We will be collaborating for a relatively brief period of time to achieve the ambitious goal of changing the course of your life. It is quite a challenge, and requires that we each play our parts well. My job is simple and without conflict—to provide you with tools that are effective in helping you do your heroic work. Your challenge is much more complex and full of conflict: You are both the entity we seek to change through our collaboration—the puppy, aka the Experiential Processing System—and the entity responsible for the biography and so wants to train the puppy to respond in accord with its own best interests —my collaborator, aka, the Rational Processing System [see Two Minds for a more detailed description of these entities].

I stress our collaborative relationship because of the common tendency to turn responsibility for selecting methods and goals over to the experts. You must be the one to define the objective of our collaboration, and to direct our efforts to the particular problems and circumstances that you encounter along your passage.

In contrast to conventional self-help books and treatment programs in which each participant gets essentially the same treatment, the premise of this course is that there is no external salvation from dependence. The best way to escape an addictive trap is to learn the pertinent cause-and-effects principles and accept the responsibility of training the puppy to respond to them in ways that avoid entrapment.

The puppy is passive in that it has no choice but to follow the path of least resistance. The rational part of you must actively train the puppy in ways that don’t scare it or give it the message that it is no damn good. I have attempted to design the forms in the section so that you develop the experiential competencies rapidly and in ways that protect you from the recursive traps commonly associated with such efforts.

We are not limited to the formats presented below, and I am open to any ideas you have for forms and methods that may improve the effectiveness of our collaboration.

Prior to each session

Formal sessions are opportunities us to collaborate directly. We have limited time and much to do, so I recommend you invest some effort to prepare for each session.
•The Relapse Prevention Feedback Form. Feel free to leave fields blank and to include as much or as little detail as you like.

•In many cases the Incentive Use Disorder is a consequence of Mood Disorder. If depression, anger, or anxiety is an issue for you, Please download The Mood Treatment Manual. In addition, please complete the Depression Symptom Inventory and the Anxiety Symptom Inventory periodically;. we can specify the frequency when we develop our plan.

The Inter-Session Interval [ISI]

Most of my clients are articulate individuals who find it easier to perform well during our sessions than to perform well between sessions [during the ISI]. My office—and probably my presence—is likely to evoke a psychological state that is incompatible with lapsing, and so it is easy to underestimate the difficulty of performing as intended during high-risk situations.

When you are in my office you sincerely want to do what it takes to achieve the outcome you say you want. I have heard it before, so please take my word for it:. Despite how sincere you are when you decide to change your ways, that motivation is temporary. When you are in a relapse crisis, you will experience a different motivation which at that time will feel just as sincere. Motivation is state-dependent!.

Consider the difficulty of your task. Your success depends upon how you perform during extremely difficult circumstances. During the critical moments of the crisis you may be motivated to experience the pleasure or relief of using the incentive, and at the same time it is likely that your cognitive resources will be depleted, otherwise occupied, or asleep at the wheel, leaving the puppy in control.

Puppy Training Protocols

If I were with you during the high-risk situation, perhaps I could bring you down from the pathogenic trance that was promoting relapse. Of course, it would not be a high-risk situation if I or any other ally was around to help you through it.

When your cognitive resources are unavailable—as will be the case when you are in a high-risk situation—the puppy will not have access to the fabulous resources of your Rational Processing system. The puppy wants to do the best it can, but it needs a wise and gentle master to prepare it for the challenges it is sure to encounter. Here are some goals of puppy training:
•The ability to keep your head despite local conditions that might evoke a high-risk state.
•The ability to recover your head—that is, to shift from a high-risk state [craving, depression, boredom, etc] to a more resourceful state, in which you have access to your good cognitive skills and your core motivation.
•The ability to perform as intended, even when you don’t feel like it.

Puppy training lacks the glamour of the insights and epiphanies of talk therapy. However, the puppy needs the attention and the firm but gentle guidance. Generally, my greatest challenge as a therapist is training the trainer. Learning how to talk to and discipline the psyche is an important skill in the development of will. The trainer must be especially kind and gentle [lean over backwards here] because the puppy may not want to play if all it gets is punishment. Keeping the puppy engaged in the training is the most important skill of the trainer.

The experiential processing system is much stupider than the rational processing system, and the benefits of training will come much slower than the you may expect. Trainers find it difficult to hang in there long enough to do what needs to be done. Even when the know what to expect, many clients take it for granted that they will do what they agreed to do, especially since it sounded so sensible during the session.

Perhaps by now you will agree with me that performing as intended during the high-risk situation is much more challenging than most people realize. It turns out that the intention to train the puppy is also state-dependent. Even though you may be highly motivated to do the exercises at one moment, your motivation may be different at another.. If follow-through turns out to be an issue for you (and it probably will), the Intentions & Action Form will help.

Note: To add insult to injury, any failure to perform as intended is demoralizing. Demoralization is our foe’s most powerful weapon to achieve its goal of getting you to capitulate and relapse completely. Because I have so much respect for your foe, I have included forms and protocols to help you structure your training sessions. You must do whatever it takes to strengthen your faculties and skills you will need during the crises you are bound to encounter.

A switch in metaphors from puppy training to martial arts training is appropriate at this point. Bruce Lee performs well during the emotional crisis of a fight, because he has developed a range of competencies such as appreciating the kinds of attacks that are likely, identifying the particular threats and how to cope with them, executing his coping responses well at the critical moments, etc.. Just as a dedicated martial artist can develop complex skills to the point that he can perform them spinally during a crisis, you can do the same. Albeit, this competence does not come out of thin air; you have to earn it.

