Pod Post Ep.1 Why I Eat Ice Cream When Feeling Anxious or Sad

Ep.1 Why I Eat Ice Cream When Feeling Anxious or Sad
In this episode I discuss the definition of buffering and how it can affect us when we feel overwhelmed or anxious. I talk about how even seemingly positive actions, like working or exercising, can be buffering. I explain how the first step is always awareness. We dive into how our primitive brain knows how to push our buttons and the difference between our primitive brain and our prefrontal cortex. We talk about the definition of an urge, why we have so many of them and how to deal with them. I also discuss why giving into these urges makes it worse for the next time the urge arises.

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Welcome to the Beat Physician Burnout podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Deanna Larson, Internal Medicine, hospitalist, and physician burnout life coach. I want this podcast to be your Burnout Bible, with topics to include anything and everything related to burnout. If you need to learn about burnout, prevent it or overcome it, this is the place for you. I want to give a disclaimer that the information and opinions shared here are for information and educational purposes only and do not serve as medical or professional advice. They do not represent any medical or professional institution or organization. If you are truly ready to take control of your life and put these tools into action, I am here to help. I have a free consultation call for any physician who is looking into coaching. Please sign up for a free consult at the link below.

You are listening to the Beat Physician Burnout podcast episode #1.

Why do we eat ice cream or watch TV when we are feeling sad?

I want to talk about a topic because I find comes up a lot when I am coaching clients. So many of us have emotions come up that we don’t want to feel or face. Sometimes we can try to use external things to change how we feel. This is called Buffering; when we try to use external things to change how we feel internally.

Let me give you an example of this. We all have a to-do list, right? Sometimes it gets really long! My default thoughts are “I am never going to get this all done. I am going to let people down. I am never going to be caught up” I feel very anxious and overwhelmed. The last thing I want to do is feel these emotions. No one wants to feel anxious. I want to turn the emotion off and make them go away. I want to feel something else or even nothing. I tend try to shut those feelings down by actions such as eat ice cream or turn on Netflix, go to sleep etc. But these actions don’t get me good results, certainly not any check marks off my list!

What I teach in coaching is that feelings alone are actually powerless to make us do any actions. But they feel SOOOOOO uncomfortable and we want to make them go away. We sometimes take these negative actions to make the negative feelings go away.

I want to spend just a quick moment talking about a few ways that are brain works. No neuroanatomy lecture, I promise!

The Primitive Brain (or our child brain) is the part of our brain that acts like a child. It's the one that says “I want this, I want it now! I'm gonna throw a fit if I don't get it.” It can throw a big fit but it actually cannot make you do anything.

Our Pre-frontal cortex (or are mature adult thinking part of our brain) is the part that is required to actually take any action.

This is the part of the brain that makes us human and the part where we make our decisions. This is the part where a lot of us, as physicians, spend a great deal of our day. It’s the part where we process, and think, and do and most of our decision making. It is required to actually take an action.

So let’s put these together. When you initially feel anxious or overwhelmed and you think I want some ice cream that's your primitive child brain saying I don't want to feel this negative emotion. I want ice cream. I want something to make me feel good. But our primitive brain can't actually take any action. It can't get you up off the couch, walk to the refrigerator freezer, open the door, take the ice cream out, none of that can happen without your pre-frontal cortex agreeing to that so that's really where we have the control. Unfortunatley, eating the ice cream may make you feel good for a moment, but likely will lead to negative consequences later and is not leading you to your overall goals in life.

The first step is learning to recognize this pattern of reacting to stop the negative emotions. Awareness is the key. Learning to make the connection. Learning with two separate out or surges from our primitive brain from our conscious mind. Become the watcher. You can think “I notice I am thinking that I want ice cream right now, but I am not even hungry. I am just doing this to try to feel better.” Being able to watch our thoughts is what makes us uniquely human. Once we are able to look at our thinking, then we can change it. Our PFC can see and decide.

To really understand buffering we must first understand what and urge is. Urge is just like every feeling or emotion, except these seem much more urgent, strong, overwhelming. They come from our primitive brain and we can't stop them from coming.

We can learn that the urge can’t control us or hurt us. We can learn to allow the urge. Its okay that I am anxious and overwhelmed right now. Urges will go away once we allow them. We want to eliminate the urge faster by giving into it. The problem with this is that if we don't allow the urge, the emotion is most likely going to come back. We can learn that we don’t have to react to them. I am not going to eat ice cream. I have done that before. It doesn’t work. I can do my self coaching.

