Buffering is when we look to external things to change how we feel emotionally. It’s something we do to take away any uncomfortable or unpleasant emotions we have. It allows us to escape from reality, procrastinate, hide, or just not show up as ourselves in our life. We do it because we feel that we should be happy and feel pleasure all of the time. We tell ourselves we deserve it.
What do we do to buffer and escape?
We eat something. We have a drink. We buy something. We look at Facebook or social media one more time. All of these activities give our brain a hit of dopamine. So we do them again. And again. Dopamine hit = pleasure. We feel better immediately. The more we eat, the more we eat; the more we drink, the more we drink; the more we spend, the more we spend. It becomes like a perpetual habit in our life.
And it becomes difficult to stop.
Buffering is when we look to external things to change how we feel emotionally.
The problem with engaging in these activities is that there is a negative consequence to them. We eat and gain weight. We drink more than we want to, spend more that we have, and don’t get to the things we want to be doing in life because of the buffering. We remain stuck. There is so much value to less food, to less drinking, to less stuff, yet when you talk about less, all people want is more.
Have you thought about your life and how it could be BETTER if you didn’t have all these false pleasures?
When you are willing to give up these false pleasures, you make room to experience the real pleasures in life. And that is having the best life. It’s true freedom.
