3.2: The OPEN Path

It is not enough to finally decide to change [although the decision is essential], nor is it enough to develop a plan [although thinking it through is important]. You must be able to execute effectively during the crisis!

Like the ability to perform well on stage ─ following your plan during a crisis requires the development of skill to such a level that it can be performed without conscious guidance. Remember, during the crisis the cognitive resources required to intentionally guide behavior will be occupied, so the intended action must be well rehearsed.

For a variety of reasons the rigid Impeccable Path may be a poor match for you. The more flexible OPEN Path is based on the scientific method. The focus of this approach is to learn the truth about cause and effect for your particular reality.

As your biography unfolds you may encounter situations where choices which now seem preposterous will seem like a good idea. During such times you will be at risk of behaving differently than you now intend. The challenge is to do something now ─ while you have access to good cognitive resources – that will help you to perform as you now intend. The Soul Illusion causes most people to underestimate this challenge; because they believe that during high-risk situations they will be motivated to avoid lapsing, just as they are now. Part of breaking free of dependence is learning to cope with this illusion.

To follow the OPEN Path you would develop an Implementation Intention such as – “When I encounter high-risk situation X, I will execute tactic Y.” Then like a scientist you observe what happens. If you get the expected outcome you are on the right track. However, if things did not work out as you expected, nature is telling you that cause and effect play out differently than you thought, and you must modify your plan to account for this new knowledge. Again, you will ask nature about this new tactic, and be nurtured by the feedback, and so forth. Over time you will develop a more sophisticated understanding of cause and effect in your universe, and a progressively more realistic and effective set of coping tactics.

The OPEN Path refers to: Outcome – Plan – Execute ─ Nurture:
o Chose an Outcome you want.
o Develop a Plan to achieve it.
o Execute the plan
o Nurture the plan through observation

Example of H’s plan: “At the wedding reception, whenever I think of drinking alcohol, I will take a sip of club soda. When I run out of club soda I will go the bathroom and review my reminder card.” At the reception H executes the plan. Later, he reviews his observations, asking himself: “What can I learn from this experience?” “What helped, what did not?”
________________________________________
The truth will set you free!
The objective of the OPEN Path is to improve your understanding of cause and effect through observation so you can continually improve your methods. If your predictions were good enough for you to create a plan that worked well: congratulate yourself and note what you did that was effective. Success has a lot of information value: There are many ways to fail, but few ways to succeed.

Alternatively, if things did not go as predicted, nature has taught you something you did not know before. The task now is to use this new information to improve your understanding of cause and effect, and modify your plan accordingly. You might make some adjustments, or abandon the tactic completely in favor of a different approach. As you continue to accept natural feedback and use it to improve your coping abilities, you will become progressively more effective.
________________________________________
Self-Forgiveness
The follower of the OPEN Path seeks truth as revealed by observation. Personal experiments are conducted primarily to ask a question of nature and receive an answer. These experiments are risky. Unexpected results are common; if we knew what would work we would not have to do the experiment.

Performing these experiments requires courage. Unfortunately, many people with addictive disorders are relentless promoters of self-hate. The inevitable setbacks and hard times are taken as proof of their intrinsic worthlessness, or the hopelessness of their situation.

To utilize the powerful tools of the scientific method you must be:
Open to the truth as revealed by direct observation

Capable of utilizing the disciplines of inductive and deductive reasoning

Free from attachment to any particular story of the truth.

Willing to rehearse your coping tactics so that you can perform them with little conscious guidance.

Flexible enough to Try something different when a tactic you are trying out produces bad results.
________________________________________

So far we have described two mutually exclusive paths to self-determination:

 The Impeccable Path requires no decisions, because there are no options ─ no exceptions are permitted.

 The OPEN Path requires you to be forgiving of errors and be flexible enough to modify your plan on the basis of new information.

Neither of these paths seems sufficient, and yet each has their advantages. If only there was a middle way…

3.1: The Impeccable Path

Few users of this kit have already tried to quit or control their incentive use. If you have ever lapsed despite your intention not to do so, then you have experienced the PIG’s ability to influence your perception and behavior in real-time. Nevertheless, you may still have insufficient respect for this challenge and so make shallow commitments that will fail because they are not sufficiently binding.

In the final analysis, the only thing preventing you from giving in to a temptation is your commitment not to. Failing to honor a commitment sets the precedent that you can make a commitment and then violate it. This precedent immediately weakens the ability of future commitments to restrain impulse. The critical error of making and then breaking a commitment can transform abuse into dependence. The transition is gradual and the individual is generally not aware of the process while it is happening.

The point of making a commitment is to freeze your current motivation, so that you behave in the future the way you now intend, rather than to yield to local temptations. A commitment is your guarantee that you will adhere to your plan no matter the local circumstance. But if you fail to honor your guarantee you have made a liar of yourself, and future guarantees are worth less.

Making a commitment is like making a bet. If you adhere to it you win, and what you win is the ability to do what you said you would do despite local conditions that would motivate you to lapse. But if you fail to honor it you lose this power of your word ─ willpower.
________________________________________
Odysseus and the Sirens
In a different era Odysseus had to sail within earshot of the Sirens. No sailor could resist their seductive call. The penalty for giving in to this irresistible temptation was death by drowning ─ the fate experienced by all who had come before. Appreciating the danger, Odysseus filled his men's ears with wax so they would not be able to hear the Sirens. Odysseus wanted to hear what the Sirens sounded like, but he knew that if he did he would be unable to resist its pull. The heroic solution: Odysseus pre-committed his future behavior by ordering him men to tie him to the mast of the ship.

The plan was successful ─ When the ship sailed past the island, the Sirens called, but the men could not hear them and kept rowing. Odysseus heard the Sirens, but did not [could not] give in to the temptation, because he was bound to the mast.

________________________________________
Four Lessons:
Odysseus made his plans in advance. He knew that once he heard the Sirens it would be too late to influence his own behavior – their call would have transformed him from a potent warrior to a helpless victim. You would do well to use Odysseus’ humility as a model. Understand this: when you encounter a high-risk situation you will not have the strengths available to you now, and you are not likely to come up with an effective response during the crisis. To succeed you must have a well planned, well rehearsed coping tactic already in place.

Engineer your environment to minimize your exposure to temptation, so avoid high-risk situations and people ─ at least until the healthy habits have strengthened.

Because no sailor had ever survived the temptation of the Sirens, some might take a defeatist attitude and passively accept the inevitable loss. But Odysseus was a hero ─ he had high self-efficacy ─ and so he approached the challenge as a problem to be solved. He devised a good plan, and executed it well.

