Escape Methods

Boy, have you ever had one of those days (weeks) where nothing big and *horrible* is happening but a billion little tiny irritating things are? It's like falling into a stinging nettle bush and coming out with all those teeny tiny "hairs" stuck in your skin... no gaping wounds but my gosh is it annoying! That's how my day is going. Nothing huge, just a TON of little things that, when added together, seem to be too much. A semi-sick kid, a limping pup, icky rainy gloomy weather, lack of phone service for 5 days, difficulty getting medical referrals, and a whole slew of inept people who are tripping up my plans left and right, all make me want to... to what?

Binge?
Drink?
Take some drugs?
Go to a casino?

Escape. In whatever way people generally escape. Those are some really unhealthy escapes I listed right there. Self destructive ones, possibly harmful ones. Self medicating is, I think, something lots of us do. But once you've gotten into a habit of using some specific method as an escape/release valve, it's kinda hard to switch to something different. Something healthy.

It would be nice to jet off to a tropical island, but most of us have responsibilities that preclude that from being our escape method, so we have to find other ways to lower stress and soothe nerves.

It's hard for me. But it has become easier the longer I have gone without bingeing. As the weeks, months, years tick by, that reflex is weakened. But yes, my mind still wanders there. I still get so overwhelmed sometimes that I think "Oh I would LOVE to just go to the store and buy a bunch of junk to eat." But I manage to stop myself, at least, from the volume, from the binge. For me, at least, there is a vast difference between the old crazy binge behaviors and the new occasional stress eating behaviors. It's a remnant of the old me, but just a shadow. That ice cream I ate last week, the latte I ordered today. It's this little remnant that is left, of the old binge behaviors.

A lot of times I think it is bad... that I need to completely eradicate any hint of using food to cope. I wonder if it is some sign of weakness or failure to turn to food, EVER, for escape. Is it? Must it be gone, be erased, for one to be truly healthy? Or is it okay once a week, once a month, on occasion, to use a food or a drink in non-binge amounts to make you "feel better" about some stress or irritation? Can that just be normal?

I'm not sure. I have a list of non-food ways to cope with stress, but habit prevails at times, and somehow a yummy treat seems so much more appealing than a bath or a walk or reading a book. Maybe this is another case of finding balance... MY balance, what works for me. Because if this latte is not harming me, not keeping me from getting healthier and losing weight, not leading to a binge, then maybe it is not such a bad escape method after all.