We were talking about the moment when doctor Z told me he was about to have me savour a Mars.
– Are you hungry now?
– No, not really.
– Good, the goal is that you eat without hunger. Are you stressed?
– Currently I’m stressed 24/7 so yes.
– On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rank your stress level?
– I would say…5
– We can do better?
– Easily
– So we’ll be a bit masochistic and we’ll raise your stress level
And here I am, eyes closed, a mini Mars in front of me, listening to my good doctor playing Cassandre and, just like a telepath, explaining how the subject of my anxiety could have indeed stressful and negative consequences on my life. So much insight actually made me think that despite a high number of patients, he obviously scrupulously took notes of what I’ve been telling him for the past months, indeed, my mother, my sister, my Churros or my Zaz could have said the same thing. Disturbing. I tried to create a diversion by teasing him with “I’m glad I came, when I leave I jump off a bridge, and you’ll have it on your conscience” but it didn’t work, he looks nice mister Zermati but you don’t want to look for trouble too much with him and the glower he threw me did calm me down. After five minutes visualizing how my life could turn, in the coming months, if everything would go wrong as I have a tendency to imagine, that’s how optimistic I am, tears started rolling on my cheeks and you can say that if the objective was to make me panic, it was a success.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, where is your stress?” he asked again
– 12.
Of course, doctor Z, alias mister Hyde was delighted, we could start the experiment.
He thus asked me to concentrate on my breathing, without trying to modify it, simply think of the air flowing through my nose, my trachea and my chest. “Thoughts that are coming to your mind, you make a note internally and you come back to your breath”. After a few seconds, he gave me the mini Mars, which I took out of its wrapping. He told me to look at it, to smell it, to touch it and then to have a bite. “ Now, you make the piece turn in your mouth, you enjoy the different textures, the smell. You take notes of the tastes you perceive, the sweetness of caramel, the softness of chocolate. Now you can munch it, chew it and then swallow it. You linger over its passing in your throat and you open your eyes again only once you have completely absorbed what you had in your mouth”, he intoned while I was getting, clearly, a shoot of Mars.
When I opened my eyes again, it seemed that my pulse was slower than a few seconds before. I munched only a few milligrams of chocolate but it felt like I had the entire piece. The doc had me take another bite. Following the same ritual.
– So, what’s you stress level now?
Stress? What stress? Gone, disappeared, in a totally temporary manner, I was aware of this but the fact remains that I felt lighter, though stuffed with a good dozen of calories.
In the meantime, I just understood why I like Mars: simply because it’s awesome, fuck, this crunchy chocolate, this soft caramel, oh lord, hung me high.
“The difference with what you just did, savouring food with the objective to calm down an anxiety, and a compulsion is that when it’s a compulsion, stress is not reduced after eating, it rises, which causes the intake of another biscuit, another piece of chocolate, another piece of bread. The difference is the full awareness with which you have eaten this piece of Mars. And even if you have a full Mars every day at the moment because circumstances are so that you need it, it is FINE. Because you also know that you can regulate yourself. That you’ll probably eat less at the next meal. Two bites of Mars or so won’t have any impact on your weight. On condition that you do it the right way.”
I left with new homework: make a note of my emotions during the day, name them (anger, anxiety, culpability, sadness) and grade them from 1 to 10 and assess how the food taken in case I wanted to has managed to make the tension drop.
I admit I am rather perplexed, even after this session. I feel that, indeed, complicated things are getting started, and not only because I have a good reason to worry. Time for prowess and perfect student has passed, it is now about living in the long term, accepting the idea of gaining weight again (inevitable because life is not alas or so much for the better always a flower paved journey), realizing that it won’t change the love my kin have for me and stopping to demonize all temptations which inevitably punctuate my days.
I’m not there yet but at the same time it’s so reassuring to know that nothing is forbidden…
Edit: No panic, I’m not ill, neither are the Churros or our children. I don’t want to give more details, because not everything should be told but no worries, nothing that is irreparable.
Edit2: The picture is a souvenir of a massage at Nuxe on Montorgueil street, a gift from my dear friend Mimi. More expensive of course than a Mars but zen effect guaranteed. During the hour I spent in the expert hand of the therapist, I thought of NOTHING and it was really NICE.
