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Mindfulness can allow us to get over bad habits without cognitive effort

When working with his smoking addiction patients, rather than telling them to simply restrain themselves from smoking, Dr Judson Brewer would actually encourage them to smoke. Now what kind of addiction doctor is that? Dont worry, there’s a twist, and that twist is that he admonished them to be mindful of their operant conditioning triggers and to how it felt when they did smoke. Many of his patients ended up being shocked as to how bad smoking really tasted. One of his patients knew cognitively that smoking was unhealthy, which was why they joined his mindfulness program. What they learned by being curious and attentive when they smoked was that smoking actually tasted horrible. This was an important distinction. They moved from conceptual understanding to experiential understanding; from knowing that smoking was bad in their brains to knowing it was bad in their bones. The spell of smoking was broken and they had started to grow viscerally disenchanted with their behavior.

This is what mindfulness is all about: seeing clearly what actually happens when we get caught up in our habits and becoming viscerally disenchanted with them. Over time, as we see more and more clearly the results of our actions, we let go of old habits and adopt better ones. Mindfulness pulls us out of mindlessness—the state of brought about by the default mode network (real-time FMRI of meditators showed decreased default mode network activity when concentrated), and one in which addictions and habits flourish. Mindfulness is about getting close and personal with what is occurring within our bodies and minds. It is a willingness to turn toward our experience rather than trying to just make unpleasant feelings go away as quickly as possible.

Mindfulness stands out from many modern techniques for behavioral control. With CBT and other related treatments, cognition is used to control behavior—hence the name cognitive behavioral therapy. Unfortunately, stress causes the amygdala and HPA axis to quite the prefrontal cortex by flooding it with dopamine and cortisol, encouraging impulsivity. When the prefrontal cortex shuts off, the chance that we can slip back into our old habits increases. This is why the disenchantment experienced by the patient is so important. Mindfulness can help us get over bad habits through non-forcing. Seeing what we really get from our habits helps us understand them on a deeper intuitive level without needing to force our selves to hold back from them.

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Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Psychology Status:⛅️

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