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The craving mind: from cigarettes to smartphones to love — why we get hooked and how we can break bad habits

Judson Brewer

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10 Training Resilience

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When I am in the face of suffering, it is easy to differentiate a selfish response from a selfless one—the former feels like a closing down, while the latter feels expansive. This expansive quality of experience shares characteristics of loving-kindness and flow—the self-referential, contracted “me” part of my mind is out of the way.

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Additionally, with “me” on the sidelines (or not even in the stadium), I don’t have to worry about protecting myself from getting tackled or injured on the field.

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Bringing this recognition back to the idea of empathy fatigue: removal of the “me” element frees up the energy devoted to self-protection, obviating the resultant fatigue. In other words, it is exhausting to take my patients’ suffering personally. It is freeing if I don’t.

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Mick Krasner and Ron Epstein, physicians at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, were interested in whether mindfulness training could decrease empathy fatigue in physicians.5 They developed an intensive educational program to develop self-awareness, mindfulness, and communication. They trained primary care physicians over the course of eight weeks and measured burnout and empathy scores (among others) both at the end of the training and a year later. Compared to baseline, Krasner and colleagues found significant differences in a number of measures, including reduced burnout and increased empathy and emotional stability.

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Their results provide empirical support for the idea that when we don’t get caught up in our own reactions, both we and our patients benefit.

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differentiate selfish reactions (biased toward protecting “me”) from selfless responses (situation-based and spontaneous),

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When I don’t take suffering personally, that freed-up energy can get recycled into helping. In fact, when seeing suffering clearly, I feel a natural movement to help. Many of us have had these experiences. Whether a friend calls on the phone in emotional distress, or we see a major natural disaster on the news, when we step back from worrying about ourselves, what happens? Paradoxically, we lean in, moving toward the suffering, whether by lending an ear, sending a donation, or otherwise.

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these self-focused activities have consequences that we can feel physically as clenching, restlessness, or an energetic push to “do something.”

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The more we reinforce any of these habits, the more “grooved” they become in our brain circuitry and corresponding behavior. The deeper we groove these pathways, the more likely they are to become ruts that we get stuck in—or to switch metaphors, they become the kind of worldview glasses worn so naturally that we don’t even notice we have them on.

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When we run into resistance of some sort, it can be a signal that we are stuck in a rut or a hole—ironically, the one that we have been grooving. As we become entrenched in a view or a behavior, we dig ourselves in deeper and deeper.

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We have all experienced this sensation during an argument. At some point, we realize that we are just dogmatically duking it out and that our arguments are becoming more and more ridiculous. Yet for some reason, our egos won’t let us back down. We have forgotten the “law of holes”: when in a hole, stop digging.6

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addition, the book has shown how simple mindful awareness can help us see whether we are digging ourselves deeper into that hole (that is, seeing the world through our subjective biases) or reinforcing patterns that are setting us up for more dis-ease in the future.

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Dis-ease or stress can be our compass—when we orient based on it. Mindfulness helps us look at our compass so that we can see whether we are moving toward or away from suffering, digging a deeper hole or putting the shovel down.

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What does it take to make a compass? Because the earth has north and south magnetic poles, a freely moving ferromagnetic needle will line up, or orient itself, with its ends pointing north and south. In other words, given certain causes or conditions (the earth has magnetic poles, and the needle is magnetic), we can expect or predict specific effects or results (the needle will orient in a certain direction). Once the earth’s magnetic fields were discovered, people could make compasses that worked all over the world.

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human behavior could be described in terms of conditionality: much of it follows straightforward rules, similar to natural laws (such as “a compass points north and south”). Based on these rules, he went on, we can predict that particular causes will lead to particular outcomes.

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The title of the first teaching of the Pali Canon has been translated as “setting in motion the wheel of truth.”7

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“The Noble Truth of Suffering (dukkha), monks, is this: … association with the unpleasant is suffering, dissociation from the pleasant is suffering, not receiving what one desires is suffering.”

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He shows that there is a logical nature to our actions, which is as straightforward as a compass lining up according to the laws of physics.

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just as a compass continually orients to north and south, repeating these actions generally brings about the same results.

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Next, having pointed out the logical nature of dis-ease, he lays out its cause. He states: “The Noble Truth of the Origin [cause] of Suffering is this: It is this craving.” When someone yells at us, he suggests that wanting that person to stop yelling makes things worse. Similarly, pining and whining when our spouse or partner is away on a trip doesn’t magically make her (let’s say) appear in our arms (and certainly annoys our friends).

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This teaching is analogous to a physics professor painting a red mark on a compass and saying, “That is north.” Previously, we knew only that one of the directions led toward suffering; now we are oriented to north and south. If we walk south (cause), we will suffer (effect). We can start using stress as a compass simply by looking at it.