Some of the coping tactics our collaboration develops for you to test may be surprising, or require that you do things you’ve never done before. We will not know if they are effective until you try them out during high-risk situations. This is expensive research, because it requires that you execute the coping tactic, when doing so is particularly difficult. The stressors and temptations of a relapse crisis will be so disruptive that you will have to practice the coping response slowly in a safe controlled environment for a while before it is strong enough to test under the adverse conditions of a personal experiment. While I encourage you to be creative in developing personal experiments, do not think that you will be able to execute the intended coping response during a real crisis without considerable preparation.

The PIG (the Problem of Immediate Gratification) is a defining feature of incentive use disorders.  Individuals suffering the negative consequences of their excessive appetites want immediate gratification of the desire to be free of their problem. 

Over-eaters want quick weight loss.  Sadly, weight loss is not a cure for obesity!  The vast majority of the participants of diets and weight loss programs will weigh more a year later than they did when they began their program. One- and two-year outcome research for substance abuse, gambling, and other addictive disorders shows similar patterns of short-term behavior change—while the individual is under the influence of the program—followed by an increasing likelihood of relapse with time from program completion, typically reaching around 80% within the first year after treatment.  

There is no external salvation from dependence on an external agent. To the extent an external agent—a treatment provider, program, support group–was responsible for the behavioral control, relapse is likely when the salience of the external source of control diminishes with time. 

An alternative to admitting powerlessness over a disease and turning responsibility for outcome over to an external agent is to admit you have freewill and accept the responsibility to develop the faculties required to act as you intend despite the influence of local conditions.

Volition is a controversial topic and many people believe that willpower is a destructive illusion.  Most everyone with an excessive appetite has tried what they call willpower—”white knuckling it”—without success.  However, if willpower is defined as acting as intended despite the influence of local conditions, then the term describes a faculty worth developing.

It is frustrating to me that many individuals cannot tell me much about what happened during the moments preceding the critical first violation of their commitment. The observation is especially perplexing considering the extensive detail the same client is capable of providing when describing some trivial conflict at work. Can this counter-intuitive observation provide a clue to understanding failures of will?

To change your behavior intentionally you must be awake at the critical moment of decision so you can intentionally choose the path that leads to the intended outcome, instead of mindlessly following the path of least resistance.

When clever attorney, H, cannot tell me what happened along the path that led to his relapse, it suggests that he was asleep at the wheel. His conscious mind was not fully engaged; he was on autopilot. He relapsed because he failed to intentionally guide his behavior during the critical high-risk moments.

Perhaps “asleep at the wheel” is too strong. At some level he was conscious of what he was doing. H reports that he observed himself following a path he had previously recognized as harmful and vowed to never follow again. He reports that he remembered his vow of abstinence, yet he simply did not exert the effort required to perform as intended and mindlessly followed the familiar sequence to the first lapse . . . demoralization and eventual relapse.

Autonomous Behavior
Performance becomes easier with practice. In fact, with enough practice, performance can become autonomous—that is, it requires no conscious attention at all. Consider activities such as driving or using a computer keyboard. When first attempted, performance is slow, hesitant, and filled with error, but with practice speed increases, variability decreases, and execution becomes increasingly effortless. What once demanded considerable attention can now be performed rapidly and accurately with little or no awareness of the component actions.

Conscious attention is not required to initiate an autonomous sequence. Mere exposure to the triggering stimulus is sufficient, and, once initiated, the action has a ballistic quality, tending to run on to completion all by itself. For example, when driving, a red light is sufficient to elicit a complex sequence of events that does not require my attention for successful performance. Conscious awareness is not required for my foot to move from the accelerator to the brake pedal or to guide the pressure on the brake to bring the vehicle safely and smoothly to a stop. Rapid, accurate, effortless performance that makes no demands on valuable conscious resources has obvious advantages. The down side of overtraining a behavioral sequence becomes apparent when you want to change it. For example, an experienced driver would take longer to learn to reliably stop at a green light than it originally took to learn to stop at a red light. Until the driver has acquired the new habit, [s]he must pay attention in order to override the well-practiced behavior of driving through a green light.

Stephen Tiffany , whose views have been paraphrased in the preceding paragraphs, suggests that after considerable practice, addictive behavior becomes autonomous. While autonomous behavior can be overridden, it requires conscious attention to do so. The karma of repeatedly using an incentive is that the path that leads to it becomes progressively easier to follow. As a result, whenever your conscious resources are occupied by a demanding social situation or powerful emotional state, or are diminished by fatigue or intoxication, you will tend to follow this default path.

A mindless relapse occurs when mindful processing, which is necessary to interrupt the autonomous sequence, is not deployed when needed. This may occur when the individual was simply not conscious of the original commitment until the relapse sequence was already well under way. Less dramatic, but probably more common: The individual is more or less aware of the unfolding sequence of events leading to the lapse, and is also fully aware of the intention to abstain, yet simply fails to put forth the effort of will required to interrupt the autonomous chain of events.

The decision to restrict access to a rewarding incentive sets up a conflict. On one side there is the well exercised behavioral sequence that leads to incentive use. Against this is pitted a poorly exercised behavioral sequence that would motivate the individual to respond to a crisis as intended. This is a lopsided conflict; the path of least resistance has the advantage. The ability to keep your head in the face of provocative stimuli is essential.

Understand this: You will not have the resources to respond mindfully during the crisis. You must strengthen your intended overt and covert responses through rehearsal and exercise, to the point where they will be of use to you when you need them.

