Posts tagged “self-medication”
April 6, 2019 8 Comments

3 C’s – Connection, Community, Companions

Three disparate voices, separated by 260 years, yet together, like a lighthouse, they point out the rocky shores of loneliness and separation. Three quotes, each stating the importance of connection and community.

Whether Brene Brown is writing from a spiritual perspective or not, when she states that “Connection is why we are here” and that “We are hardwired to connect with others,” it reminds us that there may indeed be laws of the universe that we simply must keep in mind. When I am standing near a precipice I keep the law of gravity in mind; as a passenger on a plane I am counting on Bernoulli’s Principle to create lift above the wings; and when going around corners in a car I should keep the law of centrifugal force) in mind. Maybe similarly, if I want a good state of mental health I need to cooperate with the law of human connection. As Brene Brown explains, without connection there is suffering.

We can resonate with Jesus when He informs us that “a new commandment I give to you — that you love one another” or we can agree with Paul McCartney when he sings “all you need is love,” but either way we are prodded toward Love. We are prodded toward our need to Belong. Is one – our beliefs or our spirit to love – more important than the other? I don’t think so. Instead, I think we need 100% of our being to be devoted to having both; to having our thinking be right and to having our view of others and our relationships be right.

We hear the word sustainable more and more, and rightly so. We question whether beliefs and habits of behavior contribute to the ongoing health of the planet. Most often these questions are about behaviors related to climate change, but I would add that our lack of love may destroy us before the adverse effects of climate change do. Within this context, learning to love is our only hope for a sustainable future. Unless we can get along, it won’t matter how high our seas rise or how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. A short passage from Desire of Ages declares what is needed if we are to thrive in this life, as well as the next –

In the light from Calvary it will be seen that the law of self-sacrificing love is the law of life for earth and heaven.   Desire of Ages, pgs. 19, 20

 

Smith’s truism is important, but so is the truism it solves — that being without the company of a friend our mind becomes disturbed. Relationships matter to us. The more important the relationship, the more deeply our pain and frustration are felt. Our work is adversely affected when we feel disconnected from our spouse; a child’s school work is affected when when he lacks support at home or friends on the playground; and soon, whether adult or child, even our physical health can be affected.

Loneliness is a smarts killer and a sense killer. We’re not as quick, not as sharp when we start downshifting into survival mode because of a hurting relationship. We are less able to accurately process things cognitively when our creative centers, in an attempt to cope with our relationship pain, begin to depress and shut down. We start off simply masking, but soon we are self-medicating or numbing, which almost always becomes a negative cycle, since people who numb are rarely able to think and act in a way that really solves their dilemma. Yet Adam Smith nudges us back toward tranquility — focus on a relationship, even if it is a connection with one other person.

Spiritual or not; religious or not; self-helpish or not – this is just the way things are. Connect, learn to love, value a companion.

 

The Better Plan blog has been going since the end of 2012. This post represents number 300. Thank you for being a part of The Better Plan and Choice Theory community.
December 7, 2016 2 Comments

I Have Mixed Drinks About Feelings

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I saw this shirt in a shop window at Pismo Beach, California. We chuckle at its message, but there is so much truth hidden behind the humor. For some of us, after the initial laugh, we shake our heads as we once again admit the message’s implications. It’s funny, but for some it’s not a laughing matter.

It is interesting how tied into our feelings we are; and how obsessed we are at having some sort of control over them. We crave this ability to affect our feelings a great deal! And we will go to unbelievable lengths for relief from them! One woman, wanting to change her overall diet, admitted that she had been spending around $100 a week on alcohol; another person describes his constant battle to get his hands on more Oxycontin; while yet another admits an obsession with pornography. Whether it is legal or illegal drugs, coffee or valium, food or sex, gambling or shopping, we identify and practice behaviors that change neurotransmitter levels in our brain, which then provides some sort of short term relief from our pain, frustration, worry, or boredom. Based on the data regarding things like drug sales – both legal and illegal, online viewing, and gambling profits, to name a few, the drive to affect our feelings is compelling and constant.

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Wanting to feel better is not bad in itself. In fact, it is a good goal. The problem lies in the shortcuts we choose to achieve feeling good. I heard one person describe how trying to feel right or better through a shortcut is like buying mental health on credit from an unscrupulous and tough loan shark. Sooner, rather than later, you will need to pay up, or you go into even worse debt, which many do.

“One of the great gifts of choice theory
is that it frees people from the tyranny of their feelings.”

One of the great gifts of choice theory is that it frees people from the tyranny of their feelings. Rather than being victims of our feelings, tossed to and fro by their whims, we come to understand their true role in our behavior. Rather than seeing our feelings as all-important, the central point around which other parts of our behavior revolve, we begin to see they are only as important as we make them. And rather than pursuing shortcuts to affect our feelings, shortcuts that may even be destructive to our health and our relationships, we choose behaviors that bring our feelings into line with good mental health.

