On Facing Fears and Not Going Quietly into the Night

Thanks for reading Almost Sated, a newsletter about appetite and empowermenr. I write about the messy process of detoxing from diet culture and the personal growth that comes from it. If you like what you’re reading, please consider subscribing and sharing! It’s free to join, and subscribing ensures you never miss a post. On Mondays, I round up the most interesting reads and listens from the last week.

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I woke up at 2:38 a.m. Saturday and couldn’t go back to sleep. 

In the middle of the night, my thoughts are darker, more frightening than they ever seem in the daylight, and sometimes they wake me, and I can’t shake them. I do my best, telling myself these thoughts never seem as bad in the morning, which is always true. No matter how bad it is in the darkness, it’s always better in the light. Sometimes, I wake up and can’t even remember what the thoughts were, or I may only have distant memories.

But sometimes I can’t get myself back to sleep. Like this time. So I got up and cleaned the bathroom, focusing my energy on removing soap scum from shower glass rather than the real issue.  

I’ve been doubting whether my plan to launch into a full-time writer is working. After two months of doubling in size, my Substack growth has plateaued, and of course, I am taking it personally. The thoughts spiral and loop. I’m a failure, a bad writer, unrelatable, unlikeable. I’ve had a next book idea floating around in my head for a few weeks, but the self-doubt is out now in full force, telling me, who are you to write this? I feel like it’s time to quit. And in that moment, quitting is the end of the world, because it is also a reflection of me, a failure.

I think of meditation teacher Tara Brach and the podcast she released this week on mindful witnessing, a subject I listened to in daylight a few days earlier when I was calmer. I recognized myself in her message. I can easily get lost in what she describes as anxious thoughts and fear-based reactivity. She likens them to waves in the oceans. 

“When there’s no witnessing awareness, we get lost in the waves. We get caught in anxious thinking and emotional reactivity. We get tumbled. We get caught in a shrunken, limited sense of who we are.

When we’re reactive. When we’re lost in the waves, we’re in a distorted virtual reality.” —Tara Brach

Instead, she asks to work on cultivating our mindful witness, to observe what’s happening from a place of non-judging awareness. If you’re witnessing, you’re able to view things from a wider vantage point and see the thoughts for what they are. 

At 2:38 a.m., I can see my thoughts for what they are, yet I am still not strong enough to fully take the wider view. 

But somewhere between the scrubbing and the waking—I really don’t know when—I think maybe it’s time to pivot. I’m hearing the words of one of the authors I’m editing in my head, where she talks about failing fast and often, and I think maybe failure isn’t the end. Maybe it’s time to shift and start again. 

When I wake up, the thoughts are still there, but they are no longer charged. (The soap scum is too. Dammit, why is this so hard to get rid of?)

I take the full day off from writing, except for mind mapping the new book idea. The rest of the day is devoted to household chores and the night is spent with friends (and thank god my husband has finally returned from his work trip). I wake up Sunday with still a lingering uncertainty about what to do with myself and nothing yet to write about for Monday. So I start reading, and there are two pieces that move me. 

The first is

Donna McArthur

’s “The best insurance policy against hard things.” She writes about coming face to face with her own fears as she faces her mother’s death. 

“We are looking for an insurance policy against hard things and heartbreak but there isn’t one. As best I can see, the only thing we can do is to love with our whole heart and grieve with our whole heart.” —Donna McArthur

I disagree with her a bit, because I think lots of people attempt to numb themselves through avoidance. They just run, run, run, flitting from one thing to the next, never thinking about the bigger things or facing themselves. It is hard to run away from yourself. I wasn’t able to successfully do it, but for some people it seems to work pretty well. They just have to be ok with a shallower existence. I don’t want that. I want to understand on the most fundamental level how precious life is. 

The other piece is from

Rudy’s That Cancer Life Substack

In “You will fail and other inspiring mantras,” Rudy writes about a conversation with his onco-psychologist that helped him see he’d been focusing on the symptoms of his situation rather than the real issues. He was frustrated because physical limitations were keeping him from achieving his fitness goals, which were focused on aesthetics rather than the physical deterioration he was likely to face. 

“If all anger is sadness and grieving then I was looking to assuage my frustration with shallow vanity instead of processing a much bigger source of motivation. Sure, I’d love to have a physical appearance more in line with my imagination, but I’d rather stay alive. I was focusing on the symptoms of my situation and not the root causes. I was focusing on something fleeting and not finding happiness.” —Rudy Fischmann

Rudy pulls no punches in his assessment of life. We’re gonna fail a whole lot and we’re gonna die. But we shouldn’t just go quietly in the night. 

​​“Life is inherently suffering yet it can also be a tremendously beautiful thing. None of us get out of here alive — and some get out much sooner than others. So how are you gonna let things go down before you leave this place? My recommendation is to lean into the shit with two middle fingers blazing. chase the audacious. Chase the reasonable. Just don’t lose sight of how to be the biggest and most efficient thorn in the sides of those trying to bring you down.”

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Challenging Fat Bias and the Link Between Higher Weight and Cognitive Ability

Ragen Chastain

keeps doing the good work, exposing the fat bias in our medical community. This time she breaks down the biases within a recent study challenging a previous study linking higher weight and cognitive ability.  

“The premise here, which may be obvious but I want to write it out anyway, is that being fat is the result of bad choices. So, the question that this research (both earlier research with unrelated subjects and this new study) is trying to answer is if the reason people become fat is that they lack the cognitive ability to make choices that will keep them from becoming fat.” —Ragen Chastaain

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The Case for Crying, If You Want to

SleepyHollowInk

at

Home|body

makes the case for crying, if you want to, and why it’s good for you.  

“Finally, saved only for humans, the emotional tears have the good drugs: proteins and hormones like prolactin, potassium, manganese and stress hormones like oxytocin and endogenous opioids, also known as endorphins. It is believed crying is a fine example of our body’s stress relief and helps calm you down, activating your parasympathetic nervous system, slowing your breathing and heart rate.” —SleepyHollowInk

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Finding Joy in Nourishment and Launching Something New

Linn Thorstensson

shares the first episode of her debut podcast, Joyful + Nourishment,  a space for “conversations and explorations around all things that get in the way of having a kind, compassionate and peaceful relationships with food, eating and body image.”

Linn kicks off episode 1 with her story, her early relationship with food and how it led her to a career as a non-diet nutritionist.

“A part of me was so determined and had so much longing for something to be different in my relationship with food…but it’s been many rounds and roundabouts to get to a place today where I feel I am well into my recovery and very solid in it, but at the same time knowing that I cannot do any kind of restrictive diets without that having a detrimental effect on my mental wellbeing and even my physical health.” —Linn Thorstensson

Give it a listen!

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