As a professional boxer can hire sparring partners to help him hone his skills, you can improve your skills by focusing on good performance during the high-risk situations you encounter in real-time. Unlike the boxer, you will not have to pay for your sparring partners—they will come up without you having to do anything special. As you continue to respond mindfully to the challenges as they arise, you will be developing and strengthening your coping skills. The Karma of performing as intended during high risk situations is that doing so becomes easier over time. With sufficient practice, performing the intended behavior becomes effortless—autonomous. The real objective of these articles is to help you transform your default path so that it takes you where you want to go.

Use It or Lose It
Habit strength, like muscle strength, increases with exercise. Each lapse strengthens the sequence of behaviors that lead to the lapse and each successful coping reaction strengthens the intended behavior sequence.

Every high-risk situation is a contest with a finite duration—generally seconds or minutes, rarely hours. You will either win by performing as intended or lose by lapsing. Each win enhances self-efficacy and exercises the responses that produced it, but each loss is demoralizing and strengthens the responses that will lead to future failures.

To change your default path you will have to dedicate the resources required to respond as intended during high-risk situations. Each time you do, the intended coping reaction is strengthened. It will take a finite number of exposures for the new reaction to become stronger than the old one. How many exposures? It takes 42 consecutive willed reactions to establish a new default reaction. Of course, I could be wrong. It might take 112 or 23, but it will not take a million. You will get better at this with practice and after perhaps 42 high-risk situations in which you acted as intended, you will find that your default path has become your path of greatest advantage.

You can succeed at this task, but you must stay mindful during this initial phase and manage each and every high-risk situation you encounter. While you are going through it, it may seem as though it will never end, but if you follow your intended path, you will look back on this stage and see that this part of the passage did not last very long, and the struggle against the pull of the incentive was not without its own rewards.

The fight-or-flight reaction is an exquisite orchestration of biological processes, which makes an organism physically stronger so that it will be able to fight powerfully or flee quickly when its life depends on it. If you ever encounter such a situation, you will be glad you have it. This power, however, comes at a price; during a fight-or-flight reaction the body is sacrificing everything else—including digestion, immune response, and higher cognitive faculties—to be physically strong now. But some people react to trivial stressors as though they were life and death. This costly error exhausts the body, making it vulnerable to disease, and exhausts the cognitive resources needed to override the influence of local stressors and temptations.

Rational Emotive Therapy
Dr. Albert Ellis described a useful way to defuse excessive emotionality: When you experience a fight-or-flight reaction, ask yourself, “Is this about something I want or about something I need?” If you don’t get what you want, it is disappointing but not a matter of life and death. Indeed, it is often advantageous to be cool and calm in the midst of a crisis. Sadly, some people destroy what is genuinely important to them because of their fight-or-flight reactions to trivial slights.

According to Dr. Ellis, traps of emotional over-reaction result from attachment to outcomes that are not of vital importance.

Stoicism
If your boss falsely accuses you of some sin you did not commit, it is indeed frustrating but it is not a matter of life or death. Even if you lose your job over it, it is still not a matter of life and death. The Stoic, Epictetus, observed: “A beggar doesn’t have a job, but he is alive.”

Epictetus preceded Dr. Ellis by about two thousand years, and his philosophy produced heroes. Consider an archer who strives to shoot excellently and will not be disappointed if he shoots well, even if he doesn’t win the competition. Winning is desirable, but there will be times when an excellent archer shoots well and still—for reasons beyond his control, such as a sudden gust of wind or an extraordinary performance by an opponent—is not awarded first place. A non-stoic archer views this as a failure because he did not achieve the intended outcome; whereas, a stoic archer views it as a success because he shot well. The stoic is focused on performing well, not on the outcome of the performance.

In Epictetus’ words:

On the one hand, there are things that are in our power, whereas other things are not in our power. In our power are opinion, impulse, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is our own doing. Things not in our power include our body, our possessions, our reputations, our status, and, in a word, whatever is not our own doing.

Straightaway then, train yourself to say to every unpleasant impression, ‘You are an impression, and by no means what you appear to be.’ Then examine it and test it by asking whether it concerns things that are in your power or things that are not in your power, and if it concerns something not in your power, have ready to hand the answer, ‘This is nothing to me.’

Remember that, on the one hand, desires command you to obtain what you long for, and on the other, aversions command you to avoid what you dislike. Those who fail to gain what they desire are unfortunate, whilst those who fall into what they seek to avoid are miserable.

A person’s master is the one who has power over that which is wished for or not wished for, so as to secure it or take it away. Therefore, anyone who wishes to be free should neither wish for anything nor avoid anything that depends on others; those who do not observe this rule will of necessity be the slaves of others.

When you are about to undertake some task, remind yourself what sort of business it is. If you are going out to bathe, bring to mind what happens at the baths: there will be those who splash you, those who will jostle you, some will be abusive to you, and others will steal from you. And thus you will undertake the affair more securely if you say to yourself from the start, ‘I wish to take a bath, but also to keep my moral character in accordance with nature.’ Do likewise with every undertaking. For thus, if anything should happen that interferes with your bathing, be ready to say, ‘Oh well, it was not only this that I wanted, but also to keep my moral character in accordance with nature, and I cannot do that if I am irritated by things that happen.’ Say to yourself, ‘This is the price for peace of mind, and this is the price for being free of troubles. Nothing can be had without paying the price.’