But the most important lesson of this story: Even though Odysseus experienced irresistible temptation, he did not give in to it. Before reading on, think back to the story: . . . How did he do it?

Having respect for the power of the Sirens, he pre-committed his future behavior by having himself bound by strong rope. Likewise you can pre-commit your future behavior by being bound by your word. For example: "I am not experiencing temptation now, but I know that I will, and so I give my word that whenever I experience temptation I will move away from it." Willpower refers to your ability to adhere to your commitment regardless of local circumstance.
________________________________________

Willpower – the power of your intention to influence real world events – is a creation of the psyche and can be gained or lost according to how you actually perform.

Thought Experiment ─ You announce that you need to move some bulky furniture. Ernest, who owns a pickup, offers to help. You point out that he often makes such promises and has let you down many times. He replies, “But this time I really mean it.” He seems sincere, but he seemed sincere the other times too. The objective world demands that the furniture gets moved. Should you count on Ernest showing up, or make your plans assuming he won’t? Events in the objective world have not happened yet so we don’t know whether or not Ernest shows up. However, you have expectations based on your appraisal of Ernest’s likelihood of honoring his word when you need him.

When you make commitments for yourself are you earnest? If you fail to honor a commitment your expectation that you will honor your commitments in the future is diminished – telling yourself: “But this time I really mean it” is not an effective rescue. On the other hand, each time you honor a commitment your belief that you take your word seriously increases, and your willpower increases with it. Once you make a commitment you must permit no exceptions to occur!

Note that the word "decide" is derived from the root "cide," as in sui-cide, homi-cide, insecti-cide, and means "to kill." When, for example, an alcoholic makes the decision to quit drinking, it is understood that [s]he means to kill, once and for all, the option to drink alcohol, and thereby lock out drinking in the future. [The requirement of absolute adherence to the commitment is equally important for those who choose moderation rather than abstinence as an outcome goal].

Typically, one decides to control an impulsive behavior when its costs are more salient than its benefits. Your commitment is your promise to adhere to the plan even when the benefits of violating it are more salient than the benefits of adherence. Willpower is the measure of your ability to deliver on that.

Willpower is not static, and your ability to override the influence of the PIG can increase or decrease according to certain lawful principles. Local conditions such as anger, fatigue, or a run of bad luck can deplete this power. So, like an athlete it is important to train hard to develop this strength and be vigilant for circumstances that would deplete it.

Willpower Enhancement Notes:
• Making a commitment is like making a bet. Each loss weakens you; each win strengthens you. Honoring a commitment enhances willpower; failure to adhere to a commitment diminishes willpower.

• There is a difference between a goal and a commitment. A goal gives direction; if you lapse you can benefit from what you learned. A commitment is not a learning exercise; by making a commitment, you are foreswearing all excuses and explanations for failure.

• Since you cannot guarantee outcomes, do not commit to outcomes. Commitments must be procedural. For example, you can guarantee that you will perform a History Review [review of the sequence of events that led up to and followed a moment of decision] within 24 hours of the occurrence of a high-risk situation.

• Avoid bets you cannot win in your lifetime. "I will never again search the internet for porn” is such a bet. You don't get to win it until you are on your death bed. Better to go for one day at a time ─ even better is one hour at a time [see the delay method in Chapter 5.5: Coping Tactics].

• Make the commitments short and manageable, but once made, permit no exceptions to occur! Go for what you really want, but realize that more ambitious goals tend to come with a higher price. So be careful about over-committing. Remember, whatever you promise, you will have to deliver.

• Go for little wins. If you have had a history of violating commitments, you are starting out in a hole. Be especially conservative and make sure you honor every commitment without exception. If you do, you will over time re-establish the power of your word.

• People often do pretty well in the beginning, because their commitments are fresh in their mind and hence are salient. However, with the passage of time the salience of the original commitment decays. So periodically review your commitment and why you made it – see Hard Copy Page.

o As rule of thumb, once the crisis that originally motivated the commitment recedes into the past, your motivation becomes more a function of local circumstances than of the now distant commitment. The PIG, which at first supported the commitment ─ when you wanted immediate gratification of the desire to be free of the problem ─ must be overridden when the commitment is far away and the incentive is near.

• The more you exercise a behavioral sequence the easier it is to perform.

o For some individuals, vowing abstinence and then lapsing has occurred so often that they lose the ability in influence their own actions. Their life’s course is no longer determined by their intentions, but by the path of least resistance.

• Be aware that you are free to specify any commitment that you choose, so never make commitments unless you are certain that you will be able to adhere to them under all circumstances implied by the commitment. Because you are free to specify the details of the commitment, you have no excuse not to adhere to it.

o Remember, when you take this bet you are giving long odds; one loss overcomes many victories. It is critical that you adhere to every commitment you make. So specify clearly what you are committing to, and don't accept a commitment unless you are serious enough to bet your reputation that you will adhere to it on every occasion.

• A commitment may be stated formally as an implementation intention [form: Whenever I encounter X, I will Y] – for example, "Whenever I experience an urge, I will visualize the penalties of lapsing.” Note: coding the intention as a negative, e.g., "I will not think about sex" is poor form [see The Imp of the Perverse].
The true goal of this effort is for you to exercise your intended reactions to stress and temptation until they become your defaults. The Impeccable Path is the most straightforward and direct way to achieve this end. Conceptually it is simple, and for some individuals this direct approach is an excellent option: Change your lifestyle and permit no exceptions, and after a while you will have become familiar with your new, but nevertheless idiosyncratic, path: Your path of greatest advantage.

The problem with this approach becomes evident if there is a single lapse. This is a brittle method! Once a commitment is broken the ability to honor future commitments is compromised, and there is no longer a defense against complete loss of control.

In contrast to the rigid path of no exceptions, The Open Path is flexible. At each point, you are free to make decisions on the basis of local circumstances, and what you consider to be in your best interests at the time. Needless to say, anything as valuable as freedom comes at a price.

3.0: Matching Strategies

Hedonism makes sense: One wants the maximum amount of pleasure and good experiences and the minimum amount of pain and bad experiences. You probably decided to end your relationship with the incentive when you realize it was a bad deal – it was causing more pain than pleasure. But breaking fee is trickier than it seems. The purpose of this kit is to give you the tools that will enable you to follow your path of greatest advantage, as you define it.

Good outcome is rare because of the high rate of relapse, and so you will have to develop the ability to prevent relapse, even in the face of the stressors and temptations that life deals you.

