One of the most common questions I get asked when people are struggling to quit drinking is:
It can be really demoralising when you end up drinking yet again, after promising yourself repeatedly that you’re done –
and especially when it doesn’t even do much for you anymore except leave you with a banging headache, writhing in a swamp of anxiety and shame.
If you’re reading this post then the chances are you’re contemplating stopping drinking.
Maybe alcohol is only just starting to become a problem for you or maybe it’s wreaking havoc in your life. But whatever stage you are at, you’re likely to be experiencing a certain amount of fear.
This is totally normal and happens when we try to change anything.
The subconscious part of our brain works on a very basic principle – avoid pain and move towards pleasure.
It has no concept of time – it lives purely in the moment. And for your subconscious brain – alcohol equals pleasure and living without it equals pain and uncertainty
So as soon as you start to think about stopping drinking, this part of your brain anticipates the discomfort it’s going to feel and churns out endless reasons not to try: Continue Reading
Overcoming Self Sabotage
Using The Science of Change
You may have made resolutions again this year but did you actually tell your emotional brain about them?
No?
Then it is likely that by now, as we hurtle towards 2018, those resolutions are a dim and distant memory.
We humans are notoriously bad at changing habits, but it’s not because we are inherently weak willed -it is because the brain is biologically programmed to keep doing what it has habitually done.
Our brain is designed to keep us alive – not make us happy. So, if you are alive doing the things that you do – it will fight against change.
The habits you have today – whether it’s drinking too much, watching too much TV, procrastinating, or spending too much time on face-book – have all become deeply wired into the subconscious part of the brain through countless repetitions – and the brain pushes to keep doing them. Because that is what it is programmed to do.
Lasting change requires really understanding how our brains work.
The first thing to understand is that there are essentially two brains involved in the process of change. And these two brains set us up for the constant conflict we experience when we try.
The subconscious brain and the pre-frontal cortex
Some people refer to the subconscious as the reptile brain – but this isn’t strictly true. It is actually made up of the brain stem (reptile brain) AND the emotional brain (mammal brain).
I’ll call it the emotional brain from now on for ease of description.
The emotional brain is where our habit patterns are stored. When we repeat something again and again, pathways are built in the brain so that we can access these habits with ease, efficiency and without any conscious thought.
This is how we learn anything from learning to walk, to playing a musical instrument. The more we practice, the less effort and thought we need to apply to a task.
It’s basic neuroplasticity – our brains change and grow in relation to what input they receive.
The prefrontal cortex is the conscious part of the brain.
It’s responsible for planning, long term thinking, maintaining focus and generally over-riding our impulsive urges so we can achieve our goals and dreams.
When we decide that we want to create a new habit – say going to the gym, stopping smoking, cutting back on junk food – this decision is made by the pre-frontal cortex.
But deeply wired into the emotional brain is what we have habitually done.
Perhaps it’s staying in bed and repeatedly hitting snooze, having a cigarette at certain times or stopping at the local take away on the way home from work.
When you decide on a new habit- there is no corresponding brain pattern – it hasn’t yet been wired into the emotional brain so the new habit feels ‘uncomfortable’ and it takes quite a lot of effort to do.
It doesn’t matter that we know it’s good for us or that it will change our life for the better – at the very moment we need to engage in the new behavior – our emotional brain protests.
A key principle of the emotional brain is that is designed to move away from pain and towards pleasure. It does this by generating strong sensations in the body that we experience as either stress or resistance (pain) or an urge to do something (pleasure).
So when we attempt to start a new habit – it’s naturally uncomfortable and the emotional brain resists it and pushes to stay in its comfort zone.
It will always take the path of least resistance .
And so it starts with the excuses:
“I’ll do it tomorrow” “I’m not in the mood” “I’m too tired”
“I’m too stressed right now – it’s not the right time”
“Just this once won’t hurt”
This is where the conflict starts – immediate comfort versus future comfort from long term gain.
And if your Pre-frontal cortex is a bit flimsy – as many of are – there isn’t much of a contest – the emotional brain wins.
For a new habit to become automatic and effortless, it has to be wired into the emotional brain.
And this requires action.
Repeated time and time again.
But this is something that we don’t want to hear. We want instant gratification.
We don’t want to suffer AT ALL.
We want that new body now.
We want to be able to play the guitar flawlessly now.
We want to feel better NOW.
We want change to be EASY.
And this mindset is what keeps us stuck.
Lasting change does take time, effort and consistent action.