Remember that the insult does not come from the person who abuses you or hits you, but from your judgment that such people are insulting you. Therefore, whenever someone provokes you, be aware that it is your own opinion that provokes you. Try, therefore, in the first place, not to be carried away by your impressions, for if you can gain time and delay, you will more easily control yourself.

According to Epictetus, the traps of emotional over-reaction result from attachment to outcomes that you do not control.

Attachment to outcomes hinders ongoing performance:

• Emotionality: If the archer needs to win, the prospect of failure is threatening and produces a biological reaction, nervousness, which undermines the steady hand required of the task.
• Distraction: The archer will perform best when his attention is focused on shooting to the complete exclusion of everything else. To the extent the archer thinks of winning rather than shooting, the prize divides him, and the need to win drains him of power

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According to Chaing Tsu, the traps of emotional over-reaction result from attachment to outcomes.

Negative emotional states are not necessarily pathological. Fear, for example, is an adaptive motivational response to threat. The bio-psychological changes that result from an encounter with an objective threat, a dangerous animal for example, are adaptive in that they prepare the individual for fight or flight, and, importantly, the emotional reaction dissipates after the threat has passed.

The fear evoked by worrying about events that may occur in the future is different. Here the emotional state was evoked not by an objective threat, but by the worrier’s predictions about a potential threat. The fearful emotional state does not dissipate with time because there are always potential threats in the future. Rather than energizing adaptive behavior, the emotional state evoked by thinking this way depletes the very resources required to deal with objective threats.

Depressed individuals tend to see the world through negative filters and react to environmental challenges with negative expectations, an orientation that may interfere with good performance. Anxious individuals have a different set of perceptual biases and response tendencies, but their emotional reaction also hinders their ability to cope with challenges. The fact that individuals continue to react to events that happen in ways that make them miserable suggests that they are not learning from their painful experience.

Subjective Reality
Some of life’s problems are self-correcting. You catch a cold, and the body’s immune system learns to recognize the pathogen and defeat it. A child learning to ride a bicycle may fall a few times but will eventually get it. People who have fallen into a neurotic trap may never get it, because their pathogenic beliefs cause them to act in ways that confirm these beliefs. For example, the belief that you will not be able to cope with a challenge may impair performance and produce the unwanted outcome.

We assume that our experience is a natural reflection of objective reality. In fact, the limitations of our sensory apparatus filter what comes through from the objective world to our conscious awareness. The subjective reality we experience is a creative construction of our nervous system. Everything looks different when we expect success than when we expect failure. We appraise environmental threats and our abilities to cope with them through one set of lenses when we are confident and through another when we are anxious. Because the lenses are invisible to use, we assume that we see the objective truth despite the continual shifting of lenses as our state changes from one situation to another. [For more about state-dependent perception, please click here].

Recursive Structures
Suicide bombers and corporate executives are made of the same biological material, but are biased by different beliefs and hence experience different subjective realities. There are many ways to misperceive, but some distortions are special: They have a recursive structure and so can maintain themselves indefinitely.

Blushing is an example of a recursive structure. If blushing is embarrassing for me, then any feedback that I am blushing enhances the physiological reaction. The more obvious the blush, the more embarrassed I feel, and the more embarrassed I feel, the more I blush, and so on.

Consider how a self-sabotaging recursive structure can continue to diminish the quality of life throughout an individual’s biography:

Barry, a 31 year-old engineer, has low self-efficacy regarding his social skills, and worries about making a fool of himself at the Friday office party. Thinking about it evokes emotions, appraisals, and behavioral tendencies that impair his social skills. In fact, Barry can be very funny and quick-witted when he is in the right state of mind, but when a co-worker made a joke at his expense at the office party he was inarticulate. Although he would have loved to respond with a clever comeback, his expectation of humiliation determined which state-dependent talents and abilities were available to him at the critical moment.

Barry’s story illustrates the cause-and-effect relationships that tend to evoke self-confirmatory bias. Barry’s belief that he is socially inept impairs his social performance, which confirms his handicapping belief. His social life is continually influenced by his expectation of social failure, and the objective evidence that Barry does, in fact, perform poorly in social situations continually validates this expectation. Because it has a recursive structure, it can persist indefinitely and continue to have a negative impact on Barry’s actions and how his life unfolds. Fortunately for Barry, he had the intellectual gifts to appreciate how this trap works and to change the cognitive structure that maintained it.

Self-Reference and Reciprocal Feedback
Recursion, in mathematics and computer science, is a method of defining functions in which the function being defined is applied within its own definition. The term is more generally used to describe a process of reciprocal feedback; for example, when two mirrors face each other a recurring sequence of nested images appears in each.

One kind of reciprocal structure is the Circular Chain, which, like a snake swallowing its own tail, has no end and so may repeat indefinitely. Self-sabotaging sequences that have this structure are particularly destructive because they can continue indefinitely. Low self-efficacy and dependence on external agency have a reciprocal relationship of this kind. For example:

H has become dependent on alcohol because it helps him cope with the difficulties of his life. He seeks a solution to his problem from an intensive treatment program. He does fine while in treatment but does not develop the coping skills required to manage high-risk situations independently. Soon after the external supports provided by the program fade away he relapses. The relapse is demoralizing and supports his belief that he is powerless and must depend upon an external agent to help him cope. Sadly, the mind set of powerlessness prevents him from developing the procedural skills required to finally escape this problem

Positive Feedback
When mirrors are parallel, the nested reflections do not go on forever because real mirrors are not perfectly reflective. Pathogenic structures have no such limitation. In fact, some produce amplification or positive feedback—analogous to a microphone that has gotten too close to a speaker causing a rapid and relentless magnification of the sound to the extreme. Panic attacks are produced by positive feedback of the fight-or-flight response: Specifically, the symptoms of anxiety, such as rapid heartbeat, are perceived as threatening, which results in the secretion of more fight-or-flight hormones, and so on.

