Imagine going to a restaurant in eager expectation of your favorite meal. You are starving. As as you sit in the chair, waiting for the order, you notice the kitchen door is open revealing, dirty utensils, a grease covered stove and a floor covered with trampled food. Cockroaches and flies are crawling over trampled food and dirt. The worst part is that the chef is filthy and his forehead is covered dripping with sweat onto the food he is preparing. What would your reaction be? Return and await the meal or run in disgust with a feeling of nausea in your stomach.
What happened to your hunger, the expectation and craving for your favorite meal? It was erased by a more powerful emotion. Repulsion is a powerful emotion. That process can be a tool in fighting compulsive behaviors.
What you think about something determines your mental associations. For example, when you think about beer in the background of your thoughts at the subconscious level, you may have warm associations with good friends, great parties and feeling good. Those attractive mental association are stronger than the negative repelling association such as killing brain cells, increasing the size of a beer belly, drunken driving charges and reducing your health.
To fight compulsion we need to change the attractive associations for the negative associations. Here is an example.
Imagine a dead animal at the side of the road crawling with thousands of white maggots. The image of maggot-ridden road kill will effectively stop you from eating a hamburger or anything else you were thinking of munching on.
Using revolting thoughts can shock you back to reality. Overeating greasy, salty, chemical-laden food is not normal. TV advertisers have associated toxic food with fun and enjoyment. We are told that we deserve it. Meanwhile, the followers of this golden message are riddled with disease from the effect of this modern-day diet. Even in the face of illness, we still associate salt, sugar and fat-filled foods with a pleasure that we deserve.
As a cure for emptiness, the pleasure of food can become drug-like in how it affects our thinking. It becomes distorted. We become obsessed with pleasure. Like an addict, we become fixed on that pleasure and forget the harmful effects. Pleasure becomes our god — a god who trades moments of comfort for control of our lives. We dance to its urges like puppets on a string. It’s a dance of death. Pimples, embarrassing gas, obesity, bloating and disease are signs on the road to oblivion. It is time to turn around.
Please post some of your stories of trying this.
This is a great article. I’m going to try it.