behavior - Back in Control https://backincontrol.com/tag/behavior/ The DOC (Direct your Own Care) Project Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:13:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Your Relationship to Food and Life https://backincontrol.com/your-relationship-to-food-and-life/ Sun, 11 Sep 2022 22:59:37 +0000 https://backincontrol.com/?p=21849

Objectives Our view of the world and our place in it is programmed in from the moment we are born. It becomes reinforced with age. Our relationship with food is a core example. Like many aspects of our life, we mentally punish ourselves if we don’t stick to our ideal … Read More

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Objectives

  • Our view of the world and our place in it is programmed in from the moment we are born.
  • It becomes reinforced with age. Our relationship with food is a core example.
  • Like many aspects of our life, we mentally punish ourselves if we don’t stick to our ideal of a healthy diet.
  • Use your relationship to food as a way of looking at how you relate to life. Choose joy!

Our view of the world and of ourselves is programmed by our entire life experience from the time of birth until this present moment. Most of it originates from the messaging that society, parents, relatives, friends, and colleagues feed to us about who we should or not be or doing. We end up being the product of everyone else’s perceptions. “Should thinking”  is a cognitive distortion. We are our programming and not particularly connected to the core of who we are.

Your “life lens”

Neuroscience research on consciousness has also shown that thoughts and concepts become as concretely embedded in our brains as any object such as a car or a house.1 The summation of all this input becomes our unique “life lens” that is continually being reinforced. If your new data agrees with your views, they are reinforced. If it contradicts your life concepts, you’ll reject it, and it has been shown to strengthen the position even more. The marketing term for this phenomenon is, “reactance.”2 You may have noticed that facts rarely change anyone’s mind. The only option is if you choose to be become aware of your life lens and change it. Unfortunately, change creates anxiety, and we resist it.

 

 

The mental construct of who we are and our place in the world is projected onto others in the form of judgements, with a good share of them being negative. We call this “self-esteem.”

Rigidity around food (and life)

We all must eat and each of us has our personal relationship with food. We develop belief systems based on our best summation of a lot of information. Then with time and repetition it often becomes an entrenched belief system. Here is where the trouble lies. If you have a certain fixed belief system in any domain of life, your brain spends a lot of energy correlating ongoing input with it. Our need to eat arises from our powerful unconscious brain and the drive is unending and powerful. Your rational brain is weak (a million times so) in comparison, and you’ll quickly experience “cognitive fatigue”3 trying to stick with a rigid diet. Why?

So, you have an “ideal” of what you should be eating every time you are exposed to food. If you act in accordance with your internal standards, you have control, and you are happy. What about when you “fail.” Consistent with many other aspects of our lives, we become self-critical. “I should be eating this way”, or “I shouldn’t have eaten this. You now feel badly. The more rigid and higher your “standards”, the more of your energy you’ll be expending, and you’ll fatigue. The brain consumes 20-25% of all of your body’s fuel.4 This ongoing sense of “failing” and mental self-criticism is a significant factor why many of us experience a “yo-yo” diet and it is challenging to maintain weight loss.

Then look at the other areas of your life that you are self-critical and remorseful. Your job, parenting, missed opportunities, skill level, accomplishments, and this list is infinite. We are generally programmed by “not being good enough.”

Food as an opportunity to choose joy

Your relationship to food is a wonderful opportunity to flip this paradigm. There are two parts. The first is to be kind to yourself regardless of your “performance.” Each of us can only do the best we can based on our skill sets and levels of stress. So, anytime you “fail” in meeting your standards of eating, always give yourself a break. Then the key to healing is awareness. It doesn’t matter whether you are being judgmental or trying not to be. Either energy reinforces judgment. Awareness allows you to create some distance between you and this reaction and eventually it will lower in intensity and maybe even almost disappear (it can’t ever completely resolve).

Then as you watch your relationship to food, you can choose to enjoy your meal regardless of what it consists of. It is somewhat perverse that the unhealthiest food is the most satisfying. What will happen, as you train your brain to stop reacting, is that you will have more energy to live your life in a more proactive enjoyable manner and actually eat better.

 

 

Eating and cognitive distortions

Consider why the alternative of negative reinforcement around eating beliefs detracts from your capacity to enjoy life. Many of the resultant thoughts around not eating right are cognitive distortions as described in David Burn’s book, Feeling Good.5 Since we have to deal with food daily, there is no end to them, and it is one of the ways your body’s physiology remains in a threat state. What are some of the distortions?

  • “Should” thinking
  • Labeling – “I am failure because I had a donut.
  • Catastrophizing – viewing an event as having a major effect when in reality it has little effect on your life. For example, you may have chosen to have a vegan diet, but having an occasional hamburger is not going to affect your overall health.
  • All or nothing thinking – seeing things in terms of absolutes.