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The Buddha then makes a third statement: “Giving [craving] up, relinquishing it, liberating oneself from it” results in “the complete cessation of that very craving.” Walk north, and your suffering will diminish. If our sweetheart is away for a week, see what happens if we stop daydreaming about her and focus on what is in front of us (we might feel better). If we are deeply engaged in the task at hand, we might forget about the hours left until she returns—and then bam! she is back.

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Finally, the Buddha lays out a path to the fourth truth, which leads “to the cessation of suffering.” He provides a detailed map.

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In After Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor describes these four noble truths as a “fourfold task”: to comprehend suffering, to let go of the arising of reactivity, to behold the ceasing of reactivity, and to cultivate a … path that is grounded in the perspective of mindful awareness8

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Framed in this way, the language of the Buddha’s first teaching (pleasant, unpleasant, suffering) and his emphasis on cause and effect sound like operant conditioning. Acting in an automatic or knee-jerk manner to quickly satisfy a craving just feeds it. We have looked at many examples of this habit loop. In life, we habitually react to our circumstances based on our subjective biases, especially when we don’t get what we want.

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Dropping into a mindful awareness of our habitual reactivity helps us step out of the cycle of suffering—resting in awareness itself rather than being caught up in reactivity.

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Batchelor lays this out in no uncertain terms: “‘The arising’ denotes craving; greed, hatred, and delusion … that is, whatever reactivity is triggered by our contact with the world. “‘The ceasing’ denotes the ending of that reactivity.”9

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Returning to the idea of resilience, we can see how reactivity amounts to the opposite of resilience: resistance. Why do we resist a new idea without thinking it through? We are reacting according to some type of subjective bias. Why do we resist getting dumped by our sweetheart, sometimes with begging and pleading? We are reacting to that ego blow or potential loss of security. When we are resilient, we can bend with new circumstances as we begin to experience them. When we are resilient, we don’t resist or avoid the grieving process. We recover faster our ego attachment and feeling of threat; we move on without holding on.

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As we go through the day, seeing how many times we react to or resist things beyond our control can help us see more clearly that we are training our own resistance. We are building up our muscles to be able to fight that “bad” (new) idea. We are building our defenses to fend off that hurt when we get dumped.

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The extreme end of this spectrum is to steel ourselves, to not allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable. In their song “I Am a Rock,” Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel describe building walls of protection so that “no one touches me,” an ill-fated attempt to avoid the emotional roller coaster of life. Isolation as the solution to suffering: an island never cries.

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The more we wall ourselves off from the world, the more we miss.

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Remember our logic-based System 2, our self-control mechanism? Mr. Spock has no emotions. He is optimized for unbiased action. For most humans, emotions (domain of the usually dominant System 1) go to the core of who we are, so System 2 doesn’t work very well when we get stressed or otherwise overly emotional.

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In any type of addictive behavior, reactivity builds its strength through repetition—resistance training. Each time we look for our “likes” on Facebook, we lift the barbell of “I am.” Each time we smoke a cigarette in reaction to a trigger, we do a push-up of “I smoke.” Each time we excitedly run off to a colleague to tell her about our latest and greatest idea, we do a sit-up of “I’m smart.”

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At some point we stop running around in the circles perpetuating our (perpetual) positive and negative reinforcement loops. When does this happen? Usually when we are exhausted—once we have grown tired of all the lever pressing and start to wake up to the fact that it isn’t getting us anywhere. When we stop and look at our own life, we can step back and see that we are lost, headed nowhere. We can pull out our compass and see that we have been orienting ourselves in the wrong direction.

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The beautiful thing here is that simply by paying attention to how we are causing our own stress—simply by being mindful—we can begin to train ourselves to walk the other way.

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Our resistance training will not have been in vain, though. It will help remind us of the behaviors that move us in the wrong direction—toward increased dis-ease and dissatisfaction. The more clearly we see this unwanted result arising from a repeated behavior, the more disenchanted we become, and the less we will be naturally drawn to move toward that behavior.

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The excitement that was formerly a supposed source of happiness no longer does it for us. Why? Because the reward of letting go and simply being feels better than dis-ease.

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Our brains are set up to learn. As soon as we clearly see the difference between a contracted, self-reinforcing reward and an open, expanding, joyful self-forgetting one, we will have learned to read the compass. We can then orient ourselves and begin moving in the other direction—toward true happiness.

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With our own suffering, instead of shrinking away from it or beating ourselves up for having gotten caught up in yet another habit loop, we can pull out our compass and ask ourselves, “Where am I headed with this?”

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We can even bow to our habit in a gesture of gratitude because in fact, in this moment, it is acting as a teacher, helping us learn about ourselves and our habitual reactivity so that we can grow from the experience.