The key to overcoming self-sabotage is to get your emotional brain on your side. You need to understand where it is coming from and then manipulate it to work towards your goals not against them.
So how do we do this?
1. Create a strong emotional vision of where you want to be.
As our goals are made in the logical conscious pre-frontal cortex, the emotional brain is not part of the planning. You need to get it involved. So instead of just thinking for example “I want to stop drinking” spend time really imagining how you want to feel when you do.
One incredible aspect of neuro-plasticity that people don’t know is that VISUALISING changes the brain in the same way as actually doing an action. When you repeatedly visualize yourself making the change you want to make, and how you will FEEL when you do – your brain will change in ways that it would if you actually HAD made the change.
As you imagine, time and time again, the positive feelings that will come with the change, the emotional brain will start to associate the change with pleasure and not discomfort.
You need to convince it that it is VITAL that you change.
Often, if our Pre-frontal cortex is not very well developed, visualizing is difficult. To get past this difficulty, make a vision board with images of all the outcomes you want to achieve through the change.
Then look at it EVERY SINGLE DAY – conjuring up the feelings that you imagine you will feel.
The Pre-frontal cortex is like a muscle – the more you use it, the more robust and effective it becomes so every time you imagine the future in a positive way – the more ability the PFC has to over-ride the impulses of the emotional brain.
2. Don’t focus exclusively on the end goal.
This might sound contradictory given the suggestions above but the majority of us focus too much on the end result. It’s like focusing on trying to run a marathon when you have only just started training. Our brain can become overwhelmed.
When you train for a marathon, you focus on the goals for that day. Perhaps at the beginning you aim for a mile – and then slowly you increase. You trust that your system of weekly training will do the job.
Once you have decided how you want your life to be – let go of the outcome and work on the system that will get you there.
So, if it is losing weight – what are the smallest changes you can make every day to ensure it happens.
Set up a system of actions you need to take to get there. Perhaps you need to go to the gym 4 times a week and lay off the carbs. Trust that by following the system you will end up where you want to be.
3. Give a lot of positive emotional weight to each small success.
Self-sabotage often starts with discounting the small steps. We tell ourselves that missing one gym session won’t matter – or one cigarette won’t hurt. But it absolutely does matter. Once you let the rot set in you are on a fast, slippery slope to failure. If you slip today, you will give yourself permission to slip again, and again, and again.
Each time you choose inaction over action you are strengthening the brain pathways of the old behaviour. But each time you choose action over inaction – you are helping to wire the new behaviour into the brain. Give a lot of emotional value to each and every single step in the process.
4. Celebrate ANYTHING that you do towards your goal.
We often have an all or nothing way of thinking.
Unless we work out for an hour we have failed – 30 mins just really doesn’t cut it.
If we have a list of ten things to do and we only do seven – we consider it a failure. But human motivation to change and progress relies on a chemical called dopamine. The more dopamine we can generate, the more motivated we are to take action.
And dopamine is released when we achieve something we set out to achieve.
So really focus on what you do achieve.
If it is only 5 things of the list – don’t use the word “only’ – say to yourself – wow I did 5 more things than I would normally have done.
Train yourself to celebrate any success no matter how small. You will be rewarded by dopamine which will increase your motivation to do more
5. Become familiar with your own resistance.
Whenever we have something to do – even if we know we will enjoy it – often we feel a certain amount of resistance. We feel distracted and delay whatever it is we need to do for as long as possible. This is the heart of procrastination and the death blow to our well laid plans.
But resistance to change is a very normal part of the human experience.
Accept that you will, more often than not, feel it and learn to push through it.
Re-visit your future vision to convince the emotional brain that it will ultimately suffer pain if it doesn’t push through.
6. Learn the language of your emotional brain.
When your emotional brain starts to protest change, it will have a litany of excuses and reasons that it bombards you with.
Write them all down on a piece of paper and then provide the counter argument. So, when it starts to say – “I’m too tired to work out today” Answer it with “just do 10 mins – it really is worth it”
You’ll find that spouts out the same excuses over and over again, rapidly and in quick succession – as these excuses also have their own neural pathways. The key is to repeat the counter thoughts over and over again until they become the default.
7. Let go of the self-criticism.
We all have an inner critic – some louder than others. But it’s vital that you try to ignore the constant nagging of
“You’re such a loser”, “Why can’t you just get up and do it?” ” is there something wrong with you?”
