Let’s explore guilty pleasures - our naughty habits – and what we can do to overcome them in order to move into states of more health and more balance.
So many of us are on a path of growth and expansion, but what about those treats? What about those naughty habits? And what about those indulgences that we just can't seem to kick?
On this journey, I’ll share with you some examples from clients I've worked with, looking at what actually drives these pleasures and our choices - from food through to shopping, and everything in between.
Read all the way to the end for a super simple way to shift away from choices that are not in your greatest and highest good, and start falling more deeply in love with yourself.
Let's begin by first defining what a guilty pleasure is.
A guilty pleasure is something that you know, to your very core, is not good for you. This might be because it’s unhealthy, or lazy if you’re trying to exercise, or it provides a momentary high that you know isn’t good for you in the long run.
What does this mean energetically? When we are eating, or doing whatever it is that creates that little high within ourselves, but doing it with the energy of guilt, this is exactly how our body is going to process it. It turns into guilty energy.
If I have, say, a naughty chocolate bar, one of the things I do now is a little blessing. I will eat it with love and with appreciation, with a knowing that my body will absorb only what's good for it and release everything else.
With my clients, chocolate is definitely one of the pleasures that is high up there on the list. It's often used as a means of comfort. When we're feeling a little bit down we’ll reach for chocolate. Your mind/body association is with the feeling of comfort, even though you really know that it's not very good for you, and the volume at which you’re eating it is not good for you.
Another example is shopping – maybe for a new outfit or a new handbag or a new pair of shoes. Experiencing a sense of excitement, a sense of feeling sexy or feeling good in our body comes from shopping. So when we're trying on a new outfit, it makes us feel good. But that feeling doesn't last very long so then the shopping continues. It becomes a habit for the reward of looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing something that looks good – and the added reward of other people saying that you look good and complimenting your outfit or your shoes, or the handbag. This helps to feed that habit that we will shop again.
Smoking is another ‘guilty pleasure’. There are people I know who smoke socially and they report a feeling of calm or feeling relaxed or feeling connected to their peer group. When other people that you're with are smoking, you're able to go with them and do the same thing. Lots of social connections and marketing are built around smoking - and it’s been going on for decades. So this is very, very visible in the way that we have a connection to and guilty pleasure with smoking.
Finally, the use of alcohol and drugs comes up for clients. When we're using either one of those things to create a high or a calm or a low, whatever state it's designed to elicit, when we're doing it from a state of need or to forget or to feel something different, that's when it becomes a guilty pleasure.
I'm all for variety being the spice of life and creating and having an incredibly diverse and very experiential human experience. The challenge is when these little pleasures become habits for us that are not healthy.
So how do we identify when these things have gone from healthy and we're experiencing them to explore the vastness of the human experience, to when they are unhealthy?
When you choose the guilty pleasure instead of sitting with yourself, then it is becoming unhealthy. When you are choosing it instead of going inwards and feeling into the challenges, the edges and the hurt that you might be experiencing. When you are trying to avoid current feelings.
Then, if you do it often enough, it becomes a habit. Our mind and body memorises it as a state. So when we’re feeling the low or unpleasant emotions we all do in life – maybe you’re sad, or hurt, stressed out or angry – our body and mind triggers us and tells us to reach for these things because they make us feel better. But that better is not truly better. What it's doing is suppressing our ability to really fully feel into those emotions and process them.
So what are some of the challenges of really moving out of or through some of these guilty pleasures, to reset them back into a place of health and being healthy, and being choices that we're consciously making rather than subconsciously and habitually making?
Some are around the emotions that we're experiencing as a result of these particular habits. We experience secondary gains – so when it's the high, when it's the connection with our peers, when it's the comfort – those are all emotions that we are experiencing as a result of these guilty pleasures. We want to make sure that we can still experience those emotional states in the absence of the guilty pleasure.
This is when we're going to move ourselves back into a place of health.
Other key challenges that people experience when working with guilty pleasures and unhealthy habits is around this secondary gain situation and also going cold turkey. Let's use eating chocolate as an example.