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Let’s continue with the resistance-training metaphor. When training in a gym, we calculate how much to lift, how many times to lift it, and how long to hold it against gravity (resistance). Each aspect of the exercise contributes to the strengthening of our muscles. The young monk in the parable at the beginning of the chapter lifted his mental burden once, yet kept holding it up until it became too heavy. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he angrily threw it down at the feet of his colleague.

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When starting any type of un-or antiresistance training, whether taking a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course or using some other way to change, we can apply these three types of gym metrics to our reactivity as we go about our day.

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How often do we react by taking something personally? The simplest way to find out is to look for some type of internal contraction denoting an urge or attachment—remember, this physical sensation occurs with both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. How heavy is the burden, meaning, how contracted do we get? And finally, how long do we carry it around? Gaining a clear view of our reactivity will naturally point us to its opposite: letting go.

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We can use the same metrics to check our progress in this area. How often do we let go or not habitually react in a way that we used to? When we pick something up, is it lighter than before, meaning, do we not get as caught up in it? How long do we carry it around? And if we notice that we have been carrying something around, how quickly do we drop it (and not pick it back up)?

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We can think of antiresistance training as an exploration more than a dogmatic framework for achieving some result. Orienting to stress and its opposite doesn’t lead us to something in particular. Instead, paying attention helps us start moving in a particular direction, at any moment.

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The more we become familiar with our compass, the easier it becomes to realize how readily available this mode of being is, all the time. We don’t have to do anything special or go somewhere to get something. We simply have to learn what it feels like to get in our own way, and the rest begins to take care of itself. Keeping our eyes open, seeing clearly, will keep us moving in that direction.

Notes

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6. G. DeGraff, Mind like Fire Unbound: An Image in the Early Buddhist Discourses, 4th ed. (Valley Center, Calif.: Metta Forest Monastery, 1993).

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8. J. A. Brewer, H. M. Elwafi, and J. H. Davis, “Craving to Quit: Psychological Models and Neurobiological Mechanisms of Mindfulness Training as Treatment for Addictions,” Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 27, no. 2 (2013): 366–79.

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3. D. I. Tamir and J. P. Mitchell, “Disclosing Information about the Self Is Intrinsically Rewarding.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 21 (2012): 8038–43.

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4. D. Meshi, C. Morawetz, and H. R. Heekeren, “Nucleus Accumbens Response to Gains in Reputation for the Self Relative to Gains for Others Predicts Social Media Use,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013).

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3. Watts, “This Is It,” in This Is It, 70.

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4. W. Schultz, “Behavioral Theories and the Neurophysiology of Reward,” Annual Review of Psychology 57 (2006): 87–115.

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6. S. N. Ogata et al., “Childhood Sexual and Physical Abuse in Adult Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder,” American Journal of Psychiatry 147, no. 8 (1990): 1008–13.

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7. S. K. Fineberg et al., “A Computational Account of Borderline Personality Disorder: Impaired Predictive Learning about Self and Others through Bodily Simulation,” Frontiers in Psychiatry 5 (2014): 111.

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5. M. A. Killingsworth and D. T. Gilbert, “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind,” Science 330, no. 6006 (2010): 932.

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6. J. A. Brewer, K. A. Garrison, and S. Whitfield-Gabrieli, “What about the ‘Self’ Is Processed in the Posterior Cingulate Cortex?,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013).

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8. A. F. Arnsten, “Stress Signalling Pathways That Impair Prefrontal Cortex Structure and Function,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, no. 6 (2009): 410–22.

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9. W. Hofmann et al., “Everyday Temptations: An Experience Sampling Study of Desire, Conflict, and Self-Control,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102, no. 6 (2011): 1318–35.

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4. S. Nolen-Hoeksema, B. E. Wisco, and S. Lyubomirsky, “Rethinking Rumination,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3, no. 5 (2008): 400–424.

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5. R. N. Davis and S. Nolen-Hoeksema, “Cognitive Inflexibility among Ruminators and Nonruminators,” Cognitive Therapy and Research 24, no. 6 (2000): 699–711.

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6. Y. Millgram et al., “Sad as a Matter of Choice? Emotion-Regulation Goals in Depression,” Psychological Science 2015: 1–13.

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7. M. F. Mason et al., “Wandering Minds: The Default Network and Stimulus-Independent Thought,” Science 315, no. 5810 (2007): 393–95.

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8. D. H. Weissman et al., “The Neural Bases of Momentary Lapses in Attention,” Nature Neuroscience 9, no. 7 (2006): 971–78.

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9. D. A. Gusnard et al., “Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Self-Referential Mental Activity: Relation to a Default Mode of Brain Function,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 7 (2001): 4259–264.