Positive feedback can cause bingeing in much the same way. In the example below, the payoff—escape into mindless eating—is used as a method to help an individual cope with a negative emotion. The suffering produced by the choice amplifies the motivation to escape.

Desiree hates being fat and feels shame whenever she thinks about her obesity or sees herself in the mirror. She has also discovered that she can escape her self-critical monologue and feelings of shame by becoming absorbed in the pleasurable experience of mindless eating. The self-loathing caused by her failure to restrain her eating amplifies the bad feelings she has for herself, which increases her motivation to escape into the warm comfort of mindless eating. In this case, her emotional reaction to the failure is the amplification mechanism: The worse she feels, the more she is driven to eat, and the more she eats, the worse she feels

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Ruminative Self-Focus
A particular kind of reciprocal feedback forms the core structure of pathological depression, anger, and anxiety: Ruminative self-focus is a thinking strategy in which the focus of attention is the self, how one feels, and why one feels that way. It is ruminative in the sense that one goes over the same thoughts and images without achieving a resolution or plan of action. It masquerades as a problem-solving orientation, but very little problem solving actually takes place. As a rule of thumb, when the content of the rumination is the past, a depressive disorder is the diagnosis; and when the future provides the content, the rumination is called worrying and shows up as generalized anxiety disorder. Because of its recursive structure, ruminative self-focus maintains itself and can diminish the quality of an entire biography.

Julius Kuhl’s research on conditioned helplessness shows that when people fail, their focus shifts from figuring out how to be successful (problem solving) to perseverating thoughts about themselves, how they feel and why they feel this way (ruminative self-focus). This turns out to be a poor strategy because the rumination consumes cognitive resources that are then not available for problem solving. Kuhl found that conditioned helplessness appears to be maintained by the reciprocal relationship between failure and ruminative self-focus: Failure leads to ruminative self-focus and ruminative self-focus impairs performance, which increases the likelihood of failure.

Recent research on depression and the quality of social performance shows that negative mood leads to self-reflective rumination, and self-reflective rumination leads to negative mood. Moreover, the ruminative self-focus and the depressed emotional state it engenders are found to impair subjects’ social problem-solving abilities and to decrease their self-efficacy regarding their social skills, both of which impair social performance. Poor social performance, in turn, may result in loneliness and other negative consequences, which set up higher level recursive structures.

As you may have already guessed, any attempt to improve the self carries with it a trap that is especially debilitating to individuals who become emotionally attached to outcomes, or who are judgmental toward themselves.

The belief that “now I’ve made up my mind, so acting as I intend to act will be easy” is an example of the Soul Illusion. Have some respect for the challenge of acting as intended during crises. This is a difficult task. To perform effectively during crises, requires that you interrupt the recursive sequences that can deplete your cognitive resources. For some ancient solutions to these traps, please click here.

Thought Experiment: Negative Suggestion.
Try not to scratch your nose. Continue reading, but be aware that even letting your nose itch would indicate personal weakness. So try not to even think about your nose, and see if you can read to the end of this chapter without once touching your face in the area around your nose.

Trying to prevent your nose from itching may, perversely, produce the very thing you are trying to prevent. The more seriously you try the greater is the effect. Two interpretations of this perverse phenomenon are as follows:

Negative Suggestion: Negative representations are defined in terms of positive representations (their opposite), but positive representations are defined directly. For example, the statement, “It is not raining,” requires one to conceptualize the meaning of the statement, “It is raining.” Likewise, the statement, “Chester is not a pedophile,” associates the conceptualization of Chester with child molesting. Chester would be foolish to make such an assertion during his political campaign. To understand the instruction, “Don’t let your nose itch!” the reader must access a representation of an itchy nose, which evokes that very sensation.

Ironic process: To determine if you are successful at having a nose that is not itching, you must compare the current sensations with what they would be if your nose was itching. According to this interpretation, it is checking to make sure you are successful at preventing your nose from itching that causes the nose to itch. Ironic, isn’t it?

Reactance
Humans hate restrictions—especially of those freedoms they already have. Reactance refers to the motivation to react or rebel against restriction. In one study, two-year-old boys accompanied their mothers into a room containing equally attractive toys. The toys were arranged so that one was easily available to the child while the other stood behind a transparent Plexiglas barrier, out of reach. Which toy do you think the little boys wanted? This is one among many examples of the rule of thumb: Forbidding something increases its desirability.

Attribution Theory: The Insult Is the Injury
Smoking cessation research shows that, on average, successful quitters failed seven times before they finally made it. Most smokers, however, interpret a failure to quit as an indication of their intrinsic weakness. The belief that the cause of the failure is within the self is called an internal attribution for failure. Explanations of one’s failure, which appeal to motivation, intelligence, or character defect, are examples of internal attribution for failure. The belief that the same inadequacy that caused me to fail in the past will cause me to fail in the future is an example of a stable attribution for failure.

Internal, stable attributions for failure are associated with low self-efficacy. If you believe that you don’t have what it takes to succeed at this challenge, and, moreover, that you are not going to change, then it is understandable that you would not invest much of your own effort and instead turn yourself over to a treatment provider or a higher power. However, good long-term outcome requires that you persevere through difficult challenges, and internal, stable attributions for your past failures are demoralizing and rob you of the energy and perseverance required for good long-term outcome. Efficacy-enhancing imagery, contemplation, and other trance formative exercises are included in the kit. These tools are especially useful during times of crisis when your self-efficacy may be threatened.