If you don’t follow through on the plan for the day – don’t beat yourself up. The stress and guilt that this causes, actually reduces the strength of the Pre-frontal cortex to over-ride the emotional brain and stay focused on long term goals
When we get stuck in a cycle of self-loathing and shame – it’s very difficult for us to form new behaviours. In times of stress, the brain automatically defaults to old, deeply wired coping mechanisms. So, if you are feeling stressed and sorry for yourself, you are going to find it very hard to overcome the urge to stuff yourself with high calorie food or open that bottle of wine.
Instead, have compassion for yourself – remind yourself that change is hard, but reflect on why the day wasn’t a success, review your future vision and try again tomorrow.
8. Practice mindful awareness.
We spend most of our day on automatic pilot. Most of what we do and why we do it, we are not consciously aware of. In fact, 95 % of our decisions, our feelings and our actions are subconscious – basically outside of our conscious control.
We need to become far more aware of the underlying thoughts and feelings that sabotage our plans time and time again. At that moment – at that very point when you make the decision not to go to the gym, or to have that beer when you promised yourself you wouldn’t – What was going on for you? What were you feeling? What did you tell yourself?
Research has shown that bringing conscious attention and focus to your internal states actually strengthens the wiring from the PFC down to the emotional brain. Overtime, this make the PFC much more efficient in over-riding our urges to revert back to old ways of acting.
Throughout the day, for a couple of minutes at a time just stop and ask yourself
“What am I thinking?”
“What am I emotions am I experiencing?”
“What sensations are going on in my body?”
When inevitably you slip up or stop following through on you plans for change – DON”T GIVE UP.
Take it as a learning experience and bring in an attitude of curiosity. Ask yourself WHY you stopped or went back to the old habits. Ask yourself what thoughts were behind it. Ask yourself if there are certain feeling states that caused you to revert back.
The only failure is when you give up completely. Each time you ‘fail’ is actually an opportunity to grow, to better understand yourself and how your brain works.
Change is going to happen whatever we do or not do – just make sure it happens in the direction that you want
It’s that time again – the carol singers are already at the door, there’s crap Christmas music on a loop in the supermarkets and you are probably wondering where the hell did the last year go.
Far from being a time of “good-will to all men” it’s actually a time when our worst selves emerge.
Christmas and New Year are difficult for many reasons and a large number of people cope with the madness by over-indulging with alcohol, drugs or food.
It can be a very challenging time to stay sober. [Read more…]
Alcohol and drug addiction doesn’t discriminate. All around the world, there are people from all walks of life trying to get by while abusing drugs or alcohol. In the US alone, over 40 million people fit the criteria for clinical addiction, yet only 10 percent of them will seek treatment.
If you are starting to think you might have a problem, what is stopping you from reaching out for help?
You think your problem isn’t serious enough.
Maybe you just binge drink on occasional weekends. Or perhaps you just have a few beers or glasses of wine a night. You might be functioning well on the outside, going to work, looking after your children, exercising, etc, but on the inside, you feel unfulfilled. [Read more…]
If you are along the anxious attachment spectrum you will get ‘activated’ within close relationships. This means that your stress response system is constantly triggered. You will scan for signs of abandonment and tend not to trust other people’s motives. Because there is always a heightened sense of anxiety, you will probably struggle with worrying about what other people are thinking, doing, feeling and can end up looking for excessive reassurance. You will often feel a sense of unease and this can result in:
In my last post, I talked about the link between addiction and connection – or lack of it. And how our earliest experiences shape the way our brains develop and generate a specific ‘attachment’ style.
Knowing your attachment style and how it affects your thoughts feelings and behaviours can provide an incredible sense of relief. It can help you to start making sense of the struggles that you have and can give you a focus of how to work through them.
Attachment theory is fast becoming the leading theory on why we are prone to a whole host of psychological issues including depression, anxiety, relationship conflict and addiction. Attachment theory is not new; it has been around for decades. But what IS new is the validation it now has from research in neuroscience.
So what is it exactly?
In a nutshell, the type of attachment bond we have with our caregivers in the first few years of life dictates how we live, love and learn for the rest of our lives. Or as John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, said “from the cradle to the grave” [Read more…]
This was the claim made in an article that went viral early last year.
The writer, Johann Hari, came to this conclusion after 3 years of research interviewing addicts, their families and friends, scientists, politicians, doctors and addiction treatment specialists across 9 countries.
For many people, this was a totally new take on addiction, but for researchers of human attachment, it’s what they have known for years.
Results from the longest ever study on human happiness report that over and above everything else it is the quality of our closest relationships that predict health and happiness – and loneliness is toxic.
