Buffering is when we use external things to change how we feel emotionally. It’s something we do to keep from fully experiencing our lives, to hide from reality, to procrastinate, to not show up and face the music. We do this in order to avoid negative emotion. We feel entitled to happiness and pleasure all of the time. I don’t know about you, but sometimes, for me, when I have some negative emotions come up, I want it to go away and fast. My go to method for this is to buffer, usually with social media, because I can just scroll for endless minutes and not have to feel the negative emotion I’m trying to avoid. I used to buffer with food, a lot but that created a whole lot of other problems for me. Buffering with social media isn’t necessarily better than buffering with food, but it definitely doesn’t make me fatter! Now you get to decide if what your choosing to buffer with is acceptable to you or not. I find that when I’m buffering, no matter the reason, I’m not taking action to live the life I want.

 

The most common buffers people use are food, alcohol, shopping, scrolling social media, pornography, and watching TV or movies…Netflix anyone? Now there are endless ways to buffer, I’ve even heard of someone who cleans to buffer, and another who ate carrots to buffer.

 

When it comes to buffering with food, which is usually a problem if you’re trying to lose weight, I love the analogy of a crystal vase. When the vase is empty and we rub our finger around the top, it vibrates at a really high, fast frequency, when you fill it up and do the same action the vibration is much lower and slower. In our bodies, if we are hungry and have a negative emotion come up, if we fill it with food, the vibration of that emotion will be much less intense. So why is this a problem? For one buffers only provide a temporary release of negative emotion, which always comes back and usually even stronger. When we buffer our emotions, we rob ourselves of the full human experience and it can keep us from living the life we want to live.