The mechanism behind a replacement for unpleasant feelings

The personality choice for a replacement for unpleasant feelings usually follows a pattern like the one below:

you perceive a situation
your personality interprets and judges the situation as unpleasant (if only because he is not involved, so this can well be because of the absence of anything as well
the unpleasant feeling causes a likewise unpleasant feeling of tension, more or less intense.
you want to get rid of this feeling
your personality starts to look for a way in which he can feel in charge and bring you a replacement experience in which you will succeed in feeling better
successful replacement feelings can be obtained through e.g. smoking, eating, grumbling, and your personality creates a craving for this which will occupy a great deal of your attention span until you have fulfilled it
now he knows very well that this can only give you a very short 'pleasant' feeling. Watch the speed with which you eat or smoke or the amount of effort you have to put in correcting the 'damage done' through your being grumpy.
and your personality is aware of the fact that he can use this replacement experience afterwards to make you feel guilty about that as well.

In this way your personality has converted an unpleasant interpretation of a situation outside himself into an unpleasant situation within yourself. Your attention has moved accordingly. And something that is within yourself may be unpleasant in itself, but has the aura of being changeable, usually as opposed to the situation outside yourself that caused you to react like this in the first place. So it is a way of diverting attention and being able to create the illusion of you yourself being in charge of your unpleasant feelings, rather than being at the mercy of things and people outside you.

This kind of routine can slip into your daily patterns easily, so you are able to make this choice so fast that you are hardly aware of the individual steps that lead to it. The real solution of course can be found in step 2: you interpret things, why do you do that in the first place. You need not do so. You have a choice. You may realize: I do perceive this, however I do not know what it really means. Furthermore you will notice that it are thoughts of attack, repression, wanting to feel better or more pleasant etc. that will induce this tactic of bringing about replacement feelings.