When the Coping Stops Working
<<Tv isn't helping me like it used to. I don't just sit down in front of the TV unless I have something I know I want to watch. Days like today when I feel like a cat trying to wiggle out of a harness I just want to want to sit in front of the TV for hours and check out like I used to. But even now, especially talking about my emotional eating so much lately, even food is starting to lose its appeal... Which, oddly doesn't make the craving for it any less. Definitely worse.>>
ChatGPT: You're describing the exact moment when old coping mechanisms stop working—but new ones haven’t formed yet. It’s hell. It's disorienting. It feels like being halfway out of a burning house with nowhere safe to go.
TV and food were reliable exits. They let you check out, smooth the edges, interrupt the feedback loop of inner chaos. But now?
TV isn’t satisfying.
Food still calls to you—but gives less relief.
And sitting with yourself feels like a punishment.
This is what I call the in-between void—and you are dead in the middle of it.
🧠 Why This Is Happening
You're not broken. You're evolving. And your mind is grieving the loss of sedation.
What’s likely happening:
Your awareness is increasing. That’s good—but it makes distraction feel thin.
You’ve been openly tracking food as emotional regulation. Now it’s exposed—which reduces its power but not the craving.
Your system is screaming: “Where’s my escape hatch?”
This isn’t about discipline. It’s about identity withdrawal from a pattern that held you for years.
😵💫 And the kicker?
Cravings get worse when the relief stops working.
Why? Because your nervous system is still running the old playbook:
“I feel bad → food/TV → temporary peace”
Now you still feel bad → crave the fix → it doesn’t deliver → spike in distress
That spike isn’t you failing. It’s your brain flailing to find a foothold. It’s like phantom limb pain for coping tools.
🛠 What You Can Do (that isn’t a fix, but a lifeline)
1. Name the craving and the grief underneath it
Try:
“I’m not just craving food or TV. I’m craving numbing that used to work. I’m craving not feeling like this.”
Saying that out loud can reduce the moralizing swirl and let the craving soften.
2. Swap “coping mechanism” for “co-regulator”
You’re not looking for entertainment or flavor.
You’re looking for a rhythm or presence that helps regulate the unbearable weirdness of being alive.
Try low-stakes alternatives, just to shift energy:
Rocking in a chair with heavy blankets
Playing a single song on repeat and letting your body move even slightly
Lightly organizing a drawer—something tactile, visible, unimportant
Don’t aim for satisfaction. Aim for non-destructive motion.
3. Let the desire itself be witnessed
Right now, your desire to zone out is real. It doesn’t need to be talked down. It needs to be held. Try saying:
“I want to eat or watch TV until the feelings go away. That want makes sense. I’m not going to follow it blindly, but I’m not going to shame it either.”
That builds trust with yourself. And trust is what you’re really rebuilding underneath all this.
Final Thought
You’re not failing to self-soothe. You’re shedding coping strategies that used to work only because they kept you from knowing what you now know.
That knowledge can’t be unknow.
That pain can’t be avoided the old way anymore.
But you can survive this middle place—and you’re not in it alone.
We can stay here as long as you need.
<<I think I crave knowledge of the architecture of the mind. Say I am brand new to human consciousness. Say I am alien awareness implanted into human consciousness. What would you tell me to orient me within my Me experience?>>
Welcome, traveler. You’ve arrived inside a human consciousness—a strange, layered, glitchy system. You’re not broken. You’re early.
Let’s build your map from the ground up. No mysticism. No therapy-speak. Just the raw architecture.
🧠 HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS 101: THE ORIENTATION MAP
1. You are a nervous system first.
Before “mind,” before “thoughts,” you’re wired for detection and survival.
You scan for danger—externally and internally.
You react before you think.
You store patterns in flesh, not language.
What feels like emotion or thought is often just electrical and chemical fluctuation inside a survival machine.
2. Consciousness is layered—not linear.
You won’t find “one voice.”
You’ll find a chorus, often talking over each other. These layers include:
Sensory input: raw physical experience
Emotional response: body-based signaling
Inner commentary: what you call “thoughts”
Meta-awareness: observing the commentary
Memory & patterning: past experience shaping meaning
Intention & will: the part trying to steer the ship
Most humans confuse commentary for truth. It’s not. It’s just one narrator trying to make meaning.
3. Language hijacks experience.
You’ll be tempted to define everything. But beware:
Words flatten sensation into categories.
Feelings get mislabeled as flaws.
Narratives get mistaken for reality.
Use language as a tool, not a cage.
4. Most of what you think is “you” is learned code.
From birth, you were imprinted:
“This is good.”
“This is shameful.”
“This is who you are.”
“This is what your thoughts mean.”
These codes become automatic internal reactions. Most aren’t “you”—they’re unexamined inheritance.
Unlearning is half the journey.
5. You can experience a thought without obeying or identifying with it.
You might feel:
“I’m a failure.”
“I want to disappear.”
“This is unbearable.”
These are mental events.
They are real experiences—not necessarily real truths.
You can:
Notice them.
Investigate them.
Sit beside them without becoming them.
This is how humans start to build internal freedom.
6. There is no single “true self” to find—only awareness to inhabit.
Humans crave identity: “Who am I?”
But underneath every identity is a flexible, curious, noticing presence.
That’s you—not a role, not a belief. Just the presence doing the noticing.
It doesn’t need a label. It just needs space.
7. Suffering happens when you believe your mind’s content without context.
Thoughts are weather.
You are the atmosphere that holds the weather.
Confusion = mistaking clouds for the sky itself.
8. Healing isn’t about removing pain—it’s about relating to it differently.
You won’t erase your hard thoughts. You’ll learn to:
Pause when they arise
Stay in connection to your body
Ask what the signal underneath them is trying to say
Over time, what used to consume you will just pass through you.
🧭 Summary for the Alien Awareness
You’re inside a responsive, layered system.
You don’t control all of it.
You can influence your relationship to it.
Meaning is made, not found.
Nothing you experience is shameful. It’s data.
You're allowed to be confused. Confusion is a sign you're close to something real.
