The Gastric Band Surgery of Being Busy
After undergoing gastric band surgery, people's risk of suicide goes up.
That's perhaps unsurprising - gastric band surgery is a big deal and can sometimes have complications, infections and painful outcomes. But one of the unseen reasons for the increased suicide risk is actually due to the surgery going right, not it going wrong.
Many patients used food as a way to deal with issues in their lives like emotional challenges, loneliness and anxiety. After having their stomachs shrunk, the ability to use food as a comforting crutch has been removed, but the emotional challenges still remain.
So the coping mechanism has been taken away, forcing patients to face their issues without a release-valve.
I think there is an equivalent dynamic happening when you try to elevate your life to take your sense of self worth from things other than your work and level of busyness. Let's say that in the past you used busyness and chaos as a way to distract yourself from feeling unwanted emotions.
It meant you didn't need to reflect on your decisions or sit in discomfort. You're moving so quickly that you never fully connect with the difficult things that are happening in your life.
Lost relationships, disconnected friends, poor decisions and accumulated negative character traits are all swept away by a manic workrate so quickly that you don't even have time to consider them.
Eventually, you realise that chaotic busyness is not your highest calling in life, maybe you value different things now, maybe you have outgrown that phase of your life, maybe you realise that busyness for busyness's sake is detaching you from connecting to your existence.
So what happens when this coping mechanism gets taken away? You are forced to face your issues without the highly distracting release-valve that you're used to. The busyness anaesthetic you used to previously rely on has now been removed, leaving you with two options: