Trust your feelings – unless they’re wrong

I am usually pretty much on the side of intuition. Like when making decisions they're usually either so irrelevant that it doesn't really matter or complex enough that you can't consciously look at all the variables and so I usually go with my gut feeling with very good results.

But then I found that some of my feelings are not “real” feelings at all.

It's a bit like waking up at five in the morning with a burning certainty that life is crap and you're a worthless person. That feeling usually vanishes once the sun is up and you're in the middle of your normal life again.

So for the past few weeks (during summer break) I have basically felt very depressed and paralyzed and overwhelmed and helpless. And I knew that that was neither true nor in any way helpful but I couldn't help it. I have learned not to trust these feelings a long time ago – I mean, even if I were a useless loser not good for anything, and my life bad aand hopeless it wouldn't do me any good to dwell on that and not try to make it better – but still it is no fun to feel like doing the dishes is a task that leaves you drained and unable to do anything else for the rest of the day.

I thought it must be hormones again. I also didn't manage to get enough sleep most of the time which was ridiculous when I could go to bed when I wanted and sleep as long as I liked but it seems my body has become unable to sleep past 7.30 in the morning (or 6 on a bad day), and so the only way for me to get enough sleep is to turn the lights out at 9.30 and I don't feel like doing that every night. (I know. Lame excuse.)

I became profoundly unhappy and unable to change anything about it. I tried to get enough sleep (with mixed results), I was exercising almost every day outside in the sun, I was watering and feeding myself adequately but I just felt awful.

I thought I might feel better with the start of the school year and with being back to my routine but instead I felt worse.

On the second or third day of teaching I felt so awful at night that I decided to binge-eat some chocolate to feel better. (I know that's silly. I still do it.)

And it worked. I felt better immediately and it kept helping until some time the next day. Huh.

Now eating chocolate all the time to feel better is not the worst thing one can do for sure but on the other hand I had gained some weight during summer break and I wanted to not gain more. Also when I start eating sugar I have a really hard time stopping to eat sugar which is why I try to limit my sugar consumption.

Now I think I have found out what went wrong. Some time around my birthday I reached my goal weight (almost) and I decided that I could have some sweets and a few more potato chips than before and the occasional extra glass of wine or beer, like, almost every day.

And so during summer break there were many, many days where I would eat loads of gummy bears and licorice and chips and I would drink beer and wine every single day, and funny enough, around the same time I started feeling really depressed again.

Which of course meant that I needed to eat more sugary things and drink more beer because I felt bad and eating and drinking those things makes me feel better.

Right.

Now at the moment I am slowly weaning my body from wanting all.the.sugar. If I don't eat enough I feel horrible but if I eat too much I feel worse. I'm hoping to get myself back to only drinking one beer per day max on weekends and to only eat very small amounts of dark chocolate. Without feeling constant despair.

So. Right now when despair raises its ugly head I eat a small piece of dark chocolate, and then I ignore it as much as I can.

Because in this instant those feelings of mine are not telling me anything about me that is worth listening to, they just tell me my body chemistry is out of whack.

Duh.