Use Your Damn Skills

Our brains respond to what we expose ourselves to. 

That sounds simple, obvious. But we often seem to forget it. 

Our brains respond to the pictures we put in front of our eyes. That is to say, what we watch. 

We often like to think that we can watch violent or sad or infuriating things, with no emotional repercussions— that we’re sufficiently “tough” that our entertainment choices don’t affect us. 

We need to keep in mind that television and movies did not exist when our nervous systems were evolving. 

As organisms, we are ill-equipped to meaningfully distinguish between things that are seen on a television or movie screen, and things we see right in front of our eyes. 

When we’re children, we’re VERY responsive to things we see on TV and in movies. Our parents and caretakers often have to remind us that what we’re seeing is “just a movie,” and we have to be shown that the actors involved survived to make other movies. 

That’s a distinction understand with our cerebral cortex— the part of our brain responsible for higher-order thinking and reasoning. 

That top/front part of our brain gets that “it’s just a movie.” 

But our limbic system— the deeper, lower part of our brain, which doesn’t really communicate with language and doesn’t really respond to well-reasoned argument— continues to respond to things we see as if they were real. 

This is why, even though we know it’s “just a movie,” we still get sad at sad movies, we still get an adrenaline rush while watching action movies, we still hate the bad guys on the screen, and we still root for the heroes of the story. 

It makes no sense to assume that we can repeatedly expose ourselves to sad, violent, infuriating, or otherwise negatively activating entertainment, day in and day out, and remain unaffected. 

Of course it’s “just a movie” or “just a show.” 

But does every part of you know that? 

When we close our eyes, the images we see are highly dependent upon the images we’ve seen. 

When we go to sleep, our brain has to somehow make sense of everything we’ve seen and experienced during the day. 

When we’ve fed ourselves a steady diet of violent or activating entertainment, our limbic systems are working overtime to sort out what we’re “allowed” to react to emotionally— and what emotions and reactions we need to keep “bottled up,” because we’re not “supposed to” react. 

Why is any of this relevant? People like the entertainment they like. 

It’s relevant when we’re trying to heal emotionally. 

When we’re trying to return to a sense of normalcy after trauma. 

When we’re trying to regain emotional equilibrium on the other side of depression. 

When we’re trying to convince our anxious brain that we are effectively safe. 

It’s not that we can NEVER distinguish between real life and violent or depressing entertainment. 

It’s that in exposing ourselves to a steady diet of violence or powerfully negative images and stories, we are asking our brains to work overtime. 

And when we are in recovery, our brains already have a lot to do in just helping us function every day. 

Does this mean we can NEVER expose ourselves to potentially triggering entertainment if we want to be happy and stable? 

Not necessarily. Everybody’s going to have a slightly different tolerance for violent or otherwise heavy entertainment. 

The point is: pay attention. 

Maybe consider mixing up the kind of entertainment you expose yourself to. 

Maybe consider putting some limits on things that could be triggering. 

As usual, there’s no “one size fits all” fix to this issue. Everybody needs to take responsibility for what works for them. 

All I know is that, especially in the early stages of recovery, I strongly encourage my patients and clients to devote serious thought to what they are putting in front of their eyes every day. 

Emotionally, we are what we watch, what we read, what we expose ourselves to. 

Make good choices. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

Philosophy and theory are nice. 

But when it comes to managing anxiety, skills and tools are better. 

Any effective strategy for managing anxiety includes at least three components: acceptance, mental focus, and physiology. 

There are various skills and tools we can use to address each component— but each component needs to be addressed if we’re going to make a dent in our anxiety. 

An anxiety management strategy that DOESN’T address one of those components will be incomplete. It might work for a minute— but it won’t ultimately be as effective as we need it to be. 

Acceptance means acknowledging the problem of anxiety— and the specific level and kind of anxiety we’re experiencing at the moment. 

We can’t manage what we don’t accept is happening. We really can’t. 

A lot of people think they’re going to skip this component. They find anxiety so unpleasant and overwhelming that they resist acknowledging that it’s exactly as bad as it is. 

(We’ve all known someone who is clearly melting down and overwhelmingly anxious— but who stubbornly insists they are “JUST FINE.”)