Paradoxically, the belief that, “I cannot succeed at this task,” often results from an initial underestimate of the difficulty of this task. You might think, “It shouldn’t be that hard to change my ways once I make up my mind, so my history of relapse means there must be something wrong with me.” This demoralizing belief results from underestimating what it takes to end an addictive relationship.

Attribution and Self Image
Consider the following study, which demonstrates how internal attribution and counter-regulatory motivation can work together to influence one’s appraisal of oneself: Teen-aged boys were told that a book was too sexually explicit to be read by those under 21. This restriction had the effect of dramatically increasing their desire to read the book. The experimenters knew that the attractiveness of the book was enhanced because the book was forbidden. However, ignorant of the principle of reactance, the boys attributed their motivation to read the book to a specific personal tendency to be attracted to lewd content. Forbidding the book had the perverse consequence of causing the subjects to believe that they were perverse.

[twg_gpo_button]
My academic training in cognitive and neural sciences along with the more expensive education earned over 3 decades of helping my clients escape the self-sabotaging traps they have created or fallen into has yielded a set of tools that will be of use to individuals who seek to follow a more advantageous path. I would like to make these tools available to anyone who could benefit. [These tools are unusual because they are experiential. Unlike the tools used to build a house or repair a car, these tools are designed to alter experience, a phenomenon that exists on a different dimension than concrete objects].

Among the tools are:

• Media files that invite the user to explore trance phenomena and develop his or her ability to manipulate it.
• Text files that include thought experiments to illustrate cognitive and behavioral tactics to manage crises of stress and temptation.
• Formats and protocols to promote that have been developed through the school of hard knocks to promote the exercise of will.

There are many possible formats to deliver this material. It turns out that I am a better psychologist than a web designer, and have been wasting a lot of time learning the rules of the many possible communication formats. It is time to make a decision [and thereby condemn the alternatives to oblivion]. One possibility is to send each lesson as an email with appropriate links. Alternative include an e-book in PDF format, or a series of web pages in html

I would be most grateful for suggestions or thoughts about the pros and cons of different formats. The easiest way to get a comment to me is by clicking here..

For example, most treatment for problem drinking is based on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which advocates that alcohol abusers admit powerlessness over their “disease” and comply with a treatment program developed and supervised by an external agent [e.g., treatment provider, support group]. For alcoholics whose cognitive or medical condition allows them no options other than to replace dependence on a substance with dependence on a more benevolent source of control, this is the only viable approach. However some problem drinkers can develop the skills and faculties to act in accord with their interests and principles, even during crises. For those capable of exercising will, promoting the idea that they have a disease over which they are powerless can increase their dependence and expectations of being helpless during a crisis.

The Problem of Immediate Gratification (The PIG)
Addicts are suckers for the promise of an immediate payoff. True to form, most seek immediate gratification of their desire to be free of their problem. Turning responsibility for good outcome over to a powerful external agent generally makes them feel better right away., Indeed, accepting the passive, patient role does promote good short-term outcome as long as the external source of control [treatment provider, support group, rehab program] is salient. The downside of this strategy shows up some time after the program has completed and the change agent is not available to exert its influence. Individuals who are not prepared to cope with crises of stress and temptation are likely to relapse when they encounter high-risk situations on their own.

Over the past 30 years, psychologist William Dubin, Ph.D. has accompanied thousands of individuals through their passage to freedom from dependence. The Path of Greatest Advantage: How to escape addictive traps and act in accord with your interests and principles is the resource kit that has emerged from these collaborations. The ambitious goal of this kit is to enhance the user’s ability to follow his or her path of greatest advantage rather than yield in the direction of least resistance.

“Depending upon an external agent to free you from slavery is part of the slave mentality that maintains the addictive trap. You become free of dependence when you can act in accord with your own interests despite the pull of local stressors and temptations. The capability to exercise your will emerges during a developmental passage that no one can take for you nor spare you,” says Dr. Dubin.

The passage from dependence to personal sovereignty is a difficult one with many traps and pitfalls. Real escape from dependence requires that the individual, rather than an external source of control, be the responsible agent of change. The Path of Greatest Advantage provides methods and tools developed by Dr. Dubin and the thousands of collaborators he has accompanied through their passages to freedom from dependence. Reviewing the text can spare the kit’s the falls and painful lessons of cause-and-effect that these collaborations have identified and resolved. More than passive reading of text is required to develop the skills and faculties to escape an addictive trap. Supplementing the printed manual are audio and multimedia tools including thought experiments, meditation exercises, and hypnotic inductions designed to enhance the user’s cognitive and imaginative faculties.

Good long-term outcome is the byproduct of exercising these faculties during the real-time crises each user is bound to encounter. Each individual is different and each will develop a unique solution to his or her problem. The kit offers several general strategies to approach the problem, along with a wide range of specific tactics to cope with crises.

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I am a psychologist who works with those who can afford my fee. My clients tend to be impressive individuals who generally accomplish what they set out to accomplish; they typically develop the necessary skills and work industriously until they achieve their goal. But when it comes to controlling their use of a particular incentive [e.g., alcohol, food, sex, gambling] they perform less well, astoundingly less well.

