Are you nourishing or numbing?
No matter what topic my clients and I are covering in our sessions, be it relationships, career, joy, diet culture/mentality, or parenting we somehow always come back to the foundational theme of how they are caring for themselves through their particular situation.
And over the past few weeks I’ve been talking a lot about looking at care through the lens of nourishing versus numbing.
Nourishing versus numbing is one of my core care theories that explains how any activity, food item, or even thought pattern can be nourishing or numbing to us, depending on how we're using it.
Our brain is wired to categorize things in black and white terms. Kale is good. Cookies are bad. Exercise is healthy. Chilling on the couch is lazy. Going on a cleanse is admirable. Eating cake for dinner is shameful.
Vegetables, croissants, spin class, watching TV, drinking, crying, talking politics... all of these things come with our judgements about them and we let those judgments decide how we feel about what we eat, what we do, what we say and how we act rather than checking in with our needs and intentions in that particular moment.
For example, last week a client and I were talking about her spending habits. "I love to shop," she said. "It makes me happy to buy beautiful things and see the packages come to the door." She then went on to admit that while she got a hit of joy from shopping, she wasn't mindful about how much she was spending. She also wasn't honest with her partner about the frequency of her purchases. (Not that she needed his permission to shop but rather, in having a joint account, she felt guilty for keeping him in the dark.)
"There's nothing wrong with enjoying shopping," I said. "And there's nothing wrong with spending money. The question to ask when you're shopping is, 'Is shopping right now currently an act of nourishment or numbing?'"
What came next was revelatory for my client. She began to understand that while the immediate experience of shopping felt nourishing, she ultimately felt "yucky" after. As we got deeper in, she realized that she did most of her shopping when she felt overwhelmed by her sadness and isolation as a mother and career professional with two young children. Rather than be with her feelings in a truly nourishing way, she instead numbed them with shopping.
We all do this.
Sometimes we eat salad because our body is craving a crisp, light lunch and other times we eat salad to numb our fear of getting fat.
Sometimes we watch TV to nourish our desire for storytelling and other times we watch to numb out from our anxiety-fueled day.
Sometimes we stay in bed because we need more rest and other times we sleep because we just can't cope.
Now, your knee-jerk reaction might be to think nourishing is good and numbing is bad. I invite you to not make this an opportunity for morality, another chance for you to feel good or bad about yourself.
Rather, when you ask yourself, "Is this nourishing or numbing, is this feeding me or depleting me?", use these questions as a clarifying tool to make a conscious choice.
And then honor whatever choice you make.
If you realize you're numbing with a pint of ice cream at night and choose, in that moment, to continue eating said ice cream, that's FINE. There's nothing wrong with ice cream and there's nothing wrong with using it to self-soothe. All I ask is that you be aware of what's driving your actions to numb or nourish, so that you have wisdom and agency in your actions.
The next time you find yourself doing ALL KINDS OF THINGS because you feel obligated, or because certain behaviors and actions are expected of you, I invite you to tap into whether what's being asked of you (and what you're asking of yourself) is nourishing or numbing to you.
If it's numbing and/or causing you harm in any way, I invite you to NOT DO the thing. Don't go to the party, skip the meeting, don't agree to cook the entire meal, don't take any bullshit when it comes to how you want to eat, how your body looks, how you want to feel and how you want to experience your days.
My hope for us all this year is that when we find ourselves making choices in a way that doesn't feel aligned, we ask, "Is this nourishing or numbing?" and bravely offer ourselves the conscious care we need most.
All my love and take care of you.
If you enjoyed this post, please keep reading!
This conversation is between myself and an incredible woman named Ani, who shares how she learned how to be authentic, practice self-compassion, and take up space without guilt or shame through my 6-month group coaching program, Homecoming. Ani is a model for how to excavate internalized misogyny and live authentically without fear of others’ opinions. The conversation originally took place on my podcast, The Path Home.