Personal Analysis: Abstinence From Sweets

Abstinence from Sweets

I first would like to apologize for thinking that it was easy to give up. I really struggle with giving up sugar. The first week I started was a nightmare. I experience headaches, mood swings, stress, fatigue, irritability, and depression. According to mental health daily (2014), these are some of the symptoms that an individual will experience during sugar withdrawals.

Hendricks and Leventhal (2013) describe some of the same withdrawal symptoms with individuals that are smokers. I have heard people say that it should get easier each day. I disagree with that, because I felt like it was harder each day. After two weeks, I was ready to relapse. I begin thinking of ways to justify if I ate this, it would not be considered as that much sugar. I did not have anything sweet until January 31, 2016, which was my son birthday. I ate a small piece of cake that taste as if it did not have any sugar in it.

My personality toward sugar was that I knew that had an issue in this area.

When I was stressed, I could not get enough sugar. I did not want it, but it was there and I knew it. This was how I would handle my stress so that I would not take it out on my family. I believe that over the past couple of weeks my family was ready to give me a snicker bar. I am glad that I did it, because now I have figure out better ways to handle my stress. For example, I work out more now, and I eat more fruits and vegetables. What help me to make it to January 31, 2016 was that I was more determine to prove to myself that I could overcome sugar even in the stages where I was thinking about

relapsing.
External Influences
One external influences is that sweets surrounded me. On my way to work, I would past about two donut shops. It was on television. For example, Dairy Queen commercial would come on like every 10 minutes. If you walk in the stores, there would be candy isles when I exited the store. There was no way of escaping sweets, because they surrounded me even in my home.
Gubi and Marsden-Hughes (2013) mention the some reason why some individual may drink alcohol, which included insecurities, loneliness, boredom, low self-esteem, and fear of coping with life. As an adult, I can agree with some of these self-dissatisfaction, and believe that some of them may be the reason for consume sugar even when I was not hunger. The effect of an alcohol abuse issue was that some individual looked at it as their friend (Gubi et. al., 2013). I looked at sugar as my friend when I was not able to talk about my emotions to my husband.
Insights Gained for Clinical Skills
The insight that I gained that will be useful in clinical skills will be that the struggle is real. I understand that individuals have problems, and it is important to have a sense of empathy for the clients (Shallcross, 2011). For instance, I believe it was easy to just quit, but I learned that it is not easy at all. In addition, it is important to let clients know that counselors are there to help them change. Their behavior is a result of mental addition. Counselors are to encourage clients that they can change their lives one day at a time.