Making sense of binge days
And how I'm not falling into an abyss of "I suck"
I’m sitting at my floor table, engrossed in a 500-piece puzzle and giggling at my favorite entertainment podcast, We’re Here to Help. I note the time and realize my daily hour allotment of media consumption is nearly over.
I fill with dread and desire to keep going, telling myself that the things on my to-do list can wait. “Just one more hour,” I tell myself, feeling great about my decision.
That was the start of a four-day binge—putting off all the things that matter to me and spending all my dedicated work time building puzzles and listening to:
Day One: We’re Here to Help podcast (total, silly fluff)
Day Two and Three: binging an (excellent) online course about nonviolent communication and self-regulation
Day Four: YouTube channel about how parts of the coaching industry are like MLMs and cults (I have lived experience in the first and the third)
Depending how much time I had in my work day that was non-client related, I spent between 3-5 hours each day breaking my intentions to myself.
[Quick backstory: I’m in the midst of a life experiment I’m calling the Attention Reclamation Project where I’m drastically shifting my media consumption habits, limiting solo-daily consumption to 60 minutes of something auditory like a podcast or audiobook.]
So, yeah. While I was engaged in the blissful pairing of a jigsaw puzzle and something interesting to listen to I felt uh-maze-ing, but as soon as I put the puzzle away and turned off the media stream, I deflated energetically and physically.
I felt an aching emptiness (something like withdrawal when I stop something that is a bit addictive for me) and deep disappointment sprinkled with frustration.
However, the truth is that binge days and relapses are a normal and expected part of habit change. This time, instead of falling into the abyss of “I suck” and “I’ll never be able to change this” and “This is just who I am,” I decided to get curious and do some sense-making. I’ve emerged with a few nuggets of self-knowledge and new perspectives.
Every behavior is a strategy to try to meet a need.
Part of the Nonviolent Communication course that I binged was about seeing the wisdom and positive intentions within every behavior.
I decided to sit down and do some journaling to better understand what was going on for me. Puzzling and consuming media is a potent pairing that helps me feel:
relief
pleasure
absorbed and engaged (but in a way that requires very little of me)
a sense of completion and tangible progress (puzzles — every piece has its place)
stimulated/interested (learning or considering something new)
Every feeling points to a need, so that’s where I dug into next. Hours of puzzles and podcasts are trying to help meet my needs of:
escape or respite: a temporary reprieve from typical responsibilities or ways of being
ease: not efforting in any way
rest: ways to refuel after feeling depleted
space: permission to disengage and not attune to other people, my needy rescue-pup, the world, or even myself
My work is to deeply attune to and partner with humans to support them in their personal, professional, and spiritual growth. It’s deeply fulfilling and aligns with who I am as a human. In my personal life, I also tend to attune to others, even strangers. So, it makes sense that I have needs around escape/respite, ease, rest, and space.
Once I identified the needs, it was so much easier to give myself warmth and understanding rather than judgment and criticism. There’s a life-giving need trying to be met here — the strategy is just outdated.
Once I know the needs, I can brainstorm better strategies and prepare useful self-talk.
If I’m more attuned to the deeper needs at play when I’m tempted to hook into a behavior like hours of media consumption, I will have more access to choice in future moments.
I created a menu of options that I could try to meet those needs in the future. Things like: standing and stretching to pattern interrupt the craving, going on a walk outside, playing music that might shift me in the direction of my need, trying an opposite action like staying in silence for a bit, lying down and reading or daydreaming, or working on a creative project like my macrame purse that has been stalled out at the same step for a year.
To be honest, I’ve had lists like these before, but I’ve never gotten so clear about the needs driving the habit I was trying to shift. I’m curious to see how this knowledge may help me navigate those moments differently.
I might try saying to myself, “Ah, I wonder if I’m really needing space, rest, and respite from the deep tracking and attunement I naturally do — what could help me right now that wouldn’t be hard to break away from in an hour?”
How I talk to myself matters.
I’ve tried changing my media consumption before. Lots of times. Very much in the “pre-change pain” place. But in the past, when the binge-days inevitably come, I’ve told myself:
This is hopeless. I can’t figure this out.
Maybe this is just what I need due to my past experiences, and I just have to make the best of it.
Ugh. Just…ugh. *cue head down in shame and disappointment in myself*
That sort of talk just led to more distraction and media to get away from the discomfort.
Part of what I’m engaging with this time around is being mindful about how I’m talking to myself and reframing when necessary. Here are some examples:
My brain fell into a familiar pattern. That's what brains do sometimes. I'm gathering valuable information about my patterns, not failing at my goals.
This is going to help me get to the next level if I’m willing to engage with it and understand it.
I’m working on finding new ways to meet my needs more deeply so that I am more fully engaged with my purpose and don’t lose so much time to media.
Be honest with myself about my current “danger zones.”
While reflecting on what actions I could take based on the binge days, one idea came forward around reframing them into “immersion time” where I plan ahead of time when and how long I will engage with my favorite current pairing.
I loved that idea at first, but after reflecting on my recent experiences and feeling the power of the compulsion in real time, I know that I can’t trust myself to be able to break away when a timer goes off.
So, for now, puzzles are a no-go for me. Maybe in a few weeks, I can pull one out, but I won’t be pairing it with any kind of media other than music for a while. It’s just too addictive for me. Currently, it’s my cryptonite and my sure-fire way to “lose time” and postpone things that are important to me. I can practice moderating later in the process.
Binge days reinforce my “why.”
The days that I spent hours on media consumption and puzzling, I noticed some impacts. Primarily, after a binge day, I had little to no desire to engage with other people. In contrast, for the first month of the experiment, I was surprised to more deeply enjoy and seek out socialization and connections with others.
The binge days also impacted my sense of alignment and self-trust, as well as the motivation and energy for things like my Substack post and professional development that I’m working on.
Finally, I noticed the stream of creativity and ideas that had started to flow since turning off the constant media consumption came to a dead halt. It wasn’t until a day after the final binge day, that I noticed my creativity and ideas coming back online.
If there was one thing I want to offer to others who are working with a habit they want to shift, it’s this:
Relapsing is not failing. There is rich information in every binge day if we can engage with it in a curious and compassionate way. The only way to fail is to stop listening to the wisdom nudging you toward the change.
Learning to Human is about the evolution that living calls us to. Lessons on human-ing better can come through loss, transitions, relationships, and even shifting your habits around media.
If you’d like to join me for continued conversations around growth, compassion, grief/loss, personal development, crossing thresholds, transitions, and spiritual evolution, I invite you to subscribe.