Eat, Pray, Love – Pleasure Vs. Entertainment
I am a movie buff and went to see Eat, Pray, Love with a couple of good friends Sunday. In the movie, “Liz,” played by Julia Roberts, goes to Italy to eat (a great past time). An Italian barber says to her, (I’m paraphrasing) “Americans know entertainment but they know nothing about pleasure. You work too much during the week, get burned out and lay around all weekend watching TV. That is not pleasure. You feel guilty, that you don’t deserve to have pleasure unless you have earned it. And, you don’t know how to be.”
How perfectly the barber captured why we Americans obsessively turn to “lite” addictions like the internet, Facebook, hours of TV, or 3 glasses of wine when one would be more satisfying if fully enjoyed. We’re trying to escape the stress and anxiety of so much to do, and we don’t treat the root cause – a growing sense of disconnection from ourselves and each other.
What’s the difference between entertainment and pleasure? Pleasure is defined by Webster’s as “a feeling of enjoyment or delight.” When I think of pleasure, I think of involvement – eating with friends, making love, gardening – not as a task to get done, but for the enjoyment of our hands in the dirt, smelling the air and the flowers.
“Lite” addictions temporarily distract us from the craziness of the demands of life, but is that enough? Take a few deep breaths, spend a few moments defining the pleasures of your life and how to create more time for “delight and enjyment.” I’m heading out to the backyard to my hammock.
Ah….
No surprise many addicted folks are anxious, depressed or stressed and self-medicating with their drug or food of choice. I discovered I suffered from anxiety while giving a client an anxiety assessment. As I scored the clients responses, I mentally checked off and scored my own. Momentarily shocked, I realized the pit in my stomach that was so normal was anxiety based. (*For quiz & treatment see From Panic to Power by Lucinda Bassett)
L-Theanine: Amino acid found in green tea.
I was at the health food store recently and bumped into an acquaintance who said, “You’re so thin, are you ok?” I gritted my teeth to hold back a flash of anger, then said as nicely as I could, “I don’t really like my weight being commented on.” She looked a little shocked. A friend of mind behind the counter piped in and said, “People used to tell me I was too thin and I hated it.” Ah…support. I asked the woman who’d made the comment if she would have said anything about my weight if I’d looked like I’d gained. She said probably not.
Mary, overweight since childhood, was forced to diet from the age of five. As an adult, whenever she’d get mad, she’d stand at the kitchen counter shoveling in chips and other crunchy foods as fast as she could. In our sessions together, she became aware of the reservoir of anger and humiliation caused by her mother who restricted her food because Mom was fat.
Trauma can fuel anxiety, depression and is often the underpinning of self-medicating to try to comfort, nurture or cope with overwhelming feelings. I worked with women with weight concerns for 13 years and every one of them had difficulties with anxiety or depression.
We stressed, anxious people love our “weapons of mass distraction*” which are the escapes, comforts and zone-outs we use to cope with stress or make ourselves feel temporarily better. Nothing really wrong with this except these behaviors don’t really solve the problem of stress or upset and can create problems of their own.
Shopping – Lane Benson, Ph.d, editor of I Shop Therefore I am states that about 5% of the population are full fledged compulsive shoppers. A merck family fund poll found that 72% of Americans say people buy things as a substitue for something missing in their lives.
One day I was speeding down the street, yelling at the idiotic drivers everywhere, feeling grumpy and pissed off. (Sound familiar?) “If they would just turn when they’re supposed to, or drive faster…my life would be better.” (Ha) I was selling real estate at the time and knew it wasn’t the job for me. I believed I was unhappy because of all the “other people” who didn’t do their jobs, which made my life more difficult.
Thankfully, with awareness (always the first step of change) and practice we can help the mind better behave itself and feel greater peace and happiness in the process. This leads to presence which is simply the art of staying with your self (thoughts, feelings, experiences in the moment.)