Section 1 focused on establishing a vocabulary and intellectual foundation that will enable you to utilize the tools provided by this kit. Section 2 described the traps responsible for most relapses. You should by now have some hypotheses about your particular traps, and so you are ready to consider solution strategies.
Matching
Part of the complexity of this challenge is that there are different approaches to treating addictive disorders, and each is helpful to at least some individuals. Some institutions tout one or another treatment orientation as the only real solution. In fact there is no single solution, because each individual is unique. Some people are well matched with behavior change strategies that for others are worth less.

This kit is based on the bio-psycho-social model rather than the disease model, and is best matched with inner directed, high-functioning individuals. Anyone who has made it this far through this dense material is almost certainly to be in this group. But even among this relatively small sub-group, there remains tremendous variation in temperament and circumstance. The key to good long-term outcome is matching treatment to the attributes of the individual.
Disease Model of Addictive Disorders
Many people with addictive disorders are impaired and require external structure or supervision to lead functional lives. There are, however, some individuals who function quite well in most domains, save their relationship with a particular incentive. For them, the disease metaphor and the idea of the passive patient being cured by the active treatment agent complicates good long-term outcome and fosters dependence on external agency. As a rule of thumb, the more impaired the individual, the greater the external control required to maintain incentive free periods. Some operational definitions of "impairment" are listed below:

• Cognitive impairment resulting from chronic substance abuse.

• Cognitive impairment due to other factors such as: Head injury, other organic causes, low native intelligence.

• Psychiatric impairment such as: Mood disorder, thought disorder, malevolent narcissism.

In North America, failing to control incentive use is viewed as a disease: The patient is treated and hopefully cured by an external agent such as a physician or treatment provider. The 12-Step Model of Alcoholics Anonymous, the version upon which most treatment programs for addictive disorders are based, is contrasted with the Bio-psycho-social Model upon which this kit is based:

According to the 12-Step Model, impulse control problems are diseases. Treatment emphasizes admitting powerlessness over the problem, complying with a plan developed by treatment providers, and adopting the norms and values of a new social group ─ the support or self-help group ─ in order to achieve total abstinence, which is the only acceptable outcome goal. The victim of the disease is responsible for neither the cause nor the resolution of the problem.

There are many excellent 12-Step treatment programs. In most communities virtually all treatment programs are based on this orientation. These programs will provide the best match for many individuals with addictive and compulsive disorders, especially those who benefit from the support of a self-help group, have a religious orientation, or are not well matched cognitively or philosophically for the demands of a self-directed approach.

The Relapse Prevention Model is based on the disciplines of neural and cognitive science. According to this view, substance abuse problems are the product of biological, psychological, and social factors. Rather than encourage the individual to accept powerlessness over a disease, the individual is encouraged to accept responsibility for changing behaviors that are excessively costly. Individuals who do not feel comfortable with the 12-step philosophy, or those who have attempted 12-step programs without success, often find these cognitive and behavior change techniques to be practical and direct.
Total Abstinence vs. Moderation
The disease model and 12 step programs assume that the individual is powerless to control incentive use, and so do not permit moderation as a treatment goal. The Relapse Prevention model does permit such a goal, which for many individuals is a weakness of this approach. Most individuals with an impulse control problem have tried moderation at least once and did not achieve good outcome. Even though the author does not know anything about you he asserts that choosing moderation as a goal rather than complete abstinence is probably a mistake. Nevertheless, you are an adult and it is your call. Be aware that your relationship with the incentive can take three forms: 1) abstinence, 2) controlled use, and 3) uncontrolled use. If you cannot control your use of the incentive, you have two options.

The desire to maintain some access to the incentive is certainly understandable; it does have its benefits. But incentives that can deliver immediate gratification have such an impact on the Psyche that attempting to control its use is often a fool’s errand. However, if you still want to pursue moderation rather than abstinence as a goal, take the PIG’s wager. If you win you get to be a controlled user, if you lose you must admit you have only two options regarding this incentive.

The PIG’s Wager:

 Establish whatever rules you think are appropriate regarding incentive use.

 Whatever these rules are, the PIG bets that you can’t follow them.

 Take the PIG’s wager – that is, you bet that you will adhere impeccably to your rules.

 If you win the bet you get to continue to use the incentive under the terms of your rules.

 But if you lose the bet you must admit that you cannot be a controlled user. You don’t get a second chance. Any violation of the rules means you lose, so bear this in mind when you make your rules.

 Controlled use means that you are following your own rules, so there must always be rules pertaining to this aspect of your life. You may modify your rules over time – never on the spur of the moment.

How Rigid or Flexible Should I Be?
The remaining chapters of this section address this strategic issue. Three approaches are described; it is important that you understand all three.

2.5: ATTACHMENT TO OUTCOMES

If you don't get what you want you are disappointed, but if you don't get what you need you will die. Food, water, and oxygen are examples of needs, while respect, love, and being right are examples of wants. Dr. Albert Ellis based his Rational Emotive Therapy on this distinction.

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, which exhausts the resources needed to over-ride the pull of local incentives.

Dr. Ellis suggests a way of defusing excessive emotional reactions: When you experience strong emotions, 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. Successful coping with such situations is often aided by being cool and calm rather than being in fight-or-flight mode. Indeed, people may destroy what is genuinely important to them because of their fight-or-flight reactions to trivial slights and losses.

According to Dr. Ellis, traps of emotional over-reaction result from attachment to outcomes that are not of vital importance.
________________________________________
Stoicism
If your boss or spouse falsely accuses you of some sin you did not do, it is indeed frustrating, but it is not life or death. Even if you lose your job over it, it is still not life and death, very upsetting to be sure, but not life or death. To make this point, the Stoic, Epictetus would say: “Have you ever seen a beggar? He doesn’t have a job, but he is alive.”

Epictetus preceded Dr. Ellis by about two thousand years, and his position was more basic. He used the metaphor of 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 outcome he intended; whereas a stoic archer views it as a success because he shot well. The stoic is focused on performing well, not 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.

Epictetus' brand of stoicism foreshadows contemporary cognitive therapy:

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.
________________________________________
Taoism
About 500 years before the Stoics were was the Tao poets. Consider this concise poerm by Chaing Tsu:

THE NEED TO WIN

When an archer shoots for nothing he has all his skill.
When he shoots for a brass buckle he is already nervous.
When he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind, or sees two targets.
His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him.
He cares.
He thinks more of winning than of shooting,
And the need to win drains him of power

Attachment to outcomes hinders ongoing performance in two ways:
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.

According to the Tao, the key to the traps of emotional over-reaction is detachment from outcomes.

2.4: RECURSIVE TRAPS

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 recursive trap never get it, because their distorted interpretation provokes them to respond in way that confirms the pathogenic bias.

Negative emotional states are not necessarily pathological. Sadness and fear are the natural reactions to loss and threat. The emotional reaction that results from an encounter with an objective threat, a poisonous snake for example, is adaptive and tends to dissipate after the threat has passed.

