A Firefighter Unburdens In a Hurry

Koala takes it down one more notch before the IFS Demo Watch Party!

Koala

Firefighter: I’m READY to UNBURDEN right NOW!

Koala (Firefighter): Let’s do an unburdening RIGHT NOW, A!

A (Self-energy): Let’s do this!

Koala: Okay. I’m at a 2/10 of disturbance / distress about my upcoming IFS Demo Watch party, featuring ME. Which is EXACTLY what I wanted — to be at a 2 out of 10. I was at a 4 or 5 out of 10 a few days ago, so my nervous system relief is incredible. Isn’t that a 50% decrease?

Green (Manager): Let’s not math. We were double English majors, and the last math class we took was our junior year in high school in 1988.

Koala: Okay, fair. All that to say, I’m super relieved. But I think I can get it down to a 1/10 if I do this unburdening so here goes, ho!

Firefighter ashamed of sugar addiction

A (Self-energy): What are you noticing, Koala?

Koala (Firefighter): I was embarrassed and ashamed about my IFS demonstration because I…ugh, it’s hard to articulate, but I’m under the gun so I need to focus. I was ashamed that I was so firefightery!

I wanted to smoke pot and eat all the watermelon. And I don’t mean a demure bowl of watermelon. I’m talking two or three ENTIRE watermelon. And just because they’re labeled ‘personal sized’ watermelon doesn’t mean jack, people!! Let’s not pretend here!

I was a sugar addict using fruit as a step-down from eating entire boxes of cookies. Watermelon was harm reduction, but—when you eat three watermelon or two pounds of tangerines, it’s still a massive blast of fructose. Poor liver! I apologize, liver! But liver regeneration is a topic for another day.

Right now, I want to look at my addiction to sugar. I already unburdened my desire to smoke pot. No marijuana for you, Missy! Can you imagine the destruction to our life that would ensue if we messed with drugs, when we can’t even regulate how much fruit we eat? Disaster ahoy!

Visualizing the Burden as a Black Box

Koala (Firefighter): I see the desire to eat fruit as a black box. I’m reminded of something I once saw at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. A massive tree (you know opera sets are inanely massive, like 50 feet high) had a box set into the top of it. Then there was a singer in the box - I’m almost positive it was Renee Fleming.

The desire to eat fruit is the box set in the tree.

A (Self-energy): What’s it like to be with that box?

Koala: It’s one of the evil boxes in the many branches of the evil tree of addiction! I like how it represents multiple things at once: it SINGS. It sings a song, a beautiful siren song—come into this lit-up box of deliciousness and enjoy the music of sugar! It’s only fruit sugar, it won’t hurt you, it’s natural, it’s okay. Just a watermelon….just a few tangerines…LIES!

I need to be tied to the mast of Odysseus’s ship so the mermaids don’t sing me to my death. I’ve been down that path millions of times, and I’m literally sick of it. It’s broken my digestion, it’s dysregulated my brain, and my liver is full of stones as a result. I have non-alcoholic fatty liver like a huge percent of other people in this world. I’m done with it!

Firefighter Unburdens Desire to Eat Sugar

Koala (Firefighter): I’m taking that radiant box full of light, that mesmerizing, seductive box of lies, and throwing it in the ocean! I’m cutting it off the end of the tree branch and tossing it in the sea! (Not with Renee Fleming in it, though). It’s empty. Although it shines, it radiates, it beckons, that’s all lies. Out with your lies! It feels good to chop it off and throw it away.

Now it’s filling with water like a shipping container and slowly drowning itself in the dark depths. It’s falling to the bottom and as it does the light disappears, and I see it for what it is—Kraft, Phillip Morris, the Marlboro Man—decades of tobacco companies infiltrating food companies and poisoning us with garbage, and getting ME addicted to sugar and processed chemicals so THEY can make money.

Well, I’m not their stooge anymore! I want to be 100% chemical ‘food’ and sugar free. I don’t care what anyone else thinks or does: this is what I want for me. To be a more natural, easy-going, less amped-up, jacked-up version of myself. And all those chemicals and sugars wire me up and stress me out! I don’t need them anymore. It started with Wonderbread and Fruit Loops and I whittled the addiction down to fruit, but by the time I got to fruit my anandamide and 2-AG pathways and who knows what else were so WRECKED that now I can’t even eat fruit. And I don’t care! I’ll do whatever it takes to never binge again!!

I may still have a tree full of branches of addiction inside me, but that box—the sugar box—is gone! I cut it off and let it go! Now my addictions are wasting time on the internet, scrolling and overworking—they’re related to TIME, not THINGS I ingest. That’s progress!

Whew! I’m not “cured,” I’m not “perfect,” and an unburdening doesn’t mean I’m enlightened. But it does bring my nervous system down from a 2/10 to a 1/10, and that’s a 50% improvement (I think), and I’ll take it!