I know you’ve probably found yourself overeating instead of dealing with an emotion or what you are feeling.

Or maybe you sparked up some drama or chaos in a relationship on purpose without realizing it.

What about the time you spent a few hours scrolling social media before passing out instead of working on that “very important” goal you had??

Today I’m going to talk about a concept you probably haven’t heard before, and it has the power to be pretty life changing. Let’s dive in!

Drop Self Sabotage For Good

Have you ever wondered why you fall into old patterns or habits like overeating, diminishing your own needs and putting others before you, watching excessive TV, worrying… Those things you do that you know aren’t helping you get to your vision or intentions but that you still find yourself in time and time again?

These behaviors are called BUFFERS, SOOTHERS or another way to put it, they are an attempt to regulate your nervous system. However, the ego mind is also at play here as an attempt to keep you an arm’s length from discomfort. Buffers are destructive self-sabotage habits you have learned to deal with the pain, unprocessed trauma and intensity of fear, anger, insecurity, shame, guilt and doubt.

Ego’s objective is ALWAYS to keep you stuck, distracted, separated, disconnected, seeking/striving and NEVER ARRIVING! Buffering or using outside soothers is a perfect way to keep you disconnected and distracted from the truth.

This is why I always conduct 40 Day FASTS within my Detox to Destiny program, so we can fast from the main distractions and all the noise that blocks us and is keeping us on detours from truly being on our highest purpose, with our feelings and hearing the voice of our inner guide clearly. 

However, because we are hardwired to be in connection, Buffers connect us to something (even if it’s a harmful thing). We are always seeking connection to get relief from the pressures of life and from carrying the load of managing our lives.

But here’s the deal… managing our life is not our role, that is God’s role. Because most of us have been taught to be “self-sufficient” we have taken a role that isn’t ours. It is God’s job.

As a result, it becomes too much for us to handle and we need relief from the pressure, stress and overwhelm that we were never meant to handle on our own. We “use” to get relief (whether that means using people’s approval, tv, social media, food or drugs…).

We have also been wired to be in constant connection to something. Yet we haven’t learned the proper channels to connect to, so we find our own channels like alcohol, food, sex, other people, drama, pornography, shopping, social media, being sick etc.

Buffers are a synthetic way of satisfying the essential human need to connect. It’s time to release these synthetic buffers and start to connect to the right channels that have the oxygen, love and nourishment, channels that truly satisfy us. Consistent. Sustainably.

Buffers will never satisfy us long term. Only connection to a Higher Power will.

To stop relying on buffers, you must learn how to become comfortable in the discomfort.

This is the task at hand!

The #1 way is to develop resilience, stamina, and tolerance for discomfort. In other words, to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. To build capacity to be with emotions and feelings that flush up. 

This allows you to have the ability to get intimate with the discomfort and simply BE with it rather than needing to soothe, pacify or numb it away.

I call this “being in the burn” or “training my nervous system to increase capacity to be with discomfort”. Here is an exercise you can use next time you feel the urge to dive into one of your buffering behaviors.

Somatic Practice to help you digest the discomfort and build capacity to be with it: 

Here are the steps to digest discomfort and become truly intimate with life, participating fully in co-creating with the Divine:

1. Acknowledge the pain, intensity or discomfort. Say to yourself: I am feeling pain/discomfort/intensity. Face it head-on. Get curious about it. Lean into it. Decide you are safe and that the “pain” is merely coarse, condensed energy that you can feed on and feed to the Divine.

2. Observe it in the body. Where is it? How does it feel? What color, shape and size is it? It is helpful to use visualization to digest discomfort.

3. Lay your hands on or near where the discomfort is lodged in your body. Breathe into and through the physiological experience of discomfort, intensity or pain. Imagine each breath penetrating and wrapping itself around the discomfort manifested in your body.

4. Then use your breath to move the discomfort to the solar plexus and up through to the top of your head to God/the Divine. Visualize the stream of energy moving up through your spinal cord and out the top of your head.

The more frequently you digest discomfort the more you are building capacity to be with it. The easier it gets and the more you acquire a “taste” for the physiological experiences you have spent your life avoiding. 

Did this serve you? What shifted for you? Let me know in the comments what your #1 ah-ha was and what your takeaway is.

Here is to your freedom!