These are distortions that exist in all aspects of our lives. The opportunity lies using food to highlight them and observe how they play out in other arenas. It is much different observing our judgmental nature than fighting it or trying to fix it. There is also no endpoint or logical conclusion to endless self-criticism. When do you get to truly live the life you want?

So, what is the alternative? Choose joy. Regardless of what you are eating or how much, choose joy. That also means making the choice to remain aware and watch the negative thought patterns march through. Eventually, as your focus continues to remain on nurturing joy, it will also work in nurturing you. Paradoxically, you may simply notice how much better you feel when you eat more healthfully, and it becomes easier to make better choices.

“Love yourself”

Here is one small story in how this can work. I have a close friend who has wanted to lose some weight for a while. He engaged in the usual dieting approaches such as counting calories, trying to eat more healthfully, avoiding junk food, and exercising more frequently. These are great things to do, but when he failed, he would mentally beat himself up. The outcome was the usual yo-yo weight loss with the end result being frustrated in addition to not losing weight. He made the decision to “love himself” regardless of his dietary patterns. He lost 15 pounds in 6 months and maintained it. This is just one story but consider how our general approach to food can detract from our capacity to enjoy life.

I am not saying that a healthy diet isn’t desirable. In fact, a healthy anti-inflammatory diet can dramatically improve your health and sense of well-being. It is a significant factor in decreasing mental and physical pain. What I am saying is that focusing on nurturing yourself as opposed to mentally punishing yourself when you fail to meet your dietary standards (or any other ones) allows you have higher chance of eating better. Additionally feeling content with who you today are is anti-inflammatory.

 

 

Recap

Rigidity around food is a powerful metaphor for rigidity in other aspects of your life. Food is an opportunity to learn strategies to lower anxiety in order to not need to me in so much control. The stress generated from “failing to meet your internal standards” not only detracts from your capacity to enjoy life but is inflammatory and damaging to your health.

The essence of healing is minimizing your time in inflammatory threat physiology and increasing your exposure to safety. An anti-inflammatory diet contributes to healing, but ongoing self-criticism is a form of anger, which is highly inflammatory. Why not love yourself first, regardless of your behaviors? Many of them are not ideal, but how does it help you to mentally beat yourself up? You don’t have to like many of them. However, we all are doing the best we can with what we have been given.

Choosing to enjoy the experience of eating creates an energy that carries into other arenas of your life. You get to practice daily (sometimes all day). Enjoying your life also changes your body’s chemistry to safety, you’ll react less, think more clearly, and make better choices about food. Then there is the added benefit of your diet being less inflammatory and you’ll feel even better.

Questions and considerations

  1. You might feel that this article is not relevant to you. You may not care about eating a healthy diet. Consider that maybe you don’t care about your health. You are used to feeling badly, don’t see any hope, and have given up. This is “The Abyss.” Being aware that you are in this spot is the first step in healing. Don’t give up, and please start your healing journey.
  2. Have you considered that being more focused on your beliefs about diet might detract from enjoying your meal? Having rigid belief systems about life is also tedious and eventually wears you down. There is not much room to nurture joy.
  3. Food is a basic defined need and your relationship to it becomes deeply embedded in your unconscious mind with repetition. It is easy to see and becoming aware of its impact will allow you to address other aspects of your life.
  4. Remember, a healthy diet is better, but self-criticism is a bigger issue. Why not address both?

References

  1. Feldman-Barrett, Lisa. How Emotions are Made. Mariner Books, Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2017.
  2. Berger, Jonah. The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind. Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 2020.
  3. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, NY, 2011.
  4. Xu J, and S Xu. Possible reason for the high metabolic rate in neurons of a brain. Austin Jrn of Women’s Health (2018); 5:1031.
  5. Burns, David. Feeling Good. Harper Collins, New York, NY, 1980, 1999.

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“Self-Esteem” Must Die https://backincontrol.com/self-esteem-must-die/ Tue, 05 Mar 2013 01:42:14 +0000 http://www.drdavidhanscom.com/?p=5421

In our society today, it’s commonly believed that the higher the opinion you have of yourself, the more confident, happy, and successful you’ll be; high self-esteem is held up as the ultimate goal. In actuality, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth: the pursuit of self-esteem is a destructive … Read More

The post “Self-Esteem” Must Die first appeared on Back in Control.

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In our society today, it’s commonly believed that the higher the opinion you have of yourself, the more confident, happy, and successful you’ll be; high self-esteem is held up as the ultimate goal. In actuality, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth: the pursuit of self-esteem is a destructive concept that is merely the manifestation of man’s thirst for power, driven by anxiety and the need for control.

