Murphy Row: The Worst Advice I Will Ever Give: Top 5 ways to avoid your feelings

Sometimes we need bad advice. There are times we know what the good advice would be, and it is not an option. For instance, when we are in a bad place mentally, the right advice is to seek help from friends, family, or professionals, to bear down and deal with the emotion like an adult. However if you are like me and you have been sad your entire life, sometimes you are simply too tired or drained to feel what you are feeling. This post is bad advice for people who cannot take good advice. The top 5 ways to avoid feeling what you are feeling.

5. Napping in Defiance. We could all use a good nap from time to time but when a negative emotional vortex takes over your brain it can be hard to fall asleep. Attempting to sleep can be extra time to ruminate on your problems. However, I have found that if you turn your nap into an act of defiance you can sleep like a baby and avoid your problems just fine. How do you turn your nap into an act of defiance? Its simple, you use the nap to steal back part of your day. You can find an empty conference room at work and sleep under the table, blow off a friend because you were just resting your eyes for a minute, or my favorite, just lie down on the floor wherever you are like en emotional break down sit-in.

4. Watch an entire season of anything on Netflix. Sure TV is great distraction in any amount, but there is something cathartic and significant about finishing an entire season. When you watch an entire season you not only get lost in the story, but you get lost in the goal of wasting 13 hours of your day. Before you know it, it is time to face the next day and all you can think about are meth dealers, power-hungry politicians or serial killers.

3. Bait and Switch. This is a classic move in which you convince yourself that a manageable problem in your life is a bigger problem than it actually is. Sure I can barely stand to be with my own thoughts for more than a few minutes, but that is not important right now, my DVD collection is not in alphabetical order!

2. Pick a Fight with Someone Close to You. This was close to finishing first on this list but will have to settle for second because of the inherent danger. There is no more effective way of avoiding your feelings than making it about someone else. If you simply cannot deal with the turmoil in your own head, dig up a long-standing issue with a loved one and attack it like it needs to be resolved today. The trick is to pick something that will never be resolved so you can fight about an issue outside of your own head for hours without the threat of actually having to work on anything in your life. For example, “I hate how you clean the apartment!” Or “Why can’t you consider my feelings more when you make decisions!”
This method also happens to be the most dangerous method. There is a fine line between fighting with someone you love to distract yourself from your own issues, and completely severing the last few connections you have to humanity

1. Binge Eating Junk Food. A wise person once said that you can’t let any feelings out of your body as long as something is going into it. Good looking people may choose sex to accomplish this, but for the rest of us its junk food. A dozen doughnuts, a crave case, a jar of frosting with a spoon, or anything Costco sized, binge eating junk food can distract you from the deepest darkest feelings. There are two schools of thought when it comes to binge eating. The first is that you eat something so tasty and delicious that when you are finished you are so full, all your body can do is focus on digestion. The second school of thought is that it’s not about what you eat, it is about how long you can be eating. Sure, four McDoubles tastes amazing, but at best it can get you through twenty-two and a half minutes of a sitcom. However, if you give me a Costco sized bag of popcorn and some hot sauce, I can make my eating time last for two forty-five minute episodes of a procedural drama. Different issues call for different binge eating, but either way, the trick is to know when you’ll be near a toilet tomorrow.

So I guess ultimately the best worst advice I can give about avoiding your feelings is to combine #4 and #1.