Anxiety and Sugar

I dropped my son off at an overnight camp four hours from home this week for the first time in his 12-year-old life. On the journey back, I drank a venti Frappuccino and went out for dinner and had a decadent dessert. There was enough sugar in my system to power a small boat.

I was anxious, and while I usually do not eat with anxiety, I did yesterday. Today I feel groggy and have the sugar hangover I expected and a bit of shame.

I will do my morning standing meditation and remind myself that perfection is not the goal, but awareness is.

As humans, we crave pleasure over pain nobody is disputing that. Every one of us, at some point, has eaten too many sweets (comfort) instead of going to the gym at 5:00 a.m. (pain). Until the two swap places, the behavior does not shift.

What happens when we are anxious is the search for pleasure gets amplified, and we run faster towards it. Instead of sitting with my feelings and expressing them, I inhaled sugar.

I told the friends I was eating dinner with that I was anxious, but talking about anxiety does not shift it in our nervous systems. We can talk for years about stress, and spend thousands of dollars talking about our feelings, but talk does not turn it. Stillness and acknowledging our emotions will.

Having awareness about our behavior is step one. Setting a timer on our phones for 5 minutes to sit with whatever we are struggling with emotionally is step two — expressing the emotion step three. BAM! Had I done this, there would have been no sugar. I would have cried and felt sad.

If the feelings you have need more attention than this three-step process, and you still eat sugar reach out, contact me. I am always here to help navigate this thing we call life.

Free Somatic therapy consultations always available.

“Find a moment of stillness, give your heart a chance to tell you where you really need to be.”

Dodinsky