The tires on a car are used to represent the four parts of total behavior.

The tires on a car are used to represent the four parts of total behavior. (Better to say – All behavior is purposeful.)

To me, this gift of choice theory is one of the most important things we can teach to our children. Really understanding the concepts of Total Behavior and the implications of our feelings being one of the back tires of the Total Behavior car is a permanently life-changing epiphany. We can directly (intentionally) control our thinking and our actions; as we do, our feelings and our physiology will come into agreement with them. Of course, the opposite will be true, too. If we choose to focus on our feelings, which we have no direct control over, then our thinking and our actions will come into agreement with that focus. Some have pointed out that focusing on feelings first is like driving our lives in reverse, not an effective arrangement. Or like a sixth grade student pointed out after learning about Total Behavior – “It’s like a back seat driver, like someone is controlling the car from the back seat.”

The goal is to be in a state of good mental health, but that is difficult when we dance to the tune of our feelings. God certainly desires us to experience good mental health and the purpose, love, power, freedom, and joy that goes with it. The apostle Paul said as much when he wrote –

For God has not given us a spirit of fear,
but of love, power, and a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7

Classroom Ideas

+ Put up a large poster of the Total Behavior car and explain what the parts of the car mean.

+ Get a large toy vehicle to display in the classroom, with each of the Total Behavior pieces labeled on the car.

+ When reading about characters in a story – especially during History or Bible class – ask students to consider how the character’s behavior relates to the Total Behavior car. Was he or she, for instance, focusing on the front tires or the back tires when behaving as they did? How did their behavior change during the story?

+ How does a person’s life change when the back tire of feelings is inflated to a bigger size than the rest of the tires? Can you think of a time when a character from the Bible had a “way too big” feeling tire?

+ When problem-solving, practice shifting focus from the feeling tire to the thinking tire. Help students recognize the change in their feelings as their thinking changes.

Elementary level teachers will want to check out a great idea from one of their colleagues regarding the Total Behavior car. You can access that idea by clicking on the following picture –

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July 1, 2014 5 Comments

It’s OK, as long as I am not harming others. Right?

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Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.   Bertrand Russell

This statement caused me to immediately pause and consider the extent to which it is true. Since choice theory is in my quality world, the statement was filtered through my concepts of choice theory. How about you? Is Russell’s view accurate?

Unlike most psychiatrists of his day, Glasser did see importance in moral behavior, although his definition of moral is significant. To him, moral behavior occurred when a person met his own needs without keeping someone else from meeting theirs. He frequently referred to the Golden Rule in the Bible as a good maxim by which to live.

If we stopped here, Glasser would probably support Russell’s statement about personal pleasure. However, Glasser didn’t stop with just his definition of moral. He went on to describe the difference between pleasure and happiness, at least as he came to define them.

He came to see happiness as a key human need and goal. He viewed the terms happiness, choice theory, and mental health, as synonyms. He felt that it could be said that “mental health is choice theory is happiness.” Happiness comes from being close and knowing how to stay close to the important people in our lives; it comes from engaging in activities that add strength to our lives; and recognizing our basic needs and our power to make choices, more and more we come closer to being in self-control. Happiness has much to do with our relationships with other people.

Glasser came to see pleasure as something people pursued to temporarily change a feeling. His concept of total behavior has feeling as one of the back tires on the total behavior car, a part of our behavior that we cannot directly control.

Total Behavior Car

The concept of total behavior reminds us that our mental health and happiness depends on our ability to choose to live in the realm of the front tires – that being our thinking and our acting. Our feelings can be very strong, though, even what “feels” like overwhelming. Many people attempt to address the feeling, rather than staying on the front tires. A desire to feel good, or at least to not feel bad, can lead to many behaviors. Some seemingly innocuous ways we attempt to feel good or numb our pain include eating, shopping, traveling, watching movies, and playing video games; less innocuous ways of feeling good include alcohol, various drugs, sex, including pornography, and gambling. The ways in which we attempt to feel good are in fact the ways in which we self-medicate. Self-medicating behaviors do not address the root of our unhappiness; they just attempt to change a feeling, even for just a little while. This self-medicating pursuit of pleasure leads to two things – 1) you need to up the dose of whatever your medication of choice is, and 2) addiction. Rather than coming into a place of greater personal strength, we arrive at feeling powerless in the presence of our “pleasure.” And rather than bringing us closer to others, especially the important people in our lives, our pursuit of pleasure erodes our personal connections.

This is such a dark picture, yet it captures a process in which we might find ourselves.