The negative emotional state produced by a recursive trap is different: Because it is based upon one’s cognitive structure, rather than upon objective reality, it may persist indefinitely. The anxious mood experienced by a person with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, a chronic worrier, is unrelated to objective threat, and so rather than energizing adaptive behavior, the anxiety only serves to sap the resources required for effective action.

Barry worries about his social performance – his consciousness if full of thoughts and images of being unable to cope with the social challenges he expects to encounter at the Friday office party. Attending to such thoughts causes him to become more anxious, and the more anxious he becomes the more he dreads the party.

Believing he is unable to cope with social challenges biases his performance in a particular way: He acts in ways that confirm the pathogenic belief! Because of recursive structure his self-sabotaging tendencies can persist indefinitely. Barry’s expectation of social failure is continually validated by objective evidence: He is anxious and hence unappealing in social situations. In this manner Barry creates a social reality for himself for himself and those around him.

Blushing is another 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.
________________________________________
Self-Confirmatory Bias
None of us see objective truth; our perception is always biased by our beliefs. Suicide bombers and corporate executives are built of the same biological material, but they are biased by different beliefs and hence experience a different reality.

There are many ways to misperceive the world, and people make all sorts of errors. But some distortions are special: They have a recursive structure which can entrap a person indefinitely.
Two Recursive Structures:
Circular Chain - This structure is like a snake swallowing its own tail. It has no end, and so may repeat indefinitely. Barry’s belief: “Nobody would want to date a loser like me” makes him a less desirable date.

Circular chains can perpetuate addictive disorders: Consider how low self-efficacy perpetuates dependence on external agency

Mr. H is demoralized by his most recent relapse following intensive outpatient treatment. Like most people with low self-efficacy, when confronted with a difficult challenge he gave into it fairly easily – without dedicating the energy or persistence required for success. The failure further diminished his self-efficacy causing him to seek a more potent external agent to cure him of his problem. The dependence on external forces prevents him from developing the skills from which self-efficacy emerges.

Positive Feedback - When a microphone gets too close to a speaker the self amplification, or positive feedback, results in a progressively louder squeal. Likewise, emotion is subject to recursive amplification. The rapid heartbeat of a person in a panic attack is perceived as threatening which results in the secretion of more fight-or-flight hormones, which further increases heart rate.

Positive feedback can produce bingeing: Consider how using an incentive to make yourself feel better [technical term: using the incentive as an emotion focused coping tactic] is a setup for loss of control

Winnie’s obesity causes her pain, and the more she thinks about it the worse she feels. She can escape the pain of self-awareness by becoming absorbed in the pleasurable experience of mindless eating. The overeating episode causes self-loathing, which she is driven to escape by becoming absorbed in the pleasurable experience.

2.3: THE KARMA OF BEHAVING BADLY

People generally seek my services soon after a relapse. During the first session, I almost always ask the obvious question: "How did it happen?” I spend a lot of time asking about the specific steps that led from their good intentions to the first lapse. I am no longer surprised by the usual answer: “I don’t know.” Despite my patient they usually can’t tell me the details about the critical moment. This is in striking contrast to the detail I receive when the same client describes some trivial issue such as a political conflict at work.

This observation provides a key to understanding failures of will. To intentionally change your behavior you must be aware of 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 the clever attorney,. H, can only give me a superficial analysis of the sequence of events that led to his relapse it suggests that his conscious mind was not fully engaged during the critical moments; he was on autopilot following the default path.. H lost the battle because he was not aware that it was time to come to his senses and intentionally guide his behavior during this critical high risk period.

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 mindfully, and passively 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 only becomes apparent when you decide to change it. For example, an experienced driver would take longer to learn to reliably stop at a green light than [s]he originally took to learn to stop at a red light. Until the new habit is acquired, the driver must pay attention in order to over-ride the well practiced behavior of driving through a green light.

Stephen Tiffany1, whose views have been paraphrased in the preceding paragraphs, suggests that after considerable practice, addictive behavior becomes autonomous. While autonomous behavior can be over-ridden, it requires conscious attention to do so. The karma of repeatedly using an incentive is that this path to incentive use becomes autonomous. As a result, whenever your conscious resources are occupied by a demanding social situation, powerful emotional state, or diminished due to fatigue or intoxication, you will tend to follow this default path.

An absent-minded relapse occurs when mindful processing, which is necessary to interrupt the autonomous sequence, is not invoked when needed. This may occur when a person was simply not conscious of the original commitment until the relapse sequence was already well under way. Less dramatic, but probably much more common, the person was more or less aware of the unfolding sequence of events leading to the lapse, and was also fully aware of the previous intention to abstain from the addictive behavior, yet simply failed to dedicate the conscious effort – willpower - required to interrupt the autonomous behavior chain.

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 moves the individual in the intended direction. The Hardening Exercise [see- Chapter 5.7] is a structured method of exercising intended coping reactions the presence of successfully closer approximations to actual high risk situations.

As a professional boxer can hire sparring partners to help him hone his skills, you can improve your skills during high risk situations 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. Following the path of greatest advantage does become easier over time, and if you follow it long enough it becomes the default path. The Karma of following an intentional path is that the reactions that lead to the intended outcomes eventually become easier with time, and eventually some may even become effortless - autonomous.

Use it or lose it. Habit strength, like muscle strength increases with exercise. Each success strengthens the responses that led to success. On the other hand each lapse strengthens the sequence of behaviors that lead to the lapse.

Every high risk situation you encounter 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 intentionally to the high risk situations that life deals you. 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? After working with impulse control problems for many years I can offer some rules of thumb:

It takes forty seven consecutive wins to establish a new default reaction. If you can cope successfully with each of them you will find that it has become easier to stay your intended path than to follow the path to incentive use. Everyone is different, and 64 consecutive wins may be a more realistic requirement for some readers. Certainly, these numbers are arbitrary and we do not know in advance how many high risk situations you will have to navigate successfully to get over the hump of dependence. Rest assured, it is not a million; have patience and stay the course and you will get there.

Each high risk situation is different. Your initial task is to set good precedent in each of your idiosyncratic high risk situations

Some situations will require more practice than others. But even the most difficult will become easier after some successful practice.

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 like it takes forever, but when you look back on it from the vantage point of good outcome you will see that this part of the passage did not last very long, and the struggle was not without its rewards.

Most readers appreciate that developing a healthy default path does not guarantee good long-term outcome. Even after you have followed your path of greatest advantage for many years it will still be possible for you to relapse - all it takes is a little sloppy thinking at a vulnerable moment. But despite the fact that you will forever be in danger of a first lapse and its irreversible consequences, the risky situations will tend to occur progressively further apart over time.

2.2: PERVERSE MOTIVATION

People often end up doing exactly what they tell themselves not to do. The intention to suppress a response has the perverse effect of making that response more likely. Edgar Allan Poe labeled this phenomenon: the Imp of the Perverse.
Thought Experiment #2
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:

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" requires the conceptualization of Chester molesting a child. After hearing such an assertion you may feel uneasy about letting him play with your children. 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 general rule: Forbidden something increases its desirability.
Attribution Theory: The Insult Is the Injury
Smoking cessation research shows that it takes on average seven attempts to finally quit. Most smokers, however, interpret a failure to quit as an indication of their personal 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 want to turn yourself over to a treatment provider or a higher power. Self-determination requires that you persevere through difficult challenges. Internal, stable attributions for past failures are demoralizing and will rob you of the energy and clear-headedness required for good 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 am unable to achieve good outcome" generally results from an initial underestimate of the difficulty of this task. "It shouldn't be that difficult to change my ways once I make up my mind, so my history of relapse means there must be something wrong with me." This misattribution is based on popular misconceptions about what it takes to end an addictive relationship.
Attribution and Self Image
Consider the following study1 which demonstrates how internal attribution and counter-regulatory motivation can work together to affect one's self-perception. 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. But the boys had a different perspective; they attributed their motivation to read the book to a personal weakness - to be attracted to lewd content. Forbidding the book had the perverse consequence of causing the subjects to believe that they were perverse.






Footnotes:

1. Influence: Science and Practice - Cialdini - 1988

2.1: THE PIG

The Problem of Immediate Gratification [the PIG] refers to the universal principle that immediacy is much more important than magnitude of a reward when it comes to influencing real-time behavior. This is especially true for animals, children and impulsive adults. Impulsivity is defined as the tendency to choose a small reward now at the expense of a large reward that you could have had if you waited [e.g., choosing $1 now over $10 tomorrow]. Alternatively, impulsivity can mean avoiding a small punishment now and getting the big punishment later [e.g., avoiding dental treatment]. Incentives which offer immediate payoffs are especially corrupting.

The relationship between immediacy of reward and its influence on local motivational state is hyperbolic. So when the incentive is nearby [in terms of time, space, or psychological distance] it can be terribly influential on real-time behavior. See Figure 1 below.

Some outcomes such as physical health, professional success, or loving relationships may have large magnitude, but are not produced immediately by a specific behavior. In contrast the gratification produced by consuming a drug or alcohol is immediate, and for that reason exerts an influence on behavior that is disproportional to its importance. Some people behave as if they valued this incentive more than they value health, wealth, or family.

This phenomenon looks different than it feels, and using the incentive is experienced differently when it is happening than in retrospect. So even though they may feel guilty about it later, crack heads have been known to trade their babies for small amounts of the drug.

Figure 1: The PIG



Motivation is fluid, and changes with local conditions. When the incentive is near it has a greater influence on motivation than the commitment you made some time ago. Changes in motivation alter perception in ways that you cannot now fully appreciate. Choices that may seem ridiculous now may seem to be a good idea in certain situations.

Ultimately your success or failure is determined by how you perform when you encounter the high risk situations that lie ahead. At these critical moments you will be in conflict: Pulling in one direction is the motivation to follow the path of greatest advantage, and pulling in the other is the motivation to yield in the direction of least resistance.

Below is a concrete example of an approach-avoidance conflict in which the line with arrows pointing to the right indicates the desire to engage the incentive and receive it’s benefits, and the line with arrows point to the left represents the motivation to avoid the price that will be paid later. In the example shown below the punishment is ten times greater than the reward, but delayed by one unit of time.


Figure 2: Approach-Avoidance Conflict




When you are far from the incentive, the motivation to avoid is greater than the motivation to approach. But when you are near the incentive the PIG works it’s magic and the pull of the incentive can become very strong very quickly. Once the gradients cross and the motivation to approach is greater than the motivating to avoid, the loss of control can be stunning.

The graph below (Figure 3) shows the gradient of net attraction to the incentive--that is, the motivation to approach the incentive minus the motivation to avoid it.


Figure 3: Net Motivation






When the motivation to avoid the incentive is subtracted from the motivation to approach it, the resulting gradient of net motivation is also hyperbolic; the tendency to approach increases exponentially as the distance between you and the incentive decreases.

When you are far from the incentive the gradient of net attraction is below zero indicating motivation to avoid the incentive. Under such circumstances the prospect of changing your ways looks easy. But when you are near the incentive - in terms of time, space, or psychological distance – net attraction will be greater than zero, and you will be motivated to approach the incentive. As you do, the pull of the incentive increases exponentially until it becomes sufficient to overcome your motivation to control your actions and you lapse. Once the distance between you and the incentive begins to shrink, the only way out is to exert an extreme effort to somehow put distance between you and it..

Note that the motivation to lapse is relatively flat until the it crosses “X” axis. But as soon as it does the increase in net attraction is so rapid that you may lapse before you know it – there may be no internal debate, no attempt to over-ride the urge, you may simply go from intending not to lapse to intending to lapse – literally before you knew what hit you.

2.0: ADDICTIVE TRAPS

Listed below are six traps that interfere with the exercise of will; you will be more vulnerable to some than to others

 The PIG – The Problem of Immediate Gratification: Motivation is much more influenced by the immediacy than by the magnitude of the pay off – the incentive.

 Perverse Motivation [Also known as counter-regulatory motivation] – Psychological quirks that cause people to act differently than they say they want to. For example: Reactance: As soon as there is a restriction there is a perverse motivation to violate the restriction – especially if you are forbidden something that is not forbidden to others.

 The Karma of Behaving Badly- You don't pay for your sins in the next life you pay for them during this life, because whatever choices you make become stronger with exercise. With enough practice the sequence of events that leads to the incentive can unfold by itself, and it now requires conscious effort to interrupt. Your path of least resistance is your Karma. The Karma of repeatedly violating commitments is dependence – that is, you lose control over this aspect of your life.

 Recursive Traps – Paul Wachtel described this trap in as few words as possible: "It is often possible to discern a structure to people's difficulties in which internal states and external events continually create the conditions for the reoccurrence of each other."

 Attachment - Some people fail because they don't care enough to perform well, and others fail because they care too much about outcomes to perform well.

 Dependence – If your happiness or unhappiness depends upon something you do not control, you will become its slave. You remain a slave by waiting for someone else to free you.


Completing the Trap Detector - click the heading: 2.0 Addictive Traps - will help you identify the traps to which you are most vulnerable so that you can focus on the urgent issues first.

