I started smoking when I was barely a teenager. I can still remember inhaling my first cigarette and feeling quite sick. But I persisted. At the time, I had no idea why.
When I finally stopped smoking, I’d just turned 40, and I felt triumphant. I’d hated the habit for years, and giving it up had taken real effort.
What I hadn’t expected was that, within a few months, I’d find myself standing at the fridge, eating even when I wasn’t hungry. Looking back, I can see I was doing exactly what I’d done with cigarettes. I was using food to make myself feel better.
I’d stopped smoking, but I hadn’t addressed what had made me want to smoke in the first place.
It took me a while to realise that smoking wasn’t simply a bad habit. It was part of a much wider pattern I’d been repeating for years.
Habits, Patterns and Paradigms – What’s the Difference?
I’m no psychologist, but through my work on Living From Your Higher Self, I’ve found it useful to distinguish between habits, patterns and paradigms. They are closely connected, yet understanding the differences can help us see why some behaviours are much harder to change than others.
A Habit Is Something We Do
A habit is something we do so often that we barely think about it. We might automatically reach for our phone when we sit down, or make a cup of coffee as soon as we get to our desk. We’ve repeated the behaviour so often that it becomes almost automatic.
Some habits are useful, of course. They help us get through the day without having to think about every little thing we do. Others are less helpful, and we can sometimes change them simply by interrupting the routine or doing something different. But not all habits are that easy to change, particularly when there’s an emotional reason for them.
A Pattern Is Something We Repeat
I think of a pattern as something broader than a habit. It’s a familiar way of thinking, feeling and behaving that we find ourselves repeating, often without realising it.
Something happens. We interpret it in a particular way, experience an emotional response, and then act to manage how we feel.
Over time, this sequence can become so familiar that we don’t even notice what’s happening. We just react as we always have.
A Paradigm Is How We See Ourselves and the World
A paradigm goes a little deeper. It’s the collection of beliefs and assumptions we’ve developed about ourselves, other people, and how life works. Some of these beliefs have been with us for so long that we don’t even question them.
We might believe we have to cope with everything on our own, that showing emotion is a weakness, or that we’re somehow not good enough. We don’t necessarily recognise these as beliefs. To us, they’re simply the way things are.
The difficulty is that once we believe something strongly enough, we tend to interpret our experiences in ways that support it. We notice what confirms our beliefs and overlook what challenges them. These underlying beliefs often shape our patterns.
Recognising a Pattern
Eventually, I realised that smoking and eating weren’t the real problems I needed to address. They were how I dealt with something much deeper.
I could see the behaviour, but I hadn’t recognised what happened just before I reached for a cigarette or something to eat. There were feelings I didn’t want to face, and I’d found a way to distract myself from them.
If you’ve ever managed to give something up, only to find yourself replacing it with something else, you might recognise what I’m describing.
The Real Reason Giving Up Smoking Was Hard
Looking back, I think my pattern was set when my mother became seriously ill. She had a stroke at only fifty-two, and I remember how frightened I was when I saw what had happened to her.
I’d never felt particularly safe sharing my feelings, and this was certainly something I wasn’t going to talk about. As a child, I didn’t really understand what I was experiencing, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. So I did what I’d always done. I pushed my feelings down and carried on.
When I started smoking not long afterwards, at thirteen, I didn’t realise cigarettes were helping me do just that. It was only much later that I began to understand how much I relied on them to manage my emotions. For years, I’d blamed my inability to stop smoking entirely on nicotine addiction. Of course, that was part of it, but it didn’t explain why the thought of giving up frightened me so much.
Whenever uncomfortable feelings began to surface, I’d reach for a cigarette. It seemed to help, at least for a little while, and I could get on with whatever I was doing.
Although I’d managed to overcome the addiction, I hadn’t learned how to deal with the feelings I’d been avoiding. So when those feelings came up again, I found another way to soothe myself. This time, it was food.
Not Every Habit Has a Deeper Meaning
Around the time I stopped smoking, a woman I knew gave it up too. Unlike me, she actually lost weight. When I asked how she’d managed that, she said she’d simply forgotten to eat. I couldn’t understand it.
Of course, I don’t know what her experience was. We never discussed it in any depth. But looking back, she always seemed much more comfortable with herself than I was at the time. I’ve often wondered whether, for her, smoking was mainly a habit and a nicotine addiction, without the same emotional attachment I’d developed. Perhaps when she stopped, there was simply no need to replace it with anything else. It helped me realise that we don’t all develop habits for the same reasons, and that not every habit has a deeper emotional cause.