The consequences of endlessly striving for self-esteem aren’t just dire for the individual, but for the society as a whole, as those in charge – of families, companies, countries, anything — judge others harshly, driving them into the ground on their path to power. At its worst, the quest for greater self-esteem leads to despotism, war, and mass murder, blocking world peace. What can be done about this dangerous scenario? The real key to harmony for us as individuals and as a society is not self-esteem but compassion. Only by practicing compassion – for ourselves and others — can we make our world a more peaceful one. The road to compassion starts at the point where you become aware of your own efforts to inflate your self-esteem, which can be traced back to anxiety.

Compassion

Let’s look at compassion first. Compassion is now recognized as vital force in our society: in fact, there is a group (in which I am a partner) called “A Charter for Compassion” founded by Karen Armstrong, a prominent theologian. The group’s mission is to promote compassion on an international level. It’s a great and important cause but we have one major challenge: while the idea of using compassion to bring about peace (in our world and in ourselves) has been around for a long time, there has been no lasting change.

In her book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, Armstrong points out that 2,500 years ago, Confucius had remarkable insight about the importance of compassion and worked to spread the word about it. In spite of his significant efforts, though, he felt that he’d failed to convince any world leaders to act in a compassionate way. The challenge continues today.

Self-Esteem, Anxiety, and Judgment

Now let’s consider the origins of our inability to achieve world peace: the pursuit of self-esteem, which is rooted in the universal feelings of anxiety and anger. Here’s how the sequence unfolds: we don’t like to feel anxious, so when the feeling starts, we struggle to gain control of the situation that’s causing it. If we can’t gain (or retain) control, we become angry. Anger covers up the anxiety, making us feel more in control and more powerful. It’s a vicious cycle in which those in power see no logical reason to give it up.

In trying to gain more self-esteem, we inevitably compare ourselves to others, which results in harsh judgments. This is problematic for several reasons: first, these negative feelings don’t help you enjoy your day. Second, although you might intellectually believe that “all men are created equal,” actively judging anyone – whether it’s a friend or a homeless person on the street — means you haven’t internalized this belief. Third, negative judgment leads to ill treatment of others (even if we display a veneer of civility). Lastly, self-esteem has odd blinders; whatever defines us most is what we most often judge in others. Think about this for a while.

Do you often make negative judgments? Ask yourself the following questions:

  • If you are intellectual do you view people who are less educated or less intelligent as your equal?
  • If you are in incredible physical shape, how do you judge the other 95% of the population that is not fit?
  • What if you are poor? Do you identify with your “simple” life so much that you judge those who have more than you?
  • If you aren’t poor, how do view those who have less than you? Do you treat them the same way you would treat your boss or your family?
  • If you are attractive and are defined by your looks, how do you feel about those who are physically challenged?

 

 

We really all are equal

In answering these questions, remember that every human being is flawed. The beauty of this realization is that it allows us to see that not only were we are all created equal; we truly are equal. Being judgmental interferes with our ability to enjoy the human experience at the deepest level, which is tragic for you and everyone you come in contact with. When you judge someone as being “less than” you, it enables you to rationalize some pretty bad behavior. In labeling that person, you’ve lost the capacity to view the world through that person’s eyes. It’s the antithesis of compassion. The essence of compassion is awareness.

What is really odd about this process is that you may focus so hard on the few traits you define yourself by that you become detached from the feelings of worthlessness you possess in multiple other areas. This disconnection can and will lead to aberrant behaviors. Here’s a recap of the sequence:

  • Anxiety is a universal trait
  • Anxiety drives the need for self-esteem
  • The pursuit of self-esteem leads to a pattern of judgment
    • Of others
    • Of self
  •  Working on your self-esteem is an attempt to gain more power and there is no endpoint.

Remember that in the end, no matter how hard you work on your self-esteem, there will always be people in your “target” zone who are more competent, skilled, wealthy, etc. So at the same time you feel superior to many, you also feel inferior to many. By the way, how are you keeping score?

Guaranteed to Fail

Also keep in mind that instead of making you happy, self-esteem pretty much guarantees that happiness will always elude you. For example, suppose you are brilliant in your field of work but are physically out of shape and cannot get on top of it. Does your brilliance overcome your negative feelings about your body? The answer is: probably not. There are a million traits to feel good or bad about, which is one of the reasons that self-esteem is so ineffective in allaying anxiety. It eventually becomes destructive.