Good relationships keep us happy, healthy, fulfilled and alive for longer, and loneliness kills.
So why does a lack of connection lead to addiction?
We humans are hard-wired to connect to others. As a species, we had very little going for us in terms of protection. We were not especially fast or strong. We didn’t have a poisonous sting or a venomous bite.
Our only protection was in numbers and so for 99 % of our time on earth we lived in groups of about 40 people.
Evolution ensured our survival by giving us built-in attachment systems that pushed us to stay close to the tribe and emotions that ensured we cared enough about others to make sure they survived. Without these, we would never have survived as a species. Times might be different now – we can survive physically on our own – but our biological make-up is still the same as it was 10, 000 years ago.
Our biology still needs us to connect. Our brains are still wired to attach. When we experience emotional separation (you can still feel lonely in a crowd), our brain activates distressing emotions and a heightened stress response in an attempt to push us to connect.
If connection fails or we withdraw and isolate, the stress continues until we make the connections that we need. Often we are unaware of what is happening- we might not be able to recognise feelings of loneliness or emotional isolation. But our brain does. It doesn’t matter if we have all the money we need, a good career, a good-looking spouse and a few children running around.
If our needs for emotional connection are ignored, our brain will generate feelings of emptiness, restlessness, stress and deep dis-satisfaction.
We need others to help us reduce stress and regulate emotions. We need others to feel worthwhile, important, needed and cared for. Ultimately, we need others to feel that we matter and that we belong. When we don’t have this, we look for other ways to manage stress and numb the uncomfortable feelings that arise from feeling like we don’t matter.
We will attach to anything that gives relief and a sense of stability.
We attach to substances and we become addicted.
Why do some people find it so hard to make connections?
Our ability to navigate relationships successfully depends very much on us having certain skills.
Essentially, we need the ability to manage our own emotions well and understand the emotions of others. We need to have the capacity to feel empathy and compassion. We need to be able to exercise self-control and restraint and be able to look at situations from another person’s perspective.
The part of the brain that takes care of all of this (the pre-frontal cortex) develops within the first few years of life. But in order to develop to its optimal capacity, we need specific emotional input from the adults around us.
If we grow up with emotionally attuned care-givers that recognise and consistently respond to our emotional needs, the pre-frontal cortex develops to its full potential and we will develop a ‘secure’ attachment style. Securely attached children generally feel safe and comfortable in relationships. They have a basic sense of trust and safety and have developed the skills they need to relate to others in satisfactory ways – allowing for healthy connections
However, if our early relationships are neglectful, unpredictable, abusive, traumatic or emotionally lacking -we can end up with deficits in brain structures and an insecure attachment style. This leaves us struggling with emotional difficulties, a lack of self control and a vulnerability to acting on impulsive urges – traits that make it difficult to form and maintain connection. And traits that are very characteristic of addiction.
Without the stabilizing presence of close meaningful relationships, we can end up attaching to substances to provide the comfort, stability and emotional regulation that we lack.
The good news is – the brain has an incredible capacity to change and grow no matter how old you are.
It is through and within our connection to others that our brains can grow and change. Just as relationships can damage – they can also heal. Building meaningful, healthy and intimate relationships helps us to form new neural pathways and build up parts of the brain that we need to manage emotions, over-ride impulsiveness and ultimately overcome addictive behaviour.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting a series of articles that go into more detail about attachment styles. You can find out what your style is and how it might be affecting your life. I’ll also be giving some practical steps you can use to start re-wiring your brain – so check back very soon.
In the meantime, you might want to listen to my interview with Lee Davy from The Alcohol & Addiction podcast -in which we discuss attachment and addiction and the importance of connection in recovery.
The debate about the nature of addiction has raged for decades. Is it disease? Is it a matter of choice? Is it a weakness of character? A moral failing? Today, the most widespread and prevalent view is that addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disease. The majority of addiction treatment centres in the US and the UK address addiction from a disease perspective, prescribing total abstinence from the offset and using the twelve Steps as their treatment method.
So why is there still a debate about the disease concept of addiction? it doesn’t happen with other diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease or multiple sclerosis. Well, basically because:
First of all let’s look at some of the principles that drive the disease concept and the evidence the refutes it. [Read more…]
Well let’s look at the options; you can do one of five things
So I assume if you are still reading you’ve probably tried options 1-4 numerous times before and perhaps they didn’t end so well? In that case, read on and look at what you need to do to get through this relapse. [Read more…]
