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.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
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
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
Saturday, October 20, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
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.
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.
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