Psychological allergies.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS - Path to a better you

SOMETIMES I WONDER if too many of us have allergies towards positive actions. It certainly seems that way. The information is there--perhaps scientific data or the grinding gears of our consciences; maybe the nagging physical evidence of failure to do what is better or cease and desist from destruction.

Is allergy too strong a word? Consider the allergy: an automatic response to some perceived invader. The enemy usually is something others tolerate or even enjoy. It may be something quite good, except for that overactive immune-system response. Some food allergies, for instance, make wide swaths of nutrients that much harder to obtain: those who try to stick to gluten-free diets out of necessity, rather than those who follow them as a trend, are well aware of the challenges in absorbing sufficient nutrients without all sorts of accommodations.

Playing with this metaphor, there is the allergy to doing the most basic steps of what now is called "self care." That is psychobabble for doing the obvious: eat your veggies, get enough rest, do not work too hard but hard enough, etc. Consider the problem of sleep. A plurality of adults in this country complain about having trouble sleeping, and a majority of them report, in the same 2010 findings published by the National Sleep Foundation, a cavalcade of stupid behaviors that fly in the face of common knowledge concerning slumber. Television and computers are stimulating at a hindbrain level; why do that if your objective is sleep? The notion of turning off the television for an hour or so before bedtime not only is offensive to many; it creates anxiety. An insomniac will drown you in levered rationale for keeping that endless stimulation going because it is necessary for sleep. The response is out of proportion; it is allergic.

Watching television has become what psychologists call a "safety behavior," an action taken as a sort of insurance against a problem. The key is to replace the unhealthy safety behavior tot insomnia (watching too much television, or drinking alcohol, both of which end up disrupting sleep) with behaviors actually correlated with improved sleep. In the meantime, though, the allergy to quiet remains: silence is a threat.

Psychotherapists are not impervious to this human flaw. I find it incredibly difficult to let go of what no longer works for me. Case in point: it had been almost 11 years since I last had altered my workout and training regimen. More than a decade is a long...