1.5 THE SOUL ILLUSION

The Rodney Dangerfield of philosophical questions: When a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, is there a sound?

It gets no respect, because it seems to be one of those pointless questions that have no answer. But there is an answer – an answer with profound spiritual and practical implications.

When the tree falls, it produces a series of pressure waves in the surrounding air. The ear drum converts these waves into a mechanical signal which is transmitted by 3 small bones to the fluid filled cochlea – the spiral bony canal of the inner ear. Hair cells of the cochlea are the actual receptors. Each is tuned to a particular frequency of the fluid waves. Hair cell vibrations are converted to electrical impulses, and transmitted along the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex where intensity and frequency of the vibrations are mapped. Neither pressure waves, physical movements of body parts [bones, hair], nor electrical signals are sound. What we mean by sound exists only in the mind of the perceiver.

Perception differs qualitatively from the physical properties of the stimulus. The nervous system extracts only certain information from the natural world. We perceive fluctuations of air pressure not as pressure waves but as sounds that we hear. We perceive electromagnetic waves of different frequency as colors that we see. We perceive chemical compounds dissolved in air or water as specific smells or tastes. In the words of neurologist Sir John Eccles: “I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound – nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent.” Sounds, colors, patterns, etc., appear to have an independent reality, yet are, in fact, constructed by the mind. All our experience of the natural world is our minds’ interpretation of the input it receives.

Optical Illusions
In the classic text, Principles of Neural Science, Eric Kandel observes:

“The organizational mechanisms of vision are best demonstrated by illusions. Illusions illustrate that perception is a creative construction that the brain makes in interpreting visual data.... Learning does not prevent us from being taken in by these illusions.”

There is an illusion – though not an optical illusion – that causes otherwise competent individuals to voluntarily chose a path that everyone knows will lead to a bad outcome. The lessons learned from painful experience do not prevent them from being taken in again and again. Our logo was composed with this in mind. It is the Greek letter: Psi, which represents the Psyche, surrounded by an impossible triangle that illustrates the illusory nature of perception.

Perceptual Bias is Invisible to the Perceiver
Consider Dr. Jekyll: He loves his wife, and generally treats her well, except when he is angry at her. The first time he hit her he apologized and swore he would never do it again. Like an alcoholic who swears he will never drink again, he meant it when he said it, but when he is transformed by anger into Mr. Hyde he fails to inhibit the aggression as Dr. Jekyll promised.

As Dr. Jekyll, he has tender thoughts of his wife, and memories of good times past come easily to mind – bad thoughts and images are far away. But when he is in his Mr. Hyde trance it seems that she is always looking at other men and never treats him with respect. Now the tender feelings he has for her are unavailable. The trance formation from Jekyll to Hyde is invisible to him – he believes he is always seeing the world as it really is.

Dr. Jekyll is no fool and yet makes the same error again and again. Like you, he can easily see the perceptual biases of others, but is blind to his own at the critical moments. In retrospect he is full of remorse, but that does not stop him from repeatedly hurting the one he loves.

Because it is the perceptual system itself that is biased, we are always blind to the current bias. Whether we are angry or in love we assume we are reacting to permanent truth rather than to a state-dependent construction of reality. Consequently, we often act in ways that seem foolish when viewed from a different perspective.

To extend the Jekyll and Hyde metaphor to addiction: The rational Dr. Jekyll understands that his relationship with the incentive is a bad deal. Moreover, he has leaned through painful experience that a single lapse invariably leads to loss of control, and so vows complete abstinence. He does fine until he encounters a high-risk situation, which transforms the rational Dr. Jekyll into the impulsive Mr. Hyde. At the crucial moment when decisive action is required Mr. Hyde not only fails to see the danger, but is focused on anticipating the immediate gratification of lapsing.

A Clinical Tale
The clever attorney, Mr. Hasslebring, provides an illustrative example of the Soul Illusion. During our first session, scheduled shortly after his third DUI, he reported that it is now clear to him that intoxication has much greater costs than benefits for him and his family. He stated that our sessions were just a formality because he was already highly motivated to quit drinking.

He had come to the same conclusion before – namely, that drinking alcohol produces bad outcomes for H and his family. Each time he sincerely vowed to change his ways, each time he violated his vow, and each violation led to a demoralizing relapse. Now, in my office, he is about to do it again. He is not stupid, and is aware of his history, yet he is convinced that this time he really means it.

Why can’t a clever attorney learn this simple lesson of cause and effect? As you may have guessed, H has been taken in by the Soul Illusion. He is unaware that experiential phenomena such as perception, learning, motivation, and memory are state dependent, and so when he is in a high-risk situation he is transformed by local conditions and makes different choices than would the version of H I see in my office. Previous painful relapses do not prevent him from being taken in again by the same illusion - in H’s case, “I can have a beer and not lose control.”

A Society of Hasslebrings
The expansive H who was drinking and carrying on with his buddies the night of his most recent DUI was a completely different entity than the remorseful wretch before the judge, or the one who showed up in my office for his first session. Telling this remorseful fellow that he ought to quit dinking is pointless – he knows it. In fact, during an early session he laughed at himself while recounting the rationalizations that set the stage for some of his previous relapses. It is almost like two different people: One seriously believing he can control his drinking, and the other finding it humorous that the first one could be taken in by such obvious denial.

But these are only two of the possible versions or states of H, which also include the tender father H, the angry H, the clever lawyer H, the sexually aroused H, etc. When H is in a certain social context and begins anticipating the taste and feel of a first drink, his subjective reality changes, and at that moment H himself changes. He is no longer the logical, sophisticated attorney who thinks three steps ahead. Local conditions have trance formed him into an impulsive fool who is easily tempted to behave counter to his own self interests. This version of H is now making the decisions, and it is he who honestly believes: “Of course I can have a single drink, two if I want. Screw the uptight rules that assume I am a loser. “

In this state H expects the outcome of the first drink to be positive and it is he who lapses. Soon after the first lapse he recognizes that he has violated his vow and the remorse “trance forms” him – now into the remorseful H, who must pay the emotional price of the relapse. Once again he believes that this time he has learned his lesson and so makes another permanent vow that he will never drink again – and this time he really means it! However, unless he does something differently, this cycle is likely to repeat until he has lost everything.

To the therapist and most observers it is clear that he is different when in the remorseful state than he is when he wants to get high. But regardless of his current state – be it the remorseful H, or the H who expects the outcome of a lapse to be positive, he believes that he perceives objective reality, and that he will continue to view things the same way in the future as he does now. H’s pain is testimony to the power of the soul illusion. He can look at previous examples of the “vowing-abstinence-and-then-relapsing” sequence and recognize that the beliefs he used to justify the first lapse and demoralizing slide to relapse did not turn out to be objectively valid.