For me, though, there was more to it than changing my behaviour. Only as I began to practise the principles of Living From Your Higher Self did I develop a more loving relationship with myself. I began to feel more comfortable with who I was, including the parts of myself I’d spent years trying to avoid.
As I became less afraid of my own feelings, I found it easier to explore the patterns I’d developed to keep them out of sight.
A Note Before Going Further
I want to make it clear that I’m sharing my own experience here, not offering advice on how to deal with deeply buried emotions. I’d spent years studying and practising the principles of Living From Your Higher Self before I felt equipped to face some of the feelings I’d been avoiding. Some were extremely uncomfortable, and I began to understand why I’d buried them in the first place.
You may feel able to explore your own patterns, but please don’t feel you have to do this alone. If you find yourself struggling, feeling overwhelmed, or unable to move forward, I’d encourage you to seek support from a qualified therapist who can help you explore your feelings safely. If your eating feels out of control, Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, can help.
How Living From Your Higher Self Helped Me Change My Pattern
For years, I’d tried to change my behaviour through willpower, rules and promises to start again on Monday. Sometimes it worked, but sooner or later I was back where I’d started.
What eventually helped was understanding, through Living From Your Higher Self, that my thoughts and feelings were experiences, not who I was.
That might sound obvious, but for me it made a huge difference. I’d spent years trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings because I feared them. Once I stopped judging myself for having them, I felt safe enough to look at what was going on.
I could also see how my thoughts made things worse. Old beliefs about myself would surface, and I’d accept them without question. Learning to recognise my ego thought system helped me see that just because I thought something didn’t mean it was true.
Gradually, I began to understand what was happening whenever I felt the urge to eat.
From Experiencer to Observer to Decision Maker
One of the most useful things I’ve learned is to step back and observe myself rather than reacting automatically to whatever I’m feeling. I think of this as three positions:
- The experiencer: I’m caught up in my feelings and reacting without really thinking about what I’m doing.
- The observer: I notice what’s happening. I recognise the thoughts, feelings and physical sensations that are making me want to eat.
- The decision maker: I decide what to do next, rather than automatically following the urge.
At first, I could only recognise what had happened after the fact. I’d look back and ask myself what I’d been feeling, what I’d been thinking, and what had triggered it.
Sometimes writing things down helped me make sense of it.
I also began asking myself a different question. Instead of wondering why I couldn’t stop eating, I’d ask what eating was doing for me. I already knew the answer, of course. It was helping me avoid feelings I didn’t want to face.
Over time, I became better at recognising the pattern as it happened.
Learning to Let the Feelings Be
This was probably the hardest part for me. I’d spent so many years avoiding uncomfortable feelings that allowing myself to experience them didn’t come naturally. I began to notice where I felt them in my body, which emotions were coming up, and the thoughts that accompanied them.
Instead of trying to make everything go away, I began to question those thoughts and allow the feelings to be there. I won’t pretend it was always easy. Some feelings were intense, and I wouldn’t have been ready to face them without the years I’d spent learning to be more loving towards myself.
But I gradually discovered something important. I could experience uncomfortable feelings without having to do anything about them. I didn’t have to believe every thought that came into my head, and I didn’t have to eat just because I felt the urge. Most importantly, I began to realise that feelings change, even when I don’t try to make them go away.
The Pattern Hasn’t Completely Disappeared
I still feel the urge to eat when I’m not hungry, especially when I’m upset or stressed. The difference is that I recognise what’s happening.
Most of the time, I simply allow the urge to be there without acting on it. I acknowledge how I’m feeling and carry on with whatever I’m doing. I’ve noticed that the more often I do this, the less insistent the urge becomes. Sometimes I still eat, and that’s okay too. I don’t give myself a hard time about it. I know what’s happening, and I can choose differently next time.
For me, that is a huge change. I used to think overcoming a pattern meant getting rid of it altogether. Now I know I don’t need to do that. I can recognise it without letting it dictate what I do.
A Final Thought About Changing Patterns
I don’t look back on those years of smoking and emotional eating as wasted.
Smoking helped me cope with feelings I didn’t know how to handle when I was young. Giving it up showed me I could overcome something I’d struggled with for years. And my experience with emotional eating eventually helped me understand something much deeper about myself.
What Living From Your Higher Self gave me was the ability to look at myself without judgement and to make different choices.
And perhaps that’s something worth remembering when we’re trying to change ourselves. We don’t always have to get rid of a pattern to stop it from controlling our lives.
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