If you have a dog who comes running at the sight of his leash or a cat who hurries over at the sound of her canned food being opened, you have witnessed classical, or Pavlovian, conditioning in action. The act of pairing a stimulus with a desired outcome creates habits without us knowing it and can also help reshape our habits for healthier living. But what happens when some people are conditioning themselves by shocking their wrists when they have a craving for sweets?
Pavlovian conditioning is named after the man who observed how dogs learn to anticipate being fed after hearing the ringing of a bell. This pairing of an unrelated stimulus to a desired behavior is used in mental health treatment in numerous ways, including through aversion therapy, a helpful tool for people looking to relearn habits and create newer, healthier connections with the world. A company named Pavlok has actually created a device to assist in this process—one that delivers a self-administered shock to wearers’ wrists when they do something they decide to be naughty.
A brand-new York Times blogger wrote about how one woman used the device to successfully curb her cravings for desserts. Dr. Peter Whybrow, psychiatrist and neuroscientist quoted in the post, says, “It’s an expensive spin on the idea of wearing an elastic band that you snap on your wrist to stop a certain behavior.” While it is clear the technique can be used for a wide range of behaviors (nail biting, teeth grinding, smoking, etc.), once we step into the territory of food and eating patterns, the ethics of promoting such a device becomes a little murky.
According to the National Eating Disorders Association, 20 million women and 10 million men in the U.S. experience a diagnosable eating disorder within their lifetime. The amount of people who experience body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem due to body image and restrictive eating patterns that do not warrant a diagnosis (or who do not seek treatment) is impossible to tally, but is undoubtedly very high. Within a social climate that promotes having a slender body type and sends messages about one’s worth tied to fitting this image, people are consistently at risk of developing dangerous patterns around eating.
While the Pavlok company does not necessarily promote the device for general weight loss, it does list “unhealthy eating” as one of its uses. The thing is, to someone with disordered eating there is no telling what they could consider “unhealthy.” The danger of the device being used for severely restricting caloric intake or consuming foods that are perfectly healthy to eat, as well as someone developing an obsessive relationship with shocking themselves as punishment for “indulging,” is a concern. The company’s page does include a medical disclaimer, but it does not mention mental health treatment, specifically.
If someone is seeking guidance on how to address serious disordered eating concerns, I would hope there would be enough encouragement from their environment to seek professional treatment. If aversion therapy is appropriate for what they are dealing with it should be done under the care of a mental healthcare provider.
Additionally, the very believed of people—especially women—shocking themselves so they don’t have a bite of dessert is disturbing to me. So much of that desire is tied to the arbitrary, unrealistic and dangerous beauty standards forced down our throats every day.
No, choosing a lifestyle that makes us feel happy and healthy is not a bad thing, but finding ourselves stuck in a cycle of body shaming because of society’s expectations certainly is. So, now that we’ve found ourselves in a place where women are shocking themselves out of eating sweets, I simply ask: Can we just not?
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