Perseverance and Self-Efficacy
In contrast to ordinary language in which a word may mean different things to different individuals, a technical term has a single definition. Self-Efficacy refers to the expectation that one can master the challenge. “I can fix any computer problem” is an example of the confident expectation of a person with high self-efficacy in that domain. That same person may have low self-efficacy in another domain: “I am a nerd and will probably be socially awkward at the party.”

As you would expect, self-efficacy influences performance: People with high self-efficacy can tolerate physical discomfort and surprising amounts of frustration, and yet they persevere, creatively solve problems, and stay the course until one way or another they accomplish what they set out to accomplish. In contrast, people with low self-efficacy tend to abandon the effort after minor discomforts or frustrations. “I’m not going to succeed anyway, so why suffer more than necessary?” is an example of the demoralized attitude of a person with low self-efficacy in a particular domain.

Achieving a worthwhile outcome often requires that you tolerate some discomfort or frustration. A mountain climber would never achieve the intended outcome if [s]he abandoned the task at the first sign of discomfort or frustration. It is persevering in the face of challenge that is part of the adventure of mountain climbing. But discomfort and frustration do not evoke a heroic reaction from people with low self-efficacy. Instead of triggering resolve and creative problem solving, setbacks and discomfort often elicit negative emotional reactions such as hopelessness, guilt, or self-loathing, which may motivate them to abandon the effort. People relapse because they misperceive the nature of their challenge and underestimate what is required to achieve good outcome.

A Peak Experience
Mountain climbing is a metaphor for a difficult but surmountable challenge. It would be foolhardy to attempt a serious climb without proper preparation or without the understanding that you will probably encounter physical discomfort and difficult challenges along the way. Despite the dangers and obstacles, most people who set out to climb a mountain successfully achieve their goal and remember their adventures as peak experiences. Mountain climbing is hard and often painful, but people take it on voluntarily without financial compensation because it’s fun to experience the enhanced self-efficacy that results from mastering a difficult challenge. In fact, when competent individuals have realistic expectations about the nature of their challenge, they tend to perform responsibly, and persevere—despite the physical and mental discomforts they encounter—until the goal is achieved. The difficulty of the challenge is in fact an essential part of the story, and the whole enterprise—including the discomfort—is often remembered as a positive experience.

In contrast, the vast majority of people who resolve to change their relationship with an addictive incentive do not have realistic expectations about the nature of their challenge. Consequently, they relapse, become demoralized, and lose faith in their ability to overcome their problem. The resulting diminishment of low self-efficacy makes future failures more likely, which in turn lowers self-efficacy, and so it goes.

It is important to distinguish between process and outcome. The mountain summit is the nominal or outcome goal of the mountain climber’s efforts. Performing well is the process goal. For the climber, the real goal of going mountain climbing is the peak experience that results from engaging the challenge. The function of the summit is to provide a focus that gives structure to the activity and later to the story the climber will tell friends, family, and self. If, for example, a storm developed during the climb and the team performed brilliantly by getting everyone off the mountain with no injuries, the climber would feel successful despite failing to achieve the outcome goal.

Major life accomplishments emerge over time as you systematically solve the problems encountered along the way. In domains in which you are successful, it is likely that you focus on the task rather than on self-evaluation. Actual success is encouraged by an attitude that permits you to competently and consistently perform all the actions required to achieve your goal, the pleasant ones as well as the unpleasant ones. Ironically, low self-efficacy often causes people to focus more on outcomes than process. Understand this: Good outcome is a byproduct of good performance.

Self-Efficacy Research Highlights

Individuals who have high self-efficacy are willing to tolerate physical discomfort and psychological frustration without abandoning the path to their goal.
• Individuals with high self-efficacy tend to employ an action oriented thinking style—that is, they focus on how to solve the problems.
• Action oriented thinking makes success more likely.

Individuals with low self-efficacy tend to abandon their goal in the face of even minor obstacles
• Individuals with low self-efficacy tend to employ a state oriented thinking style—that is, they focus on how they feel and why they feel that way.
• State oriented thinking makes failure more likely.

For a discussion of self-efficacy, social anxiety, and depression please click here.

Thought Experiment: Efficacy Enhancing Imagery.
Consider an area of your life in which you are usually successful—athletic, artistic, occupational, social, etc—and imagine what it feels like to be you when you take on a challenge in this domain. Elaborate this imagery until you experience the confident state associated with high self-efficacy. Now, imagine that you are presented with an impressive new challenge in this domain: What is your attitude toward it? How would you expect to react to the discomforts and frustrations you encounter

Below is a list of strategies I have accumulated over the years. Please feel free to add to the list, make comments and to give feedback on what works.

Dayenu/Successive Approximation. “Dayenu” in Hebrew means “that will suffice” (translated to the future tense) “that will suffice.” In psychological terminology, this approach is called “successive approximation”. It means that if you have something hard to do, take the tiniest step in that direction and give yourself a slap on the back for doing it – doing something physical like that is actually important – even if that’s only as far as you get.

~Dr. Tina’s Aside~

When I first moved to Austin, I was by myself. I didn’t really know anyone. So, I felt invisible and vulnerable. That made it hard for me to push myself to attend any kind of social function where I might meet people. So, I’d instruct myself to choose what I would wear if I were to go. A big cheer for myself later – really! – I acknowledge “Dayenu” this is good enough for now; I can stop here.” If I felt I could get dressed, I would, but if that was only as far as I got, Dayneu, pat on the back…….It will at least get you moving. At some point, it will get you there.

