Healthy Choices

Another deviation from 2 Samuel.

Making healthy decisions on a regular basis can be overwhelming. Historically, I’m not very good at making the healthy choices. From childhood ineffective coping skills, including making decisions to try and protect myself, are ingrained in my thoughts. The goal is to adjust and change my thinking, my reactions, and my behaviors to more effective, more mature, more balanced thinking.

Becoming better at choosing healthy (mentally, physically, and emotionally) actions is the process of becoming an adult. At first, I didn’t even know my thoughts were “child-like.” They were all I knew and not having examples of other ways of thinking, those were the only thoughts I was familiar with. The thoughts and corresponding behaviors did protect me and help me cope as a child, but as an adult they are ineffective. They are in many cases self-destructive.

Change. What’s the process of changing and learning new ways? I thought you just started doing things differently. That’s part of the process, but that is usually the final step in the process. First, I have to recognize the ineffective, dysfunctional thought or action. For instance, when it comes to losing weight, I have tried many things and the results were not beneficial to me. In one sense I knew they worked for losing weight, but in another, the rest of my body and mind was being hurt. My therapist (and I guess I also do now) identified the unhealthy thinking about losing weight as an Eating Disorder (ED for short). So the first step in making “adult” decisions is to recognize and acknowledge the ED thought or behavior. Sometimes, this happens after the poor behavior has already been executed. But it’s a place to start.

Second, I have to argue against or convince myself to think differently. The behavior will not change without an active, logical thought to control it. Sounds easy? It hasn’t been the case for me. Sometimes I don’t know or can’t determine what a healthy thought would be. Through therapy, we talk about these things and come up with alternative possibilities, which I sometimes remember and sometimes don’t (so I ask for help). So, when ED thoughts are identified, I can counter them with the idea of living a healthy lifestyle as the goal (not to lose weight).

Third, I have to determine to choose to engage in the healthy thought and/or do the healthy behavior – not every time but one situation at a time. With ED, it means choosing foods that are healthy for me, or choosing a walk instead of eating an unneeded snack. This usually involves a bit of arguing with myself. Keeping the argument short is a key to making the right choice. The longer the argument goes on, the less likely I am to choose the healthy thing. (I just give up, saying to myself, “I’m never going to change” which is another unhealthy thought and urge to deal with.)

The last part of the process involves repeated success at choosing the “adult healthy” option. Do it enough and a new pattern forms in our brains replacing the old patterns. At first, choosing the beneficial option may not happen every time (it may not ever happen every time), but the more often that choice is made, the easier it becomes to make and the more automatic it will become.

Someday, you will realize that the old pattern interrupts your life infrequently and you have changed.