I received a Facebook announcement that a colleague of mine was going to be on TV in San Francisco. My stomach clenched with a jealous pang. My first thought wasn’t “Good for her!” It was: “That should be me.” Well, it has been – I’ve been on TV- but in that uncomfortable moment of envy, any success I’ve had in the past was completely forgotten as negative emotions overcame me. And, though I sent an email and said “Good for you,” I didn’t completely feel it. I took a few breaths, realized I had been sideswiped by envy, went into the emotion instead of avoiding it and soon was able to let it go.
We’ve all had those moments where one thought like the one I just shared takes us into a negative spiral that is hard to recover from. It’s common knowledge that we have approximately 60,000 thoughts a day and most of them are habitually negative. BUT, most of us don’t connect our thoughts to our feelings. The key to living JOYFULLY is to become aware of the normal human emotions of anger, sadness, fear and guilt that are constantly running through us and to know HOW to move into them safely. One of the paradoxes of the human condition is that the quickest way to rid of a feeling is to feel it.
For anyone with addictive issues, the downward spiral of thoughts and emotions can lead to relapse. I’ve noticed the most happy people in recovery have strategies to deal with the emotional ups and downs of life. LIFE happens – it’s how we grow – but that doesn’t mean we have to suffer. Suffering comes when we avoid or resist how we feel. Pretty simple and with practice we become more comfortable knowing that going INTO and riding the wave of our emotions leads to feeling better than complaining about them or blaming someone else.
Can stress be addictive? What do you think? We get used to a certain level of pushing and making things happen. Stress becomes a comfort zone, of sorts. Uncomfortably comfortable. We hate it, but don’t know how to BE in life unless we’re running. We may feel bored, or out of sorts when life slows down or there’s some space. We look for ways to fill the emptiness rather than allow ourselves to replenish, let the body and our mind slow down and RELAX. Eckhart Tolle defines stress as “being here, but wanting to be there.”
During the 90s people were stressed, but I’ve noticed a new level of intensity since the development of the internet, cell phones, texting and the belief that we need to be “plugged in” all the time.
“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug,” from author Chris Hedges’ 2002 bestselling book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. In the movie, “The Hurt Locker,” Jeremy Renner’s character is a soldier who becomes addicted to the adrenalin rush of defusing bombs in Iraq.
Is our world addicted to war? Yes…and we can’t or won’t stop to consider other possibilities despite the consequences. In fact, a conversation about other possibilities never comes up for debate in Congress. To say NO to war has become synonymous with weakness. President Obama just asked Congress to approve another $700 billion for the war in Afghanistan. But the cost is more than the dollars spent in the Middle East. For every soldier lost, wounded or returning home with an injured body, mind and spirit, millions more are spent on rehab, therapy, disability and the lost dreams of another wounded young person.
One definition of addiction is the loss of control over how much or when to use a substance or a behavior. An addict is someone who can’t stop their behavior even when it’s causing serious consequences. We are a country and a world in denial. As an addiction specialist, I know that often denial can only be broken by an intervention that clearly, firmly and lovingly states the problem, the consequences and the course of action necessary – get into treatment or else. When will the world decide to break out of the addiction to war? When enough individuals have healed the terrorist within – when enough of us have let go of the ego’s addiction to fear and made the higher choice for love.
My dad had a saying, “no harm, no foul.” He was a man afraid to take risks and he used that phrase both in kindness to others and to avoid conflict. I’m also afraid to take risks, but I’ve learned to push through the fear and take action anyway, and I’m not afraid of conflict. Thank you Dad.
Robert Kiyosaki, of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame, says that too often we’re afraid to make mistakes. My greatest learning has come from the mistakes I’ve made in life and I’ve made some doozies.
What I learned from the Amazon experience is that taking risks is how we stretch, that when working with a large, non-vendor friendly company to make extra sure of the details, to appreciate the importance of self-care – breathe baby breathe – and to be grateful for all who participated – from customers to sponsors.
