‘Down with the Stuckness ’ - Improving my Diet - Part 7.
I’m interested in personality psychology. While sometimes quackery can parade under the banner of psychology, the endeavours of mind-oriented clinicians to understand temperament is, at the very least, a useful fiction.
I was enthused with OCEAN/BIG 5/FFM tests for a while, completing a great number of them online. I am always told by these tests that I am extremely high in neuroticism. This blog may evidence that to an extent; I have a habit of meticulously recording certain things. It’s called scrupulosity; my obsession with moral correctness. This might go some ways to explaining my obsessive personality and compulsion to ‘check’ things and interrogate my own thinking. This coalesces with bad habits in my life, in the way that my drive for perfectionism can stand in the way of practical changes I could be making. I am well aware that vowing to change my diet is downstream of such neuroticism and perfectionism. I don’t care. I made the pledge. More on that later.
The mind malady I am doomed to carry around manifests as irrational, magical thinking that can tempt me to sabotage myself as regards to my goals.
It’s crazy stuff, man. My brain makes paranoic connections between things and then I act that out, or try to strike out against these connections in my actions. For example, my nose is itching at the moment, and I keep scratching it again and again. While writing this article I have sanitised my hands multiple times. It’s not germophobia; I like to think God is guiding my words when I write, and therefore to scratch my nose is sinful because it involves dubious hygiene. So, you see, if I were to keep writing without handwashing- having scratched my nose- surely I am tainting the words on the screen as typed by my hands! I keep sanitising as a way to offset this.
It doesn’t completely floor me. Eventually I tear myself away from it. That’s why I don’t say I have OCD. It doesn’t stop me being productive. For example, having grown sick of getting up to wash my hands, I find a way of squaring it to myself: excessive worry is itself a sin. God is probably alright with me itching my nose.
Similarly, if I have a bad thought about someone while doing something, like praying or journalling, I feel that I have to do away with the sentence I was writing, restart the prayer, or the point I was making; as if it has been contaminated by my negative thought- and if I don’t do something then the bad thought is forever immortalised on the page (regardless of how far removed the thought is, in relation to the subject I’m writing about). <- I just did it with that sentence (and an aspect of this one). I convinced myself it was inbued with the spirit of someone else, and therefore I have to redo the sentence to make it my own. This thought existed in unicity with the idea that if I don’t change it… then that means I hate a loved one (something like that) and value this other person over this family member… and I need to change it otherwise its immortalised in this text!!!!!! (It’s super crazy, bro.)
I’ve read Bible verses online which I recoil from, because I had a certain thought of something or someone... so I convince myself its a ‘bad’ quote and that I must find a different one. As I write this, it seems obvious to me that it’s devilwork. But these patterns are ingrained.
It’s an affliction of sorts. A state of stuckness. But I’m learning slowly to ignore it.
I’ve always done this. I don’t quite understand it.
Prayer becomes difficult with my brain, because you start to want to pray compulsively. The Bible says to pray unceasingly. The way I manage to pray without disrupting my life too much is to understand that you can’t literally pray unceasingly, otherwise you’d never manage anything else. Therefore, it obviously means that you should pray throughout your life- not pray at the expense of your peace. I don’t need to pray during a tennis match just because I muttered a cuss, I can in fact talk to God after in the changing room.
I’m quite a happy chappy despite this mind forg’d manacle, and all of the frustration that goes along with it. I think it’s because the same personality tests also tend to reflect my moderately extroverted disposition, and relative agreeableness; prosocial traits which help you keep on an even keel. My trait openness always tests just as high as my neuroticism- so I manage to ‘pay attention to the world’ out of curiosity and to ‘be imaginative’, however, high O high N people are ‘vulnerable to having their feelings hurt’. So it’s something to watch out for as far as I’m concerned.
I say all this to say, I broke my diet vow consistantly today. I need to repent for that again, and then I need to get into the point of this piece.
Dear Lord,
I apologise for again breaking my vow,
Please forgive me and inspire me to do better in the future.
I know this is not a light matter Lord, but you know my heart.
Please mend me and make me more steadfast.
Such that I may serve you Lord by treating my Earthly body with increased purity as regards bad food.
Lord please emeloriate the suffering of all who need it; please comfort and bless those who need it.
Lord, help me overcome this disease of excess.
I am afflicted- down with the stuckness- neurotic thoughts stand in the way of my goals, Lord.
Please give me the strength to resist these impulses, to take responsibility for myself- Lord- and to heal.
Lord, may I be better; honouring my family, friends, local community and the World.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
Okay, so here’s what happened today diet-wise. I ate junk food and drank diet coke irresponsibly throughout the day, culminating in a mid-morning moment in which I thought ‘maybe I can change my vow: junk food only on Sundays’.
I accepted the thought in the moment- ‘All I need to do is repent in prayer for this silly vow to be lifted. Then I can eat bad food on a once-weekly basis’. I made an arrangement with God, a vow, no less. I feel quite ashamed to treat the concept with such levity. Sunday- this day just gone- was the day of the thought, so I nearly convinced myself that my instant gratification-seeking was a strategy for dietary moderation.
I did away with this idea later. NO. Bad food is bad for you. And I have a problem with overeating. So it needs to be sorted out. It needs to be gone.
This evening, as I pondered breaking the vow tomorrow, I was struck with the reality that I made a vow, and there’s no reason not to jump back on the wagon effective immediately- which would be monday breakfast seeing as I’m done eating now. There were some intrusive thoughts which co-occured with this revelation. This nearly made me decide to cheat tomorrow and then diet following that. The extra day is to distance the intrusive thought from the dieting for neurotic reasons akin to the ones I’ve mentioned.
My point is that these mental blocks conveniently postpone the enforcement of my rules for myself. It’s not that it feels that my compulsions carry that intention. It happens to be the case, though. Be aware of thoughts that stand in between you and your goals. Winning the war with these thoughts is to remove their power. That’s why I’m writing this, so I can articulate my problem and think more clearly upon it.
But the Lord directs his steps.
It’s technically Monday now. I’m relatively sure that the midnight point was reached and that I had ceased munching by then. In any event, let’s considor this the start of the week and the start of…*sigh*… trying this diet again, then. My mum always says its fallacious to wait for the next week to start a diet, in this moment it just so happens to be monday.
Here we go again.
Once more, with gusto.
Regards,
Jed.
P.S. I read a website a few days ago, (either this one, or one like it) which struck a cord in my head. These dark thoughts are ‘magical’/fanciful, therefore I am being drawn in by the delusion that I can have the Godlike power to taint things or otherwise. To fear that others are magically controlling my brain, or that my thoughts will change fate, is to act like a userper of God or regard other mortals as possessing of Godlike qualities. It’s a fascinating topic, and I’m sure to study it further would be to soothe my soul. There’s something helpful in there. I would rather do a more fleshed-out blog post on it. This post was more of an update on my diet.