I recently had a conversation with a young professional about self-esteem. He told me that in any social situation that he is in he feels like he is the most intelligent person in the room. It does not matter who is in the group or if it is in his area of expertise. He then went into a somewhat complicated explanation why he thought this was the case. I could only feel sorry for him as I realized how much of his life energies were being consumed by this process.

Solutions

We’ve established that anxiety and the resulting negative judgment lead to the pursuit of self-esteem, which, in turn, results in power struggles. The resulting judgment blocks awareness, which is the foundation of compassion. As self-esteem is so widely promoted how is world peace even a concept? What is the solution to this problem? First, we have to start at the individual level and deal with our anxiety/judgments. The most effective technique is a strategy called reprogramming, which essentially “resets” your nervous system via the following tactics: 1) awareness, 2) detachment, and 3) reprogramming.

The first step is to become aware of your anxiety/judgments. One effective method is to either write down or speak your judgmental thoughts, which allows you to separate from the, which accomplishes the second step.

The detachment process doesn’t get rid of your judgments; they will still be there the next time you interact with the same person. However, in separating from your thoughts, your negativity is no long running the show. You don’t have to like this person but you’ve created a situation where the possibility of liking him or her one-day exists. At a minimum you can do business or interact with them without it disrupting your peace of mind. This third step is the reprogramming part of the process.

Note that it may be tempting to try and suppress your anxiety-driven judgments, but this won’t work; the anxiety that lies beneath our judgments is a mental reflex, and impossible to deal with in any way that might seem rational.

“Not being judgmental”

I have an ongoing discussion with my patients about why suppressing their judgments doesn’t work. For instance, suppose they’ve decided to turn over a new leaf and not be judgmental of a person they don’t like, such as a coworker or relative. The next time they interact with this person, what happens? In trying not to think negative thoughts about the other person, they focus on these thoughts even more, literally “firing up” their neurological circuits of judgment. It’s a problematic way to run one’s life, since lack of awareness results in detached and even bizarre behavior.

There are other, effective methods for breaking the negative cycle of self-esteem:

  • Treat anxiety/anger as a Neurophysiological Disorder (NPD) symptom.
    • Become aware of your own self-esteem needs and resulting judgmental nature.
    • If you are working on your self-esteem, realize that you are using rational means to deal with the powerful unconscious brain. It is a mismatch.t
    • Become aware of the impact of your judgmental behavior on yourself and others.
      • Stop it – now.
        • Every person, every time. No exceptions.
    • This work is done via small, multiple daily interactions.
      • Example: avoid taking part in gossiping.
      • Connect with who you are. It does not matter how you compare with others.

Once you become aware of the destructive nature of pursuing self-esteem, you can implement tools to change, creating the possibility for peace within you and around you.

World Peace – Act Now or Quit Talking

The concept of world peace has been in my thoughts my entire life. Though I have at times been hopeful, it currently seems like we are headed the wrong direction. In fact, sometimes I feel that much of the free world is heading back into the Dark Ages. Many parts of the world still live in the same conditions as the Dark Ages, subject to absolute control by a few leaders, with severe consequences for breaking the arbitrary rules. Can the human condition ever overcome its own nature? What would it take for us to achieve world peace? This is the question that needs to be answered; otherwise let’s quit talking about it and deal with the reality that it’s never going to happen.

Consider this breakdown:

  • World Peace is a result of having….
  • Compassion, which only occurs if we…
  • Remove what’s blocking compassion: our need for power/pursuit of self-esteem
  • The drive for power/self-esteem can only be stopped if we address…
    • Anxiety/ anger, which has to happen at the…
    • Individual level, because…
      • The institutions that can create world peace are a result of the collective consciousness

Compassion is contagious. The more compassionate you are with your partner, children, friends, coworkers, or a stranger on the street, the more likely they will be compassionate to those around them.

 

 

Change Your Behavior, Change Your World

Most everyone would agree that world peace is a good idea, so how do we go about achieving it? Besides being compassionate to your fellow man, it helps to let others know about the destructive nature of self-esteem.

This is the idea put forth in the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything written by people who are highly skilled in creating change. The book is about pinpointing which behaviors need to be modified in order to create the desired result. For example, if you wanted to improve people’s dental hygiene habits, you might think you should display this message on every billboard in the country: “Practicing good dental hygiene results in healthier teeth and gums.” This tactic wouldn’t change a thing, however. But if you systematically educated the population about regular and correct methods of brushing and flossing your teeth, you’d achieve your goal.

Let’s consider this idea in the context of world peace. You can promote the concept that world peace is a good idea, but you won’t get anywhere unless you specify to others what behaviors need to change. One might be to stop working on their self-esteem and instead, practicing awareness and compassion. True lasting change can only occur one person at a time and everyone is important.

Video:

 

 

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