Clients that I’ve worked with reach for chocolate as a bit of a habit. Perhaps after they've had dinner or when they're feeling a little bit low in themselves, when they've had a very emotional day.
In that situation, they're looking for some comfort. Getting a bar of chocolate out of the fridge and easily consuming the whole thing gives them that comfort. I understand where this comes from because I’ve done that in the past myself. It's a little bit of a mixture of oh, this feels really good, and then, oh, wow, this is super yummy so I'm just going to keep going, and before you know it, you're watching TV and you're eating a bar of chocolate and it's completely gone.
In this situation, two things happen. Firstly, they are getting the emotional benefit from eating the chocolate or feeling comforted or feeling emotionally nurtured, knowing that they're not physically nurturing their bodies. They're feeling emotional nurturing. Secondly, trying to go cold turkey. You’re trying to switch out of and cut off these habits and these guilty pleasures cold turkey. I’ve seen many people and clients try this and it does not work. The second they are experiencing the stressful emotional state they reach for that comfort food.
Being aware of the secondary gain is a great place to start. So first of all, being mindful of the emotion and the trigger that's leading you to choose these guilty pleasures and these unhealthy habits, but then also acknowledging the experience that you have with the consumption of them. So when you're eating the chocolate, how is it that you feel? If you’re reaching for chocolate because you feel sad or stressed out, we want to clear that stress. We also want to be able to acknowledge and still be able to feel that level of comfort, of nurture at the emotional level to make sure that this secondary gain is still being served.
Removing the stress that's leading you to reach for the chocolate, go shopping, or reach for the cigarette, whatever that guilty pleasure is, is something that you can do with a whole host of different tools and working with lots of different coaches and energy workers. Ensuring that you then pull in that pleasure state into that process is super important.
Going cold turkey is the second challenge. This has worked for some people, but more often than not it doesn't. Denying ourselves something that we haven't really cleared at the emotional subconscious level is creating that much more pressure on our bodies to transition to something that is a healthier state.
Let me give you an example.
I had a client experiencing unhealthy eating habits – chocolate was one of them. They would have a bar of chocolate at dinner time every evening.
After we’d cleared the stress around what was going on and what was triggering the situation and the reach for the chocolate, and doing subconscious work around making healthy eating choices and healthy nurturing eating choices for physical body and for emotional body, we set up some activation steps.
The client's first pick was to switch the chocolate bar for a cup of tea or herbal tea instead. I could sense the resistance in her physical body, so I challenged this step with her and asked if it was truly achievable, because if right now she's eating one whole bar of chocolate a night, would it be easier to eat two pieces and have a cup of tea? So we're reducing the guilty pleasure and introducing the new habit and the new healthy nurturing thing, rather than going cold turkey. This was really important because we needed to create momentum towards this new state of being without creating too much resistance around it. Instantly I could feel the resistance in her emotional body shift. Instead it gave her permission to do something that felt easier and more achievable and create, as I said, momentum towards this new state of being.
So I've done a full spoiler on today's tip, and it is very much around reducing instead of omitting. Weaning ourselves off of the unhealthy and guilty pleasure and moving into a state of loving ourselves more.
We can do this first of all, by acknowledging and identifying what the guilty pleasure is, whether it is the eating the whole chocolate bar, whether it is shopping when we don't actually need to buy anything, whether it is reaching for the cigarette because it feels good to go out and have a smoke with our friends, or whether it's drinking, or something else entirely.
Identifying that guilty pleasure and that particular unhealthy habit and then starting to implement ways of reducing that and replacing it with something that is healthier.
This is going to start moving you towards a healthier state of being. Of course removing the stress around what’s leading to this particular guilty pleasure, or this unhealthy habit is going to create that much more ease around this change and the transition. On a conscious level you can start by taking those little baby steps towards creating a happier, healthier you.
Let me know how easy or challenging it is for you to wean off of your guilty pleasure and move into healthier states for yourself.
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna xx
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