This is such a dark picture, yet it captures a process in which we might find ourselves.

This additional definition of pleasure vs. happiness adds an important element to how we might process Russell’s statement. Now, when we read . . .

Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.

. . . we realize that pleasure that does no harm to others may still be harming me. And it brings up a really important question – Is it possible to be in the process of harming myself and not, ultimately, to be harming my relationship with the important people in my life?

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The Glasser International Conference is coming up next week in Toronto, Canada, and I am looking forward to seeing all of you who  are a part of that. For me, it will be a bit of a homecoming, as I began my teaching career in 1978 in Oshawa, Ontario, just 1/2 hour from Toronto.
January 2, 2013 2 Comments

Dagnabit! Pt. 2

Besides the deadly habits derailing our New Year’s resolutions, something else to consider is the strength of the behavior with which we are dealing. Wanting to eat differently is a common New Year’s goal, and on the surface that goal seems simple enough, but our eating habits often revolve around much deeper issues in our lives than simply taking food and swallowing it. Behaviors can become forms of self-medication. We want to feel good and over time we discover behaviors that satisfy our needs. We don’t refer to certain kinds of food as comfort food for nothing.

Some self-medicating behaviors, like gambling or use of illicit drugs, are inherently destructive, while many others, like shopping or eating or even sex, are not necessarily bad in themselves, yet they can become destructive as we give them more power than they deserve. Self-medicating is by nature an addictive process, a complex process that involves nature, nurture, and choice factors. Engaging in a particular activity, or even thinking about the activity, bathes our brain cells in a way that results in either pleasure or a at least a release from the pain.

The power of addictive behaviors can be incredibly strong, leading us to do things that leave us incredulous at our own weakness and disgusted with our self-imprisonment. A book that compassionately, yet firmly and candidly describes the comprehensive and compelling power of addiction, especially drug and alcohol addiction, is titled In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (2010), by Gabor Mate. Describing the lives of drug addicts in Vancouver, British Columbia, Mate persuasively explains why the current war on drugs does nothing to curb the addict’s drive for a fleeting moment of satisfaction. The book also makes a case for all addictions basically being the same. Whether we are a hardcore drug addict or a housewife desperate to do some online shopping, addiction is addiction. Behaviors that weaken us and lessen our ability to have control over our lives are negative addictions. It is possible, though, according to William Glasser, for certain habits (e.g.- exercising, devotional meditations, creative hobbies, etc.) to add strength and self-control to our lives, to literally be positive addictions. For more on Glasser’s views check out Positive Addiction, which was published in 1976.

At a New Year’s Eve gathering we got to talking about New Year’s resolutions and a friend shared that he had heard that as of June each calendar year, that of the people who had made resolutions, 40% of them were still keeping their new commitment. I felt that number was way high, but I do agree that a percentage of us are able to make and keep behavior change commitments. For some of us we know that we aren’t exercising enough and we start exercising; for some of us we know that we are eating to much sugar and we cut back; and for some of us we know that we’re spending too much time playing video games and we stop. For others of us, though, it isn’t that simple. Some of us are in a battle for our lives.

If a behavior has become a self-medicating behavior, then we need to acknowledge and respect it for what it has become. We made choices that invited that behavior into our lives. It felt right or important enough at the moment. And we have repeatedly affirmed that choice, sometimes for many years. The behavior has become a “friend” that we can count on. True, this “friend” is a bully and cares nothing for our real happiness. But we prefer a terrible friend we can count on over other options that seem out of our reach. If this kind of self-medicating behavior has become a part of your life, be aware that a simple resolution sometime around the end of December or beginning of January isn’t going to cut it. The cause of the challenge lies deeper than a New Year’s promise can affect.

Self-medicating, addictive behaviors can be dealt with! There is most definitely hope! To begin to gain the victory over behavior that weaken and trap, I recommend the following:
1) Take an honest personal inventory and admit the largeness of your addiction. Recognize that the behavior has become a thief of your power and your joy.
2) Bring your inventory to the Holy Spirit, admit your inability to effectively deal with the behavior, and seek His cleansing and strengthening might. He is anxious to share His insight and muscle with you.
3) Begin to learn about how our brains actually work. Seek to understand the source of your own motivation. For me, choice theory offered the best explanation of human psychology and provided details into how God created us a free will beings. (My goal is to write a follow-up book to Soul Shapers that will describe choice theory, along with how it shows up in our lives.)

Just remember that real change, lasting change occurs from the inside-out, and that not even pressure we afflict on ourselves from the outside-in, also known as the deadly habits, will make a positive difference. I am so glad that Romans 8:1, 2 comes right after Romans 7:18-25.

“And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.* I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.
I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power* within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.
So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to Him, the power of life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Romans 7:18 – 8:2.

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