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Comfort food is something we crave when we are tired, sad, lonely, stressed or even happy. We all have our own favorite comfort food, for me it is Jack in the Box tacos. If you had this food as an adult for the first time, you would never eat it again, but still you are drawn to it. It is just not logical!

The logic is simple, you have an emotional attachment to the food you are craving. I can justify eating it because I think it will make me feel happy, content or calm, I am guessing you feel the same way. You may know it is not good for you, but subconsciously you think it will. After a while you start to believe the food will make you feel better and because our mind believes this, you do feel better, but the effect is not long lasting.

After a few bites, guilt kicks in. However this doesn’t stop me from finishing my first taco, or even my second. I know you know this feeling and it can be frustrating. I know I should not be eating this greasy, oddly textures taco but at the same time I really feel like eating it! I like you have the craving, desire, longing, and urge to devour that taco!

Inhaling the taco is a habit and the habit was learned through different ways. For me, I remember being seven or eight years old maybe. I was with my family on the way to the beach in Southern California. We were talking about Jack in the Box tacos. My mom and aunt talked about how good and greasy they are. We talked about how perfect the tacos would be to have at the beach. All of us were all happy and having a good time. It was a warm, sunny day at the beach, and we were going to play and enjoy ourselves, it would be a good day. We reached Jack in the Box and ordered the tacos, they were amazing! Some sand got into one of my tacos, but I did not care, we were having a fantastic day. Memories which are important are typically vivid and more influential than everyday random memories.

Today, just the anticipation of getting the tacos triggers good feelings which are associated with this memory. Sometimes the memory comes with it and sometimes not. It is important to understand how we relate feelings to different things in our lives, things like food, music or a voice.

I used to love Aerosmith. I would listen to their songs over and over again, and never get sick of them. All this changed in the 90’s when I took my then girlfriend to an Aerosmith concert. Things did not get well and since then I don’t care for their music, each song reminds me of her. This is just another example of how memories can influence simple things in our lives.

I have been able to conquer my embarrassing fear of spiders, thank goodness. I managed to trace it back to a time when I was six or seven and had a run in with a black widow spider. The spider was inside of a rear window in our van. I remember the van had pin striping and the interior was tangerine orange with matching carpet. Try not to laugh too hard, it was SoCal in the 70’s. My parents were freaking out and they made my brothers and I quickly evacuate the van. Now I am able to kill spiders but if I see a big one, still gets my heart racing.

When I hear my wife yelling my name, I know it is time for me to hide in the garage or look busy fast! Sometimes a stern voice makes me feel like I did something wrong or I am in trouble. Most people like me, feel like a child, especially when someone uses my first, middle and last name. This is just one more way we associate feelings or emotions, and hold on to those attachments.

Enough about me. The point of all this is to show you common sense examples of learned behaviors. Emotions associated with memories trigger very powerful, behind the scenes reactions and decisions in our minds.