A great frustration of being a therapist – and a motivation for developing this kit – is that despite their sincere desire to achieve good outcome, dependent individuals repeatedly make the same errors with the predictable disastrous consequences for themselves and their loved ones. H’s folly is obvious to most observers and even to H when he is in my office and I force him to review his history. You may think he is somehow defective since he continually makes the same error. Be assured that your follies would be equally obvious to H, while to you they remain invisible.

1.4: WILL & THE PSYCHE

We are each dealt a particular biology, psychological history, and current social environment. From these parts emerges a new entity: – the Psyche – with attributes that did not exist before. Even the neuron, as remarkable and complex a structure as it is, does not posses consciousness. Experiential phenomena emerge from the activities of many neurons. Opinions, actions and will are properties of the Psyche, but do not exist within any of its component parts.

Some individuals have good cognitive abilities, and are able to predict the likely outcome of making one choice versus another. They may, nevertheless, knowingly choose a less rewarding over a more rewarding alternative. The technical term for this perverse tendency is: Impulsivity.

Dependence occurs when the individual becomes unable to control incentive use despite its obvious destructive consequences. Despite sincere attempts to quit or cut down the individual predictably relapses to the scold from self or others: “Don’t you have any willpower?”

Willpower
Free will refers to the idea that we have the ability to intentionally influence our actions. The contrasting view, Determinism, holds that we actually have no free will, because all of our decisions and actions are completely determined by a set of causes, though they may be unknowable to us. Determinists believe that the experience that we have free will is merely an illusion.

There is a third, or middle, position: Libertarianism – not to be confused with political libertarianism. This view holds that human behavior is determined by many causes including, biological factors, psychological conditioning, and current social pressures, but this very causality provides the opportunity for us to have an intentional influence on how things play out. The more we discover about the cause-and-effect relationships, the more power we have to impose our will upon the world.

Consider the turkey; it doesn’t have free will yet it provides excellent care for its young. Turkeys spend much time warming and cleaning their young; but this complex behavior is triggered by one thing – the “cheep cheep” sound of her chicks. If the chick makes that sound the mother will care for it, otherwise she will ignore it. In a research project a polecat, the turkey’s natural enemy, was stuffed with a tape recording of the “cheep cheep” sound. When the stuffed pole cat was pulled by string to approach turkey she attacked it viciously, but when the taped sound was turned on, the turkey not only did not attack it, but gathered it under her to comfort it. When the sound was turned off she again attacked it.

Unlike turkeys whose behavior is determined by specific aspects of their immediate environment; some humans are able to set long range goals, develop plans, and make adjustments to the plan until their goal is achieved - their life’s course appears to be self-determined. Advocates of freewill argue that a new phenomenon emerged with human cognition, which makes us fundamentally different from turkeys. Alternatively, determinists argue that it may just seem that way because we are so much more complex than turkeys.

We cannot resolve the free will debate by simply asking people whether they intended to do something or not, because we cannot be sure whether the intention led to the behavior or the behavior led to the experience of intention. The subjective experience of free will is not evidence for its existence.

We can never be sure that A causes B, as there could always be a third variable C that causes both of them. While it seems that our intentions cause our actions, there may be causes, of which we are unaware, that produce both of them. In fact, there is evidence that even before we are aware of the intention to perform an action, the neural precursors of the action have already occurred. For example, subjects were told to note the time on a clock when they made the decision to press a button, and then to press the button. They took 0.2 seconds on average to press the button, after they decided to do so. EEG monitoring of their brain waves, however, revealed a spike 0.3 seconds before they decided to press the button. 1

Even if willful control of our immediate behavior is an illusion, we can use our understanding of cause-and-effect relationships to intentionally influence the course of events. This kit contains information and tools that can help its user change a tragic life’s course into a heroic one.

Willpower – overriding the path of least resistance to follow the intended path – is taxing, so conscious, free choice must be restricted to a small proportion of human behavior. Following the path of least resistance is the default, because it does not make demands on the cognitive resources required to consciously guide behavior. For this reason it is desirable for the intended behaviors to be expressed automatically without needing to be instigated and then guided by expensive acts of will. The limited conscious resources are better spared for those occasions when there are real options and choices of which paths to take.

To utilize the gift of rational processing it is important to appreciate when it is available and when it is not, as well as what it can and cannot do:

 Rational processing is only possible when there is a surplus of cognitive resources. It is not available when cognitive resources are otherwise occupied by complex cognitive demands, strong emotional states, or diminished by fatigue or intoxication.

 Rational processing is too slow to influence behavior in real time. Performance, to be smooth and responsive to a changing world, requires a rapid, holistic processing. Typically when you try to consciously control ongoing behavior, you disrupt it.

 Rational processing can produce rapid change, e.g., “I used to believe in the tooth fairy, but then I realized that it was my mother, and since then have never relapsed to the earlier view.” This is contrasted with the many repetitions required to change a habit.

 Rational processing can influence future behavior through a variety of means including: pre-commitment, rehearsal of desired performance, modification of environments.

Procedural Skill and the Acquisition of Control
Operating the bio-psycho-social system you inhabit is a bit like driving a car. To operate the motor vehicle you must appreciate that pressing the accelerator makes it go faster, turning the wheel steers it, etc. Once you learn how it works it then becomes a matter of practice – with some guidance from dad or a driving instructor – to achieve competence.

Those who live in cold climates are forced to develop additional skills to cope with icy roads. While it seems unfair that northerners have an extra burden to bear, fairness is irrelevant. Northerners and southerners must each cope with the reality they are presented. As partial compensation for the additional demands, northerners get to be better drivers in icy conditions than southerners.

Your relationship with the incentive has created dangers with which you must now cope. The key to good outcome is developing the competence to manage your high-risk situations successfully; after all you are bound to encounter them again.

Depletion of Willpower
According to Freud, the ego is the part of the psyche that must deal with the reality of the external world by mediating between conflicting inner and outer pressures. A Victorian gentleman standing on the street might feel urged by his “id” to head for the brothel and by his “superego” to go to church, but it is ultimately left up to his “ego” to start his feet walking in one direction or the other. Freud was fond of the analogy of horse and rider, because, as he said, the rider (analogous to the ego) is generally in charge of steering but is sometimes unable to prevent the horse from going where it wants to go. In fact, it requires some energy to control the “horse”, and recent research demonstrates that this energy can be depleted: Depletion of willpower refers to a temporary exhaustion of the Psyche’s capacity to engage in volitional action – including controlling the environment, controlling the self, making choices, and initiating action. Like muscle power, it can be strengthened with regular exercise, though it may be exhausted by trying to do too much too soon.



















