50 More Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, by Susan Albers, PsyD, is a pretty self-explanatory set of 50 short essays, each with a different way to practice self-care without resorting to eating junk food. It's the second of two books, the other being of nearly the same name, minus the "More." The book begins with a 40 page section about the stress <--> eating cycle that the author so often sees in her clients, and then hops right into the essays.
The topical essays aren't disparate "try this!" ideas as I feared, they're organized by general subject. So the broader subjects of mindfulness, meditation, yoga, expressive art therapy, and sensory therapies each have a collection of ideas within them. So there are, for example, several kinds of meditation you can try.
I had no idea there were so many different kinds of meditation! Chanting meditation, which is often parodied in media with robed, skinny monks sitting in funny postures, intoning "Ommmm..." (You may chant something else, but apparently one ancient culture insists "Oum" is the word of creation.) There's a kind of meditation where you try to empty your mind and still your thoughts. There's meditation with prayer beads of some variety. A mantra-based meditation, where you focus on a phrase and try to internalize it. And a more recent arrival, self-compassion meditation. I thought it was so cool that there were so many ways to do an ancient practice like meditation.
I was amused to look through this book, especially the last couple sections, and recognize that some of these techniques the book is teaching you are stimming. There's a type of rhythmic finger tapping they teach you how to do. The roots of this are in a ancient China, but c'mon. Tapping your fingers on yourself is obviously stimming. Only, it's acceptable, because "Ancient Chinese meditative practice."
Same goes for many of the sensory therapies, like aromatherapy. Using something that smells nice to perk you up, or remind you of better times? Please. I hear that exact same strategy spoken about by other autistic adults. They use it as a coping strategy to endure the trials of being neurodiverse in a world that doesn't want us around.
I particularly got a kick out of the entry on soothing your senses, which included touching soft and smooth fabrics, darkening a room, and taking off any restrictive clothing (such as shoes). Could this seriously be any more obvious?
Naturally, the whole book wasn't a primer on "Things Autistic People Do To Cope," but so much of it was that I spent the latter half of the book being amused rather than learning anything.
On a more personal note, I found this book instructive but it didn't personally describe my particular comfort food tendencies, which disheartened me considerably for the first half of the book. The first 40 pages or so describe a particular eating <--> stress cycle that some people get locked into. Basically, a person experiences stress, which makes them want comfort. They then eat something, feel better temporarily, then feel worse and guilty about eating whatever it was. This leads directly back to stress, and the whole thing repeats.
That is not how food and I work. The book makes much noise about the comfort and positive feelings of eating food only last a few seconds. That may be true for some people, but it is not true for me. As I was struggling through this book, I examined how I ate comfort foods and whether I did in fact only enjoy them for a short time. And whether I then descended into guilt afterwards.
The answer was no, I enjoyed them the entire time I was eating them, and did not descend into guilt afterwards. My sources of stress are mainly not food related, and though I do indulge in comfort-eating, I'm pretty mindful about it. If anything, this book, with its suggestion to eat mindfully, simply increased how much comfort and pleasure I derive from eating said comfort foods.
Maybe this, like other aspects of my life, is simply a thing I process and deal with differently due to being autistic. Or maybe I simply haven't had time to get into the complete cycle as described in the book. Either way, I read the first section of the book with increasing frustration and annoyance.
That said, the information in this book is neither invalid due to that, nor useless. It's cheaper on the wallet to engage in meditation than it is to make pancakes or a mug cake, or to put on some music with your computer or phone, or even to drink a cup of tea. And really, less effort to do any of those things rather than cook. So yeah, this is still very good information. I just had a hard time recognizing that as I read the book, due to the "this is you, isn't it!" tone in the first section, and its incorrectness.
The topical essays aren't disparate "try this!" ideas as I feared, they're organized by general subject. So the broader subjects of mindfulness, meditation, yoga, expressive art therapy, and sensory therapies each have a collection of ideas within them. So there are, for example, several kinds of meditation you can try.
I had no idea there were so many different kinds of meditation! Chanting meditation, which is often parodied in media with robed, skinny monks sitting in funny postures, intoning "Ommmm..." (You may chant something else, but apparently one ancient culture insists "Oum" is the word of creation.) There's a kind of meditation where you try to empty your mind and still your thoughts. There's meditation with prayer beads of some variety. A mantra-based meditation, where you focus on a phrase and try to internalize it. And a more recent arrival, self-compassion meditation. I thought it was so cool that there were so many ways to do an ancient practice like meditation.
I was amused to look through this book, especially the last couple sections, and recognize that some of these techniques the book is teaching you are stimming. There's a type of rhythmic finger tapping they teach you how to do. The roots of this are in a ancient China, but c'mon. Tapping your fingers on yourself is obviously stimming. Only, it's acceptable, because "Ancient Chinese meditative practice."
Same goes for many of the sensory therapies, like aromatherapy. Using something that smells nice to perk you up, or remind you of better times? Please. I hear that exact same strategy spoken about by other autistic adults. They use it as a coping strategy to endure the trials of being neurodiverse in a world that doesn't want us around.
I particularly got a kick out of the entry on soothing your senses, which included touching soft and smooth fabrics, darkening a room, and taking off any restrictive clothing (such as shoes). Could this seriously be any more obvious?
Naturally, the whole book wasn't a primer on "Things Autistic People Do To Cope," but so much of it was that I spent the latter half of the book being amused rather than learning anything.
On a more personal note, I found this book instructive but it didn't personally describe my particular comfort food tendencies, which disheartened me considerably for the first half of the book. The first 40 pages or so describe a particular eating <--> stress cycle that some people get locked into. Basically, a person experiences stress, which makes them want comfort. They then eat something, feel better temporarily, then feel worse and guilty about eating whatever it was. This leads directly back to stress, and the whole thing repeats.
That is not how food and I work. The book makes much noise about the comfort and positive feelings of eating food only last a few seconds. That may be true for some people, but it is not true for me. As I was struggling through this book, I examined how I ate comfort foods and whether I did in fact only enjoy them for a short time. And whether I then descended into guilt afterwards.
The answer was no, I enjoyed them the entire time I was eating them, and did not descend into guilt afterwards. My sources of stress are mainly not food related, and though I do indulge in comfort-eating, I'm pretty mindful about it. If anything, this book, with its suggestion to eat mindfully, simply increased how much comfort and pleasure I derive from eating said comfort foods.
Maybe this, like other aspects of my life, is simply a thing I process and deal with differently due to being autistic. Or maybe I simply haven't had time to get into the complete cycle as described in the book. Either way, I read the first section of the book with increasing frustration and annoyance.
That said, the information in this book is neither invalid due to that, nor useless. It's cheaper on the wallet to engage in meditation than it is to make pancakes or a mug cake, or to put on some music with your computer or phone, or even to drink a cup of tea. And really, less effort to do any of those things rather than cook. So yeah, this is still very good information. I just had a hard time recognizing that as I read the book, due to the "this is you, isn't it!" tone in the first section, and its incorrectness.
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