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10. S. Whitfield-Gabrieli et al., “Associations and Dissociations between Default and Self-Reference Networks in the Human Brain,” NeuroImage 55, no. 1 (2011): 225–32.

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11. J. A. Brewer et al., “Meditation Experience Is Associated with Differences in Default Mode Network Activity and Connectivity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 50 (2011): 20254–59.

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1. J. D. Ireland, trans., Dvayatanupassana Sutta: The Noble One’s Happiness (1995), available from Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism, www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.3.12.irel.html.

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2. Magandiya Sutta: To Magandiya (MN 75), in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nika−ya, trans. B. Ña−n.amoli and B. Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995).

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3. B. Bodhi, ed., In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (Somerville, Mass.: Wisdom Publications, 2005), 192–93.

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4. G. Harrison, In the Lap of the Buddha (Boston: Shambhala, 2013).

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5. Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words.

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6. Magandiya Sutta.

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7. B. F. Skinner and J. Hayes, Walden Two (New York: Macmillan, 1976 [1948]).

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2. B. Ña−n.amoli and B. Bodhi, trans., The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nika−ya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995).

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3. J. Davis, “Acting Wide Awake: Attention and the Ethics of Emotion” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2014).

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4. H. A. Chapman et al., “In Bad Taste: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust,” Science 323, no. 5918 (2009): 1222–26.

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5. U. Kirk, J. Downar, and P. R. Montague, “Interoception Drives Increased Rational Decision-Making in Meditators Playing the Ultimatum Game,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 5 (2011).

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6. A. G. Sanfey et al., “The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game,” Science 300, no. 5626 (2003): 1755–58.

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7. S. Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015), 242.

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8. T. Bhikkhu, “No Strings Attached,” in Head and Heart Together: Essays on the Buddhist Path (2010), 12.

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M. Csíkszentmihályi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1975).

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2. M. Csíkszentmihályi, “Go with the Flow,” interview by J. Geirland, Wired, September 1996, www.wired.com/1996/09/czik.

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3. J. Nakamura and M. Csíkszentmihályi, “Flow Theory and Research,” in The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 2nd ed., ed. S. J. Lopez and C. R. Snyder, 195–206 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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4. D. Potter, “Dean Potter: The Modern Day Adventure Samurai,” interview by Jimmy Chin, Jimmy Chin’s Blog, May 12, 2014. “BASE” is an acronym for “building, antenna, span, earth.”

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5. P. Jackson and H. Delehanty, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success (New York: Penguin, 2013), 23.

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6. Sujiva, “Five Jhana Factors of Concentration/Absorption,” 2012, BuddhaNet, www.buddhanet.net/mettab3.htm.

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7. M. Csíkszentmihályi, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 129.

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8. C. J. Limb and A. R. Braun, “Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation,” PLoS One 3, no. 2 (2008): e1679; S. Liu et al., “Neural Correlates of Lyrical Improvisation: An fMRI Study of Freestyle Rap,” Scientific Reports 2 (2012): 834; G. F. Donnay et al., “Neural Substrates of Interactive Musical Improvisation: An fMRI Study of ‘Trading Fours’ in Jazz,” PLoS One 9, no. 2 (2014): e88665.

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9. T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” in Four Quartets. In the United States: excerpts from “Burnt Norton” from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company; Copyright © renewed 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. In the UK and the rest of the world: published by Faber and Faber Ltd., reprinted with permission.

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10. M. Steinfeld and J. Brewer, “The Psychological Benefits from Reconceptualizing Music-Making as Mindfulness Practice,” Medical Problems of Performing Artists 30, no. 2 (2015): 84–89.

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1. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), chap. 59.

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2. S. Del Canale et al., “The Relationship between Physician Empathy and Disease Complications: An Empirical Study of Primary Care Physicians and Their Diabetic Patients in Parma, Italy,” Academic Medicine 87, no. 9 (2012): 1243–49; D. P. Rakel et al., “Practitioner Empathy and the Duration of the Common Cold,” Family Medicine 41, no. 7 (2009): 494–501.

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3. M. S. Krasner et al., “Association of an Educational Program in Mindful Communication with Burnout, Empathy, and Attitudes among Primary Care Physicians,” JAMA 302, no. 12 (2009): 1284–93.

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4. T. Gyatso (Dalai Lama XIV), The Compassionate Life (Somerville, Mass.: Wisdom Publications, 2003), 21.

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5. Krasner et al., “Educational Program in Mindful Communication.”

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6. The quotation was published in the Bankers Magazine in 1964 and has also been attributed to Will Rogers.

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7. B. Thanissaro, trans., Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion (1993); available from Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism, www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.than.html.

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8. S. Batchelor, After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015), 27; emphasis in the original.

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9. Ibid., 125.