This week, we are going to take a look at one of my favorite coaching topics: buffering.
I’ll dive into more detail below, but buffering results from the brain’s desire to avoid pain. It leads us take maladaptive actions oblivious to the actual causes underlying them.
Last week’s post on urges segues nicely into this week’s post as urges and buffering are inextricably linked as will become apparent as you read on.
Enjoy!
Gimme the Skinny in the Buff
Wait, wait! No, please don’t!
Gimme the Skinny ON the Buff
That’s better. Apparently, prepositions are important!
In the intro, I mentioned that buffering is one of my favorite topics. Why? Because once you learn about it, you’ll see it everywhere in things you do and things others do. You literally will not be able to stop seeing it.
Buffering is any activity in which we partake in order to avoid feeling a negative emotion.
Buffers are often the actions taken to satisfy an urge. As you recall from last week’s post, an urge is an uncomfortable emotion that we want to alleviate immediately.
Buffering is borne out of the societal norm that we shouldn’t experience negative emotions. From a young age we are taught that we should be happy at all times. That feelings like sadness, grief, discomfort, angst, are taboo.
Modern society has us go all Gandalf on negative emotions.
The implicit shared understanding is that we need to do everything in our power to avoid such feelings. Enter buffering.
Our consumerist culture is intrinsic to this with the constant barrage of messaging telling us things like, “Buy more things to make yourself feel better,” and, “Retail therapy, anyone?”
All You Can Eat Buffer
As mentioned above, binge shopping on Amazon is a form of buffering. Really, “binge” anything is buffering. This includes binge-watching Netflix, binge-reading the Twilight series (sorry, thought I’d throw a joke in there), or binge-reading this blog (I’m deadly serious).
There are countless other examples.
Family life stressing you out? More than medicine? Then maybe you stay late at work consistently to avoid the home stressors. Super easy for physicians to succumb to this one and lie to themselves that they’re just serving their patients.
Have a moment with nothing to immediately occupy your attention? Bored? Then maybe you pull out your phone and mindlessly scroll through your social media accounts.
(Instead, you could be reading a highly stimulating and entertaining blog post…I dunno…about buffering)!
Don’t like your weight? Your body causing you shame and sadness? Then maybe you go and eat a box of Thin Mints (just a random, spontaneous example that doesn’t apply to me…and even if it did it was for a good cause, dammit)!
It Can't All Be Bad, Right?
Some forms of buffering are incredibly insidious because they can feel productive. The staying at work late example above fits this bill.
Two more examples.
Someone else who struggles with work or family life may buffer with exercise. You may ask what’s wrong with that, and honestly, I’d love to have that problem! But the issue is it still involves avoiding addressing negative feelings.
A personal example involves me starting this website and my coaching business. I buffered like a madman by putting all my time into the website initially instead of working on the business, producing content, and marketing.
I was avoiding the fear of putting myself out there and so put all my energy into something else that felt productive (the website). I did this so I’d still have something to “show” for all that time even if it didn’t truly move me forward.
Meh, It Seems Harmless
I keep harping that buffering is avoiding negative feelings, but why does that matter?
Well, if you’re not addressing negative emotions head on, they tend to stick around and shape how you act and show up in the world.
Sometimes this is clear like in the examples of overeating, but oftentimes it is less obvious.
Like acting on an urge, the net effect of buffering is always negative because it’s avoidance.
In the movie The Matrix, the robot overlords that have taken over the world have put humans in a constant state of blissful buffering.
Admittedly, this is not a great example since it’s forced on the people. However, take the character Cypher from the movie. He’s one of “red-pillers” who has unplugged from the Matrix and lives a spartan lifestyle free of the machines but in constant stress and without luxury.
He ends up betraying the protagonists to the machines in a deal where they would re-upload him into the Matrix so he could enjoy his creature comforts and buffer away blissfully in a false reality.
Back to Reality
In a way buffering is delaying the inevitable, so to speak, but by kicking that can down the road, it only slowly amplifies the negative feelings and results. This occurs unbeknownst to us because it happens so slowly that we don’t notice a difference.
It’s like that online video you’re trying to watch which is slowly buffering (here I go again, forcing an analogy) and not allowing you to enjoy the content (your life).
In my example above (ahem, the website, not the Thin Mints—rude of you to assume), I made no progress on what truly mattered because of my buffering. That’s the point—buffering held me back.
How to Stop Relying on Parentheticals—Err...Buffering
Instead of trying to escape the negative emotion, allow yourself to experience it. Just sit with it.
An emotion cannot itself hurt you. So just sit with that discomfort and recognize that nothing will happen to you.
Train your brain that you are safe no matter the negative emotion. You have control.
Now you can feel urges without giving in to them. It will take a lot of practice—some say you have to allow an urge in this manner 100 times before you’re retrained your brain—but in the end, it will be well worth the rewards of having more control over your life.
In what ways do you buffer? What results has it created for you? Let me know in the comments section below.
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