Footnotes:
1. Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W. and Pearl, D. K. (1983). Time of conscious intention to act in
relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely
voluntary act. Brain, 102, 623–642.

1.3: TWO MINDS

Knowing what is good for you is one thing, acting in accord with that knowledge is quite another. To explain why people act counter to their own interests, Freud proposed a Psyche motivated by Conscious and Unconscious factors. For our purposes a model proposed more recently by Epstein1 is particularly useful. Epstein posits that we, like other animals, have an Experiential Processing System through which we learn which response under which conditions produce immediate pleasure and pain. But unlike other creatures we have access to higher cognitive faculties - a Rational Processing System - that enable us to appreciate the likely long-term consequences of our actions, so that we can maximize our gratification and minimize our suffering. This wonderful resource is only available during periods of surplus, because it requires sufficient time and energy to think things through. The attributes of the two processing systems are contrasted below:

Experiential Processing System	Rational Processing System
Pleasure-pain oriented: What feels best now	Rationally oriented: What yields the greatest net benefits
Connections determined by the principals of classical conditioning	Connections determined by the principals of logic
Has a long evolutionary history and operates in animals as well as humans	Has a brief evolutionary history, operates through language
Holistic	Analytic
Encodes reality in concrete images, metaphors and narratives	Encodes reality in abstract symbols, words and numbers
Rapid processing: Oriented toward immediate action	Slower processing: Oriented toward future action
Slow to change: Change requires repetitive or intense experience	Rapid to change: Changes with the speed of thought
Experience is state dependent	Logic is independent of local state
Experienced passively, outside of conscious awareness [one is seized by one's emotions]	Experienced actively and consciously [one is in control of one's thoughts]
Certainty is self-evident [seeing is believing]	Certainty requires justification via logic and evidence

Because the rational processing system is only available in special circumstances, it cannot be counted upon to guide behavior during a crisis. In my office clients generally have access to good cognitive resources; he or she has taken an hour out of their day to focus their full attention on solving this problem. Knowing that I will point out thinking errors, most competent individuals are able to adhere to the rules of inductive and deductive reasoning. But at most other times, the experiential processing system is the default, and guides real time performance.

Ms. Lickfire has become dependent on cocaine. She is a competent woman, a well-paid attorney, body builder, and mom. In my office she develops an excellent plan – one that would certainly produce good outcomes for her and her daughters if she adhered to it. She has good cognitive skills so developing the plan is the easy part for her. The real challenge is for her to get herself to adhere to her plan when she encounters a crisis and her cognitive resources are otherwise occupied.

That this is a difficult challenge is demonstrated by the fact that L has already gone through several inpatient and intensive outpatient treatment programs, and has attended self-help group meetings on and off for years, yet she continues to relapse.

I interact with L’s rational processing system, the one to whom it makes no sense to risk everything dear to her for the trivial pleasure of a cocaine high. But there are other versions of L, and I only have access to the one who appears in my office. The L that I see has put aside all the other demands of her daily life and dedicates her best cognitive resources to the problem of acting counter to what she says are her true intentions. But during the critical moments of a high-risk situation, my office and her excellent cognitive abilities are far away.

Real-time performance is not based on deliberate rational processing – there is no time for that. The best predictor of what L will do when faced with a particular high-risk situation is what she did the last time she encountered such a situation. To behave differently she will have to override this default reaction and intentionally guide her behavior. Initially this requires will, but with practice the intentional reactions become habitual and hence easier to perform.

The process of sculpting her habit patterns is not all that different from the way L sculpts her physique. First, she used her rational processing system to figure out a possible solution to her challenge. Then she strengthens the intended coping tactics through the practice performing as intended. With sufficient practice the intended reaction becomes habitual – that is, automatic, easy requiring little cognitive resources. For both body sculpting and habit sculpting the intended reality gradually emerges with exercise.

1.2: SELF-EFFICACY

Most clients who see me privately have achieved sufficient financial success to pay for my services. These are 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 the incentive they perform less well – astoundingly less well.

Perseverance and Self-Efficacy

Technical terms can provide a more specific definition of a concept than ordinary language in which a word may have different meanings to different individuals. 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 make a fool of myself at the party.”

As you would expect, self efficacy has an influence on performance: People with high self-efficacy can tolerate physical discomfort and surprising amounts of frustration, and yet 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 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 his goal if 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 evoke negative emotional reactions such as hopelessness, guilt, or self-loathing, which may motivate one to abandon the effort. Indeed, most dependent individuals repeatedly 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. Most climbers have fond memories of their adventurous challenges and remember them as peak experiences. People voluntarily take on difficult challenges, because it’s fun to experience the mastery and enhanced self-efficacy that result from achieving an impressive goal. Mountain climbing is hard and often painful, but people take it on voluntarily - without financial compensation – because engaging and mastering a difficult challenge can be quite gratifying.

Despite the serious dangers and formidable obstacles, most people who set out to climb a mountain successfully achieve their goal. When competent individuals have realistic expectations about the nature of their challenge, they dedicate sufficient resources to planning, and are able to persevere until the goal is achieved, despite the physical and mental discomforts they encounter along the way. 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 fail to achieve their goal. They relapse, become demoralized, and lose faith in their ability to overcome their problem. The low self-efficacy, in turn, makes future failures more likely, which in turn lowers self-efficacy, and so it goes. If low self-efficacy is a problem for you, it will be helpful to distinguish between process and outcome. The mountain summit is the nominal or outcome goal of the mountain climber’s efforts. Performing well on the slopes 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 getting everyone off the mountain with no injuries, the climber would feel successful despite failing to achieve the outcome goal

Ironically, low self-efficacy often causes people to focus more on outcomes than process. The insecure climber may be more focused on what the other climbers think of his skills than on the details of good performance. As everyone knows, good outcome is a byproduct of good performance.

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 your real time performance is guided by 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.

Self-Efficacy Research Highlights

n Individuals who have high self-efficacy are willing to tolerate physical discomfort and psychological frustration without abandoning the path to their goal.

n Individuals with high self-efficacy tend to employ an action oriented thinking style - that is they focus on how to solve the problems.

n Conversely, research shows that action oriented thinking makes success more likely.

n Individuals with low self-efficacy tend to abandon the path in the face of even minor obstacles.

n 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. Research shows that state oriented thinking makes failure more likely.

So, if you have low self-efficacy in this domain, switch from state oriented to action oriented thinking; that is, focus on how to solve the problem I am facing here and now rather than on yourself and how you are feeling.

Thought Experiment #1: Efficacy Enhancing Imagery

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