So when I have that feeling of overwhelm and anxiety that I have too much to do and default thought is I am never going to get all this done I am overwhelmed I'm anxious I just want to give up and go to bed and watch TV. But, I've learned to recognize this pattern, it is not going to get me the results that I want.

I think have learned better thoughts . My brain still continues to offer up the thought “you can’t get all of this done” and that’s okay. It is still going to do that. Our brain’s job is to offer us up thoughts. Our brain is lazy and it like repeat thoughts. I bet I have had that negative thought for years and it has been repeating in my brain thousands of times. But I can have that thought AND also have the thought “I KNOW I CAN get the 2 or 3 most important things done today that I need to get done today”. That makes me feel confident and competent and in control. I can stop my brain from spinning and get to work.

Another example of allowing or overriding an urge is when we want to watch a scary movie or go through a haunted house. Are primitive brain sends information that we should be scared and run away. It is trying to protect us. But you're prefrontal cortex can override that and say “I know I'm in a haunted house everything is OK. I know this is just a movie and I don't really have to be scared”. We can learn to apply this skill of our PFC overriding a are primitive brain in all other areas of our life, If that we want.

We are constantly bombarded with suggestions for urges. Social media, television, advertisers. They try to tempt us all the time. You should really go eat something. You should go buy some thing. You should drink this kind of alcohol. Look how beautiful and happy these people look in the commercial drinking this alcohol. You should do this activity. A lot of money is me trying to convince us to follow urges.

Other examples of urges are the urge to over-eat, over-drink, or sometimes even break the law.

Let’s say you are so angry you want to punch your boss in the face. Your prefrontal cortex knows that's not a good idea and may get you fired or put in jail.

Another example is procrastination. We know we should be working but instead or primitive brain says “lay the couch, watch a movie, get on Facebook, Take a nap”. Once you are able to be the watcher of your primitive brain you can say ‘OK, I see you. I feel you. I'll allow you. I'm not going to try to eliminate you but we need to get to work.’

Anything can actually be used to Buffer depending on how you are using it. Even good things. Before I learning this coaching topic, I used to call this “positive procrastination”. Let’s say I really needed to do this podcast and I don't wanna do it so instead I cleaned my kitchen. Now this is better than watching Netflix but it's still not what I really needed to get done. So watching Netflix really isn't doing anything good for me at least cleaning my kitchen is getting something that needed to get done but it was still procrastinating what was on my schedule to do. Some people will do things like say “I’m gonna go on a walk” which is actually a great activity but if you’re doing that to avoid doing something else it's still buffering. So what you want to do is look at the WHY. Why are you doing this activity? What result is it getting you and what are you trying to avoid when you're doing it?

In Coaching, we teach you to learn that your feelings, even urges, come from your thoughts. Your brain knows exactly what to say to get you to respond.

I deserve a treat.

I just wanna relax.

I've been good all day.

Just This one won't hurt.

When we learn to see the pattern and what results we get when we given to our urges, That's when we can start changing our results.

It’s always going to be easiest to give in and take the shortcut. When we give into an urge it sometimes makes it harder the next time. Anytime we get pleasure, dopamine is released in our brain. That positive reinforcement leads to easier and more frequent recurrences of the urge. The more we reward ourselves the more our brain offers up the urge thoughts. Buffers only provide temporary relief to a negative emotion. The emotion will always come back, usually harder, if you don’t understand the thoughts and feelings behind them.

When you feel bad about yourself and go out and buy yourself a brand new car you can’t afford, you will have the immediate rush of pleasure, but then the payments start to come and you have to deal with those. In the end you have to deal with the feelings. It's similar to walking into a house that is a mess. The easiest way would be to turn off the lights and then the mess would “go away” because you’re not able to see it. But obviously the mess didn’t really go away you’re just not looking at it. It will still be there when the lights come back on.

Coaching helps you develop better thoughts such as

I want my body to be healthy.

I want to get this work done so I can spend time with my family.

Some of the best things in life take work.

I don’t expect to be happy all of the time.

Once you learn to deal with your urges and buffers you will gain more confidence and trust in yourself. You will be able to really look at yourself and your goals. When you figure out your thoughts and patterns is when you can start to enjoy an authentic life. You'll have more to offer the world.

What would your world be like if you didn’t over eat, over drink, overspend, overworked, over people-please, over Facebook?

That’s it for today. Next time we are going to talk about how we allow urges.

Talk to you soon.

-Deanna.

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