Continuing on my Feel 2018 journey, I wanted to share some thoughts and experiences about buffering.
One of the definitions of the word buffer is to “lessen or moderate the impact of (something).”
Another definition is “a person or thing that prevents incompatible or antagonistic people or things from coming into contact with or harming each other.”
Buffering doesn’t sound bad, right? Well, when we buffer, we usually use artificial external things to change how we feel emotionally. This can be anything from overeating, to drinking, to scrolling social media. And there are many things in between. We use buffers to avoid or escape our negative emotions. In Brooke Castillo’s podcast episode about buffering (which I highly recommend listening to), she says,
“buffering is one of those things that we do to not fully experience our lives, to not fully show up and face the truth and face the music. The reason why we don’t want to face the truth of our lives is because we don’t want to experience any type of negative emotion. We feel entitled to feel happy and pleasure all of the time.”
So how do we know if one of our habits is a buffer or not? Buffering with artificial external things has a net-negative effect. Again from Brooke…
“sometimes people will say to me “well is it buffering if I watch documentaries all day on a Saturday?” “Is it buffering if I watch Netflix all the time?” “Is it buffering if I am constantly going to the movies?” And here’s what I want to say about that: Does it give you a negative consequence on the backend? And are you using it to avoid negative emotion? If the answer is yes to either one of those, then yes, the answer is it is buffering. If you’re willing to feel your emotions and you’re willing to go through those things and you go to the movies or you watch Netflix and you don’t experience a negative consequence on the other side of it, then rock it out. Not everything is buffering. You will know, because it will have a negative impact on you. You will know because you will be creating it through negative emotion.”
I can see the use of buffers in my own life and I know that they aren’t helping me in the long run. I am working to overcome and conquer them. I believe that it’s probably possible to eliminate all buffers from our lives and to learn how to control our thoughts so well that we don’t need any buffers at all. I think that it’s possible to learn how to master our thoughts and emotions. I think that learning self control and mental/emotional control is very important. But it isn’t everything. And just having complete control isn’t our ultimate goal.
I think that the point of life is to remember and strengthen our relationship with God. And that requires some surrendering of our own willpower and “control”. That requires some buffering, but not with the habits that we normally use.
Spiritually, this make sense to me. Faith without works is dead. But it works the other way around as well. Works without faith is dead as well.
A few weeks ago, during Sacrament Meeting, the closing hymn was “Testimony.” As we were singing, the 4th verse stuck out to me…
As testimony fills my heart,
It dulls the pain of days.
For one brief moment, heaven’s view
Appears before my gaze.
When we sang “As testimony fills my heart, it dulls the pain of days.” it made me think about buffers and how we use those to “dull the pain of days”. But this hymn suggests that our testimonies should be our buffers. Christ should be our buffer that we turn to and having a true testimony of Him dulls our pain.
When we buffer, it dulls our pain. We can choose to dull the pain with external artificial things, (drugs, alcohol, food, social media, binge watching shows, pornography, etc.) but when we do that, it’s just a bandaid. The pain relief doesn’t last. In fact, the pleasure is false and the pain almost always comes back even stronger and then we need to buffer even more to be able to dull the pain again.
Contrast that instead with using Jesus Christ as our buffer. This is the only real, lasting form of pain relief. Christ isn’t just a bandaid that covers up our wounds. He is the power that heals our wounds. Buffering with Christ doesn’t take away our negative emotions and make us feel pleasure all the time. Negative emotions are still very important as I’ve talked about before (here and here). But buffering with Christ allows us to have this constant peace that runs through the middle of the up and down waves that make up positive and negative emotions throughout our lives.
Buffering with artificial things digs us deeper into a pit of despair and stunts our growth and progress.
Buffering with Christ raises us higher, gives us real confidence, and sends us soaring on our journey of growth and progress.
Son of God by Steve Gamba
A couple weeks ago, my husband and I went on a trip to India and I had an experience while we were in there that really strengthened my testimony of Christ as my buffer.
First, let me preface by saying that I did not want to go to India. A small part of me agreed to this trip for the sake of the adventure and I knew that my husband and I would make memories together. The majority of me was absolutely terrified. I agreed to go on this trip because my husband really wanted to go to his friend’s wedding and I wanted to support him (my husband) and his dreams. I was terrified for multiple reasons – leaving my kids for 10 days; being on the other side of the world, as far away from home as possible; food and water safety; travel safety, etc.
The weeks and days leading up to this trip were filled with many emotional breakdowns from me (mostly between me and Heavenly Father and in my journal… I really didn’t want to put a downer on this trip for my husband, although he was definitely aware that I wasn’t jumping for joy and this trip was really going to stretch me.) There were also many prayers offered, begging Heavenly Father to prepare the way that we would be protected on this trip and that our kids would be protected at home.
I remember one mental freakout in particular, a few days before our trip when I was reading on the Center for Disease Control website (as advised by the nurse that gave us our travel immunizations) about food and travel safety in India. I knew that this would probably bring up additional anxiety for me, but I also didn’t want to go into this experience being ignorant. As predicted, it stirred up more fear and anxiety.
One thing in particular that stood out to me was when the website mentioned that “Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among healthy travelers.” And it went on…
“Each year, 1.3 million people are killed and 20–50 million are injured in motor vehicle crashes worldwide. Most (85%) of these casualties occur in low- or middle-income countries, and 25,000 of the deaths are among tourists. Nearly half of medical evacuations back to the United States are the result of a car crash, and a medical evacuation can cost upward of $100,000.