Reward – Simply enough, if I actually work on this for an hour I’ll go buy that thing I wanted. Or, on a larger scale, “if I work on this for 3 months, I’ll whisk myself off to Tahiti”. Don’t turn the rewarding over for anyone else to judge. You know if you deserve the reward. Be fair – in both directions.

With someone else – Having an exercise partner, makes it much easier to get going. If someone else is waiting for you, expecting you, counting on you, you are more likely to do it. (I wonder if this is more of a female thing.) With a partner,you have someone to talk to and to share the experience with.

~Dr. Tina’s Aside~

My walking regime began a number of years ago when Bill’s college friend came to town with his new wife who was older than we were – a grandmother, actually – and the 3 of them went bike riding. I didn’t feel fit enough to keep up. So, I went to my friend Joanne’s house and told her we were going to start walking on a regular basis. And we did. I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. So, having someone to do it with along with the shame and humiliation I felt got me going. Obviously, shame and humiliation along with desperation can also get us to do hard stuff – and sometimes it has to come down to that – but don’t start there if you don’t have to.

Minimizing its importance – For some reason, you’ve made doing this thing pretty intense. You may be using it as proof of something – how smart or dumb you are, whether or not you are as clever as you thought. So, finding a way to minimize the whole thing can be helpful. Yes – you can fool yourself!

Writing an idea about it on a scrap of paper, for example. “I just can’t write this paper,” you might think. “ I don’t think I really know what I’m doing. Well, I’ve got one idea; I’ll just put it on this napkin.” Or you might use your all-too-natural negativity “I’m going to quit any way, what difference does it make how good this is”. “I’m going to drop out of this program anyway; it doesn’t matter what they think.” (This is how I got through the first year of graduate school).

For just a short time – You can do anything for 30 minutes or 3 hours or one day.

Do it along with something else you like – typing; getting dressed up; sitting outside; eating popcorn; with music on; with some hot tea.

Agenderize – Choose the day, time and amount of time you are going to devote to it – specifically – Saturday at 1:00 for an hour. Show up – whether you actually do anything or not. Commit the time and honor the commitment. Even if you don’t do it, you at least sit with it. Don’t make it too long. The idea is to be successful at keeping the agreement with yourself.

Set up consequences in case you don’t do it – Have others expecting you to be there; to have accomplished it; to perform it. Deadlines are good. Talk to your Inner Child – “You don’t get to go/buy that/wear that unless you do it.”

Do something/anything – rather than nothing (though nothing is okay for a little bit). If you are sitting around, sleeping, watching TV just to avoid, then this can be a good place to start. Get up and put clothes in the dryer or brush your teeth or take in the mail. The idea is to stop the escape behavior. There are certainly times when doing nothing is the right thing to do. But you’ll know when it’s too much.

Do it so as to avoid doing something else more odious – One way to get your house clean is to see it as a productive way of avoiding having to do something more overwhelming. Vacuum your floors instead of doing your taxes for now. Of course, do your taxes eventually.

Do it as a solution to another problem – Walk to the pharmacy in order to pick up the prescription. Go to the uncomfortable social event by way of getting a free meal.

~Dr. Tina’s Aside~

I needed to do weight bearing exercises; you know, lifting those little barbells to fight off swinging upper arm syndrome. Nothing was working. My friend gave me some small hand held weights. I couldn’t get myself to touch them. I tried putting them by the TV. “What a good use of time,” I thought. But I never touched them. Then I found myself waiting by the answering machine for the “voice” to go through his thing. I was bored. I didn’t like just standing there. I know, I can lift those weights. Yes!

Use your obsessive tendencies where possible – Obsessive and compulsive tendencies can drive both you and those around you nuts. But it can also very useful for routinely engaging in positive habits. We used to laugh in my family about how my father would go down to the basement every day and walk a certain number of rotations around the ping pong table for exercise. As I am now turning into my father in certain ways, I find that I must walk 40 minutes a day. It turns out to be just easier to know that – like brushing teeth – it’s not a decision, there’s no conflict. I just do it. Bill likes to achieve a certain number of miles on his bike over a certain period of time. Pedometers are good that way too.

Use positive self-talk – I’m all for talking positive self-talk out loud where possible. You won’t look any weirder than people talking on invisible phones . This is do be done along with physical kudos like pats on the back or self-hugs – goofy as it sounds. What is even more important is to minimize the negative self-talk, catastrophic thinking and gloomy images. I’m all too good at catastrophic images. I tried making myself come up with a positive image for every negative one I catch myself in. Very hard to do, despite having many in my life. We’re just programmed to scan for danger.

Move away from all self-talk for a while. Meditation and mindfulness – the practice of focusing on being in the moment – allow us to be aware of the fleeting nature of thoughts, recriminations and anxious anticipations. Either of those help quiet our mind, let go of overreactions for a little while and gain some perspective.

Figure out what gets you to do the stuff you do act on – If you realize, for example, that you are more likely to do something if it is for someone else, use that information in getting yourself moving now. If you are someone who likes to be competitive, use that. If you’re a nature lover, do it outdoors. There are many ways you can use who you are to get yourself to do difficult tasks.

Figure out what gets in your way. Honor that. Get clear on what is making you anxious – failing, looking stupid, finding out you have no creativity, being rejected – those are the usual. Make it easier for yourself, considering that; with any of the above or any other way you can minimize your fear and optimize your success. Have compassion for yourself but still do what you need to do.

All of the above involve making a deal with yourself – to do what you feel is right or necessary or nice. You want your steps to be doable (even shoo-ins at first). And you want to be sure and follow through. The goal is both to succeed and to keep your promise to yourself.