and we start changing the thought process that is going on. This is a slow process and takes a lot of effort, but it gets easier with time. And then, one day we might not even have to pay attention to it anymore because our inner attitudes have changed.

The changed attitude results in changed emotions, making life (I think) less negative and much easier to deal with if I can talk myself out of a negative feeling or behaviour.