More and more people are driving cars and riding motorcycles in developing countries, and these countries are an increasingly common destination for US tourists. Roads in these countries may be poorly maintained, and traffic laws may be haphazardly followed or enforced. A crash in a developing country is more likely to be fatal because emergency care may not be readily available. It may take a long time to get to a center that can provide appropriate care, and care, where available, may not be up to US standards.”
I hadn’t really thought much about the road safety and car traveling part of our trip so here I was, 3 days away from our trip, and adding more things to feel fear about. As I was getting ready for bed after this, I was crying in my closet and telling Heavenly Father that I was terrified and I did not want to go on this trip. I said my nightly prayer before getting into bed. As I was laying in bed, I could feel the anxiety strongly in my body. But slowly, it faded. And it was replaced with a feeling of peace and an assurance that everything would be ok.
Fast forward to a few days later… my husband and I had just completed our last flight and 40 hours of traveling, just to get to Patna, India – the closest airport to our friend’s house.
I don’t think that words can accurately convey the feelings that I had but here is what I wrote in my journal…
When we landed in Patna, that’s when the craziness really started. We got off the plane and walked down some stairs, outside. Then we walked through the windy (it was cloudy and a bit rainy), polluted air with the crowd of people, into the Patna airport. This was a really small airport and it didn’t take long at all to walk out the front doors and find Ricky, who was waiting for us. Thank goodness Ricky was there. Stepping off that plane was definitely the start of our real Indian experience.
Ricky and the taxi driver led us through the crowd and down the street a bit to get to the parking lot. We got in the taxi and oh boy. It began. It was just some ghetto Jeep thing with no doors, and with bike handle bars in place of a steering wheel. I felt like we were back in the Philippines. But worse because we didn’t have my in laws with us. And this time we have kids that we have to worry about getting back to.
There are no traffic laws here. If there are, no one obeys them. They drive on the left side of the road… most of the time (instead of the right like in the US). They weave in and out of traffic, always passing people and barely not hitting everyone. It’s hard to look out the windshield because it’s too scary. You will be about to hit someone head on and then someone (your vehicle or the other) will swerve back into their lane, just in time. People will drive in the wrong lane, going the wrong direction. People will just turn around in the middle of the road and block traffic. And then you have other people on bikes and motorcycles that are weaving in and out of traffic too. The cars and motorcycles just honk at everyone to communicate so you just hear a ton of honking all the time. And pedestrians walking around everywhere, just walking in front of cars. And on top of that, there aren’t any seat belts.
So we rode 15 minutes or so to get to the train station. The anxiety and fear was rising up inside me. I didn’t want to be there.
We got to the train station, which of course was very ghetto and people everywhere, waiting for the train that wouldn’t come for 3 more hours because the other train got cancelled. After waiting for a little bit (and a bird pooping on my shoe… my lovely welcome to India,) we finally met up with Ricky’s cousin and her 2 kids and decided that we would ride in a car to Begusarai instead of taking the train. The train schedule was messed up because of some additional stops or something and might not have arrived at Begusarai until after midnight (it was only 1:30 in the afternoon by this point.)
So after waiting around for a little bit longer while Ricky found someone to drive us the 2-6 hours (depending on traffic) to Begusarai, we finally got in a car. It was the taxi driver, Ricky, me, Jershon, Ricky’s cousin, and her 2 young kids. No one had seat belts. We started our journey to Begusarai, and Ricky said we would hopefully arrive before 8 pm.
The fear was overwhelming. I felt so out of place and so out of control. Was it too late to turn around and just go back to the airport and try to get a new flight back home? I was seriously so scared. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t sign up for this (honestly, I had no idea what to expect when I signed up for this.) Even though we had just traveled 40 hours to get here, I was so close to seriously asking Jershon if we could just go back to the airport and get on the next flight out of here.
This is probably the most out of control and out of my comfort zone as I have ever felt before in my entire life. I felt like I had nothing to ease my fears. No distractions. The only thing I could do was to start praying. So I did. I begged Heavenly Father to protect us and to keep us safe on this trip. I begged Him to help us to return home safely to our kids. I begged for Him to speak peace to my soul and to comfort me.
After that, I decided to try to get some sleep, partially because I was exhausted from the past couple days of traveling and getting little sleep and partially because I didn’t want to watch the crazy driving. If I was gonna die, I’d rather be asleep when it happened. I was able to sleep for a little while and when I woke up, I surprisingly felt this incredible sense of peace and calm. The difference was miraculous. It’s not like I was magically happy to be in this situation and loving life, but the fear had decreased significantly and I felt a lot of peace. I really did feel that Christ had calmed the storm inside of me. And that felt like a miracle.
Security by David Bowman
I was thinking about it, and I realized that because I had really felt the fear and anxiety during my emotional breakdowns (one or two in particular) before this trip, and again on the drive from the airport to Ricky’s town, I had opened up my heart to really feel the peace and comfort from Heavenly Father in those times. And that peace was real. It wasn’t just surface level. It was deep.
So when it came to other times when I was feeling fear and anxiety during our trip, particularly during this drive from the hotel to the airport (heading home), and on the plane when we were experiencing extra turbulence off and on, I was able to rely on that peace. I was able to believe that it was real. I was able to trust that Heavenly Father really would take care of me and that He really would keep His promises. I would say to myself “He comforted me then, He can comfort me now. Christ is my buffer.” and then repeat that over and over.
I really did feel peace during these times when I would usually feel fear and anxiety. And I know that that peace that “passes understanding” came because I leaned on Christ. He was my buffer.
A couple days ago, I heard this song for the first time and it really stood out to me. It reminded me of the drive from Patna to Begusarai and the feelings that I felt.
I have more thoughts to share about buffering, and about our trip to India. I plan to write those up for my Feel 2018 February Reflections in the next couple days.