Denial is not an anxiety management strategy. It’s a very effective anxiety exacerbation strategy, though. 

Once we’ve accepted that we’re anxious, and it’s exactly as bad as it is, then we can get on to effectively managing it. 

Mental focus involves becoming aware of the story in our heads that is fueling the anxiety. 

We don’t develop anxiety in a vacuum. Anxiety arises in response to our thoughts— usually our thoughts about things that are outside of our control. 

What often happens is, an external event will trigger a well-rehearsed “story” that we often tell ourselves— and we tumble down the anxiety rabbit hole as a result. 

In order to effectively manage our anxiety, we need to shift our mental focus, somehow, some way. 

There are lots of tools and skills we can use to shift our mental focus— containment, distraction, music, self-talk, internal communication, poetry, quotes, visualization. The list goes on and on. 

The important thing is that we get something new and different in front of our mind’s eye than the mental “story” that triggered our anxiety. 

We cannot manage our anxiety without shifting our mental focus. 

Physiology is the state of our physical body. Our posture, breathing, muscle tension, heart rate— anything going on that involves your body (as opposed what’s happening in your mind). 

It’s hard to mange your anxiety if you’re holding on to anxious physiology. 

It’s not at all easy to relax your muscles, slow your breathing, or straighten your posture while you’re in a state of anxiety— but if you really want to change that anxiety, you’re going to have to address that physiology. 

With practice those three components— acceptance, mental focus, and physiology— can all be addressed in a short period of time. 

At first, the temptation is to get “stuck” on one of the components— but, over time, we can get into the habit of going through our mental checklist and making quick adjustments to each component. 

There are anxiety management strategies that focus on each of those components. Cognitive therapy, for example, addresses mental focus. Progressive relaxation and medication address physiology. The mindfulness tools of Dialectical Behavior Therapy addresses acceptance. 

Any long-term strategy for handling anxiety, however, NEEDS to address all three components. 

Anxiety management can be learned. It can be practiced, and you WILL get better at it. 

That said: anxiety is no fun, and managing it isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. 

Be patient with yourself. Give yourself time to experiment with the strategies that work for you. 

And don’t give up. 

You’ve come too far. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

When you’re scraping bottom with your depression, there’s a lot you don’t express. 

The people around you might not even have any idea that you’re scraping bottom. 

They might see you as a perfectly functional human being, with no indication that there’s anything wrong at all. 

I can tell you from my own experience that people who know me from the period when I was at my worst, tend to be surprised to learn that every day I was waging a private battle against my own thoughts, feelings, and impulses. 

I went for a period of several years where my behavior was reliably self-sabotaging and self-harmful. 

But almost no one knew. 

I was very good at hiding it. 

People who struggle with depression, anxiety, and trauma over the long term get very good at hiding it. 

It’s not that we’re trying to be dishonest with anybody. It’s often that we are embarrassed or ashamed. 

I certainly didn’t want the people around me to know that I was having trouble just living day to day. 

I didn’t want anyone to know the kinds of things I was doing to try to manage my feelings. 

I felt weak and out of control and pathetic. Why on earth would I want anyone to know anything about any of that? 

So I hid it. 

In my case, at the time I was at my worst, I was involved in the local performing arts scene. I was regularly cast in productions for a local dinner theater, and I received reasonably good reviews for my performances. 

Little did anyone know that the reason I was performing at the time was because it was one of the few jobs available where I didn’t have to get up before noon. 

In the performing arts, even in the relatively small performing arts community I was in at the time, you kind of are who you say you are. You can basically invent a story about what your deal is. 

I told the people around me that I was a student— and I was, technically.  I was enrolled at the local community college. 

Little did anyone suspect that, although I continued to enroll every semester, I basically never showed up to class, due to a combination of depression and anxiety that made leaving the house almost unbearable. 

People who knew me at that point in my life would probably tell you I was somebody who enjoyed performing, and someone who was fairly good at it. 

And I was. 

They didn’t know that my life was basically a performance. 

They didn’t know that every single day I felt increasingly ground down, emotionally. 

They didn’t know that my struggle to just get out of bed and leave the house was a reflection of a larger struggle: I was desperately searching for reasons to keep living at all. 

