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Podcast #67: Demogorgon Whack-a-mole

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:23 pm
by reinhard
What to do when your appetites keep routing around your rules to contain them

https://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode/67/

Re: Podcast #67: Demogorgon Whack-a-mole

Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2022 6:40 pm
by oolala53
I wonder where the concept of motivational interviewing applies in habit theory. I hope it doesn’t seem tactless for me to say, but in the coaching program that I just finished, and essential part of it is to have the person consider very deeply what will happen for them in a year, two years, five years, if they continue with their behavior as it is. A study of serious narcotic addicts found that most of them actually either greatly reduced or completely eliminated their usage when they looked ahead in their life as a user. They saw that it was not gonna fit in with the rest of what they wanted to accomplish. This might be easier to see in something like cocaine, but people would have to be hiding under a rock not to admit the cumulative effects of something like excess alcohol and modern hyper palatable foods. It’s possible that the slide down might reach a threshold that isn’t actually dangerous, but just the fact that we have a term like slippery slope acknowledges that we know that the likelihood is that things could get very risky, and had a very high cost at a point where it would be egregiously more difficult to turn things around. We see that there are people who get so far into the dependence-I won’t call it a disease- that they do end up sacrificing everything important to them, including a longer, vibrant life, especially when facing not only their appetite but the advertising and industrial food and alcohol production developed to thwart it. Maybe stickin’ it to the executives proud of the market share despite the misery caused could be one of the mantras. BTW, the founder of the coaching program for bingeing wrote a book of all of what he calls “pig squeals,” or the reasons the lizard brain he and hundreds of clients have come up with, and sample refutations. He has found that having people write these out themselves goes a long way towards supporting them to stick with whatever rules they decide would best manage the problem.

Re: Podcast #67: Demogorgon Whack-a-mole

Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2022 10:49 pm
by oolala53
I borught up the book with squeals because of your talking about how the Demogorgon keeps coming up with run-arounds, was that the term you used? But I realize now you meant that it finds ways to suggest following the rule but somehow increasing the amount? Probably both. Without that motivation NOT to give in, and I think smartly to review that regularly, the appetites are likely to keep at it. Though I must say, I did end up limiting my sugar to around 10 grams added per day for over 30 months, now, and I'm not interested in messing with that. It just got the point at which any pleasure did not outweigh the mental real estate it continued to take on me, even with established mods.

Re: Podcast #67: Demogorgon Whack-a-mole

Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 4:41 pm
by reinhard
Thanks, Oolala, for these thoughtful responses!

I agree that the technique of asking yourself to imagine yourself being/behaving this way in x years/forever is helpful, maybe even necessary.

It reminds me a little of that famous rabbinical question, "...if not now, when?"