Those who know my story know that it didn’t end there. 

I ended up making major changes in my life— and that my life changes were largely due to material that I had discovered in the self-help literature. 

This is why, to this day, I feel so strongly about the self-help community: it played a large role in keeping me alive once upon a time. 

But the point of this post is to acknowledge that if you feel like every day is a performance, if you’re just hanging on day to day, if you feel like the entire world is clueless to how desperate you are: hang in there. 

I’ve been there. 

Things do change. 

I got lucky and found what I needed— and what you need IS out there. 

Maybe reading these words are part of that process. 

But please, please don’t give up. 

And please know you’re not alone. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

When we desperately want a specific kind of contact or attention, and we don’t get it, it can be overwhelmingly painful. 

We humans are wired to need certain kinds of affection. 

It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s not a thing that we sit down, think about, and decide one day that we desperately crave human contact and affection. 

There are many theories about why we so desperately want and need certain types of contact and affection. 

Some researchers think it’s tied into the human survival drive. 

They suspect that, when we’re tiny, defenseless babies, it was human contact and connectedness that provide security against being abandoned and possibly dying. 

After all, a baby can’t survive on its own. It needs a caretaker that cares about it in order to live. 

Thus, they think that our strong need for attachment stems from our fear of abandonment as infants. 

It’s been established that human contact and intimacy is associated with the production in our bodies and brains of certain hormones and neurotransmitters, which result in pleasurable feelings. 

That is to say: even our biology inclines us to want and need human contact and intimacy. 

But what happens when we don’t get it? 

What happens when we’re denied that positive contact and intimacy and attention and affection again, and again, and again, over the course of years or even decades? 

There are definitely people reading this right now who are thinking, “I don’t NEED that connection and intimacy.” 

There are undoubtedly people reading this right now who are thinking, “That may be true for OTHER people, but I’VE learned to live without those things.” 

And there are definitely people who have decided that the need for human contact and intimacy invites so many opportunities to get hurt and feel horrible, that they’ve made a conscious decision to cut themselves off from it. 

When we have to go without that human contact, affection, and intimacy over time, we tend to develop defenses against how painful the lack of those things are. 

We close ourselves off. 

Sometimes we even dissociate our powerful desire for intimacy and the feelings it stirs up.

But even if we don’t consciously acknowledge it…that need never quite goes away, does it? 

We can ignore it, deny it disown it, dissociate it…but we were still powerfully wired, once upon a time, to want to be held. 

To be seen. 

To be understood. 

To be accepted and wanted and needed and loved. 

When we become aware of our wants and needs for intimacy and connection, it’s important that we not judge it. 

It’s important that we not judge ourselves for wanting closeness. 

And it’s really  important that we not judge ourselves harshly for things we’ve done in in the past to feel connection— even if those things have led to painful outcomes. 

People will do lots of things to try to compensate for a feeling of emptiness. 

Things we’re not proud of, things that seem foolish, things that it’s really easy to make fun of or get judgmental about. 

Be gentle with yourself. 

The need for intimacy and connection is powerful and innate. 

It stirs up powerful chemicals in our bodies and brains, and it often impairs our judgment. 

Give yourself a break. 

Show yourself some compassion. 

And make the best decisions you can going forward, because we can’t undo the past. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

There are literally thousands of things we COULD focus on in our experience. 

Even when we’re sitting by ourselves, alone in a room, there are hundreds and hundreds of things we COULD focus on and think about. 

Every single minute of every day, our senses are overwhelmed with input. 

The things we could look at; the things we could listen to; the things we could feel and smell and touch. 

Most of what our brain does every day is filter all of this sensory input. 

Our brain has to make choices about what we’re going to notice, and what we’re going to ignore. It’s a cognitive process called “sensory discrimination.” 

One of the reasons why different people have such dramatically different experiences of life is that they have developed different patterns in what they pay attention to. 

Some people have gotten used to paying attention to everything that is broken in the world. 

They see every problem. They see every inconvenience. They see every part of every obstacle. 

Other people have gotten used to paying attention to everything that is threatening in the world. 

They see every danger. They see every accident waiting to happen. They see every tragedy in the making. 

Most of the time, we have not consciously chosen our patterns of focus. 

Our patterns of focus are usually modeled on what we saw our parents focusing on, how we saw our parents interpreting and responding to the world. 

This is one of the reasons why depression and anxiety seem to “run” in families: because children tend to mirror and mimic their parents’ patterns of focus that contribute to depression and anxiety. 

As well, most of the time we don’t fully realize how much our characteristic patterns of focus contribute to our struggles. 

If you’re constantly focusing on what’s broken and tragic, it’s hard to NOT be depressed. 

If you’re constantly focusing on what’s dangerous and unpredictable, it’s hard to NOT be anxious. 

This doesn’t just apply to what we focus on in the world. It also applies to how we think about our past. 

If we are overly focused on the ways we’ve failed in the past, it’s hard to build a self-image as capable and productive. 

If we are overly focused on times we’ve been rejected, it’s hard to see ourselves as attractive and worthy. 

Understand: there is a LOT more than our patterns of focus that contribute to emotional difficulties. 

Our genetics, our brain chemistry, and our life stressors all contribute significantly to our current emotional state. 

But our patterns of focus represent possibly the best opportunity for us to make an intentional, positive change in how we experience the world. 

When we’re talking about patterns of noticing and interpreting the world, all we’re talking about are habits. 

Repeated actions. 

We get “good” at habits for one reason: we’ve practiced them, over and over and over again. 

Any habit that has been learned, can be un-learned. 

This goes for patterns of mental focus, patterns of behavior, and patterns of relating. 

We can dig our way out of any hole the same way we dug ourselves into it: bit, by bit, by bit, by bit. 

Get curious about your patterns of focus. 

Get curious about what you notice— and what you ignore. 

Get curious about how attention shapes your experience of life. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

I’ll spare you the suspense: you’re going to be frustrated with the pace of your recovery or personal development. 

It’ll move too slow for you. 

It’ll involve tasks that you won’t immediately see the point of (or, even if you DO see the point of them, you might think they’re STILL pretty stupid). 

And along the way in this process, you’re DEFINITELY going to get annoyed with me or any other therapist, mentor, or guru who is guiding you along the path. 

All of that is normal. 

I find it more than a little annoying when self-help types write about how the process of improving your life REQUIRES SACRIFICE, and then they CHALLENGE you to BREAK THROUGH YOUR LIMITATIONS!

Because the fact is, it’s both more and less complicated than just, “this process requires sacrifices.” 

Does recovery require sacrifices? Sure, it often does. 

I find a lot of truth in the quote, “Your new life is going to cost you your old one.” 

We DO need to sacrifice old habits and relationships and viewpoints that we may be attached to, or that felt comfortable. 

We don’t get to both move forward and keep everything the same. 

But it seems to me the reason these self-help types always stress SACRIFICE is mostly to make you more open to the idea of making a rather specific sacrifice: sacrificing your money, to buy their products and services. 

Honestly, most seekers I’ve ever met in therapy or personal development have been more than willing to make sacrifices in the pursuit of their goals. 

It drives me INSANE when self-help gurus treat their audience with condescension— as if the primary problem encountered by most seekers is that they’re unwilling to just SUCK IT UP and MAKE SOME SACRIFICES! 

(I’m here thinking of a specific self-help guy who loves to condescendingly tell his audience that what he’s selling “may not be for them,” and if they’re not ready to “really invest” in their personal growth, he advises they find another program.) 

The path to achieving goals and creating a productive life that feels good involves a lot of mundane tasks. 

It involves learning skills for emotional management— and learning new skills is often no fun. 

It’s not because you’re lazy or weak or uncommitted. 

It’s because NOBODY likes to learn new skills. 

We usually SUCK at new things. And learning how to manage our emotions is particularly HARD, especially when we didn’t really learn how to do it growing up.

Yeah. You’re going to dislike this project a certain amount of the time. 

You’re going to find it boring. 

You’re going to find me annoying. 

You’re going to be angry that you HAVE to learn these new skills in order to make your life work. 

All that is normal. 

The trick is to feel the annoyance, feel the boredom, feel the negative feelings that go along with the project of recovery or life development…and do it all anyway. 

Improving— or even saving— your life is more important than the inconvenience and discomfort that come with learning new skills. 

Your quality of life is worth the trouble. 

You are worth the trouble. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

We are not ourselves when we are responding to stress or trauma. 

Yet, we often expect ourselves to react to stress and trauma in cool, calm, and collected ways. 

In fact, we often seem to expect more from ourselves in times of stress and trauma than we would ever reasonably expect of anyone else. 

We often hold our past selves responsible for not knowing what we didn’t know at the time. 

We often hold our child selves responsible for thinking, feeling, and acting like children…when we actually WERE children. 

We often look back at past relationships and call ourselves weak and stupid for staying in them. 

We see how we’ve frozen up or “checked out” during periods of pain or intensity, and we are embarrassed or ashamed that we didn’t handle the situation “better.” 

Nobody is at their best during times of stress and trauma. 

During times of stress and trauma, there are neurological events that happen inside our bodies and brains that make it really, really hard to think straight. 

During those times we are overwhelmed with a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters that make it possible to either fight, flee, or freeze…and it’s really, really hard to overcome that cascade of neurotransmitters and handle things in a cool, calm, collected way. 

It is not fair to look back at how we’ve reacted to pain and stress in our life, and judge ourselves harshly. 

The truth is, we did what we could with the tools we had. 

We didn’t know what we didn’t know. 

We couldn’t do what we weren’t emotionally equipped to do. 

Would it have been preferable if we did know how to get out of threatening situations back then? Of course. 

But when you’re in a situation where you feel trapped, where you see literally no way out, and when TRYING to get out would probably put you in even more danger…you can’t be expected to have invented options you just didn’t have. 

In order to build self-esteem now, we have to make peace with the past versions of ourselves. 

It is not your fault that you were in a situation that seemed unescapable at the time. 

It is not your fault that your brain switched into fight, flight, or freeze mode. 

It is not your fault that you dissociated and lost time. 

It is not your fault that you fell into unhealthy coping patterns when you saw no other options for managing what you were feeling— and there was no one there to teach you or model for you a different way. 

And it is not your fault that you can’t change the past now. 

What we need to do is meet the embarrassment and shame of our past with enormous, overwhelming compassion. 

What we need to do is get on our own side, and refuse to abandon ourselves— including our past selves. 

Your past self did the best they could. 

Your past self got you through it. 

Your past self felt very small and very alone, and had no real idea what to do with that. 

But it doesn’t need to be alone any more. 

You can be, now, the adult you needed then. 

You can be a place of safety and stability for that past version of you. 

You can develop and use the healthy, non-harmful coping mechanisms you didn’t have then. 

You can choose who you have in your life, and limit your exposure to certain people and situations now, in ways you couldn’t then. 

Trying to deny and disown your past self only alienates you from you. 

Yes, your past self holds memories of pain and shame…but it also holds the resilience and resourcefulness that somehow got you through it. 

You can make peace with you. 

And you can move forward together with your past self, without shame or regret. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

Your recovery or therapy plan doesn’t need to be perfect. 

It doesn’t need to answer all the questions you have about living a productive or happy life. 

It doesn’t need to address every single area in which you experience pain. 

What is most important about your recovery plan is that it be doable and consistent. 

It needs to be comprised of things that you can and will do every day. 

It needs to produce results that are realistic and measurable. 

I will take an imperfect recovery plan that is made up of realistic, actionable behaviors that you can and will do CONSISTENTLY and can measure the results of, over a hypothetically “perfect” recovery plan that bears no resemblance to reality, any day of the week. 

My approach to recovering from depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addiction, is not dramatic or glamorous. 

No joke, sometimes I WISH I had some emotional and behavioral change system that is elegant and marketable, with a catchy name. 

(It’d certainly help me out as I try to build this “self help” career.) 

But I don’t. 

The principles of emotional management and behavior change that I believe in, the ones that I teach to my patients and clients, are nothing new. 

I didn’t invent them. 

They’re not perfect, and some of them aren’t even particularly well understood by research psychologists. 

(Good luck getting research psychologists to ADMIT that, though.) 

I believe in getting real about not just what causes behavior, what MAINTAINS behavior. 

I believe in being honest with ourselves about what we get out of supposedly negative behavior or painful feelings.

Every behavior is an attempt to scratch an itch, to fill a need. I believe in getting curious about what those needs are. 

I believe that a lot of people struggle in recovery because it’s boring and painful, and they’ve never been taught how to manage being bored and uncomfortable. 

We HAVE to figure out how to manage our behavior and our feelings even when we don’t feel like it.

(Especially when we don’t feel like it.) 

I don’t believe in “grit.” I don’t believe in “willpower.” I don’t believe some people are just “tougher” than others, and that’s why they succeed. 

I believe in skills and tools— and that ANYBODY can learn skills and acquire tools. Regardless of whether they are “tough” or have “grit” or “willpower.” 

I believe most people just want to feel good. 

I believe that many of us have been taught that feeling good is not an important or worthy project. 

I believe that people will do what they can to feel good— even if they have to compromise their principles and values to do so. 

Feeling good matters. It matters so much that people will throw all sort of caution to the wind to feel good. We’ll take all sorts of chances. We’ll make all sorts of sacrifices. 

To try to shame someone for feeing good is like shaming them for wanting to breathe. 

Don’t shoot for perfect. 

Shoot for doable. Shoot for consistent. Shoot for measurable. 

Don’t expect profound, blinding flames of insight and dramatic breakthroughs. 

Expect to chip away. Slowly, steadily, on good days and bad days. Just chip, chip, chip away. 

Now you see why I’m not a self-help superstar yet. None of that really fits into a flashy marketing campaign. 

But it will keep you alive and it will realistically improve your life. 

But don’t take my word for it. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

I first learned I had an “addictive personality” when I was a kid. 

When I was young, I— and my parents— noticed something odd about my behavior: when I found something I liked, something that felt good, I got very, very into it. 

As in, almost obsessively into it. 

I vividly remember that my parents actually had to set limits for me when it came to things I liked— whether it was movies, or TV shows, or foods, or…whatever. 

If left to my own devices, I simply would not stop indulging in whatever I was indulging in that made me feel good. 

I really would watch a movie, then rewind it, and watch it again. And again. And again. 

I really would eat bowl after bowl of cereal, until there wasn’t any left. 

Now, you may think, that’s just the kind of thing kids do, right? All kinds need some sort of parental intervention to make sure they don’t overindulge in things they like. 

This went a step beyond that. 

I would never, ever feel “full” of the things that I liked. 

I would never, ever feel satisfied. 

This pattern continued as I grew up. As a young adult, it led me to become obese, because I had extreme difficulty putting the breaks on my eating behavior. 

It led me to risky sexual behavior, because— even though I was, objectively speaking, a smart person— I had extreme difficulty saying “no” to potentially pleasurable experiences. 

Even if those experiences put my health and my relationships in danger. 

I know now at least part of what was happening. I was born with a genetic disposition toward both Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and depression— meaning my brain has difficulty reliably producing the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, which govern motivation, satisfaction, and happiness. 

As a result, I was constantly reaching out of myself for a “feel good” fix— and I didn’t have the inherent ability to push the “pause” or “stop” buttons when I actually found something that gave me pleasure. 

As I grew up, I experienced sexual abuse, and I was bullied— traumatic experiences that further impaired my ability to feel good or safe without some sort of outside “kick.” 

Why am I telling you any of this? Because it’s important to understand why I think we need to take care to sometimes “pump the brakes” on our pleasurable experiences. 

When we find something that feels good to us, our judgment immediately becomes compromised. 

Some people can manage experiences of pleasure far better than I was able to as a kid (or even better than I’m able to now)— but the principle still applies. 

We don’t think straight when it comes to things that make us feel good. 

We WILL find excuses to indulge in those things. 

We will bend logic and reason and our perception of reality to give us access to those “feel good” experiences. 

We will ignore red flags in relationships. 

We will justify behaviors that we wouldn’t otherwise find acceptable, in ourselves and others. 

Again: it’s not that everybody will have the problems I had, and still do have, in regulating their experience of pleasure and curtailing their behavior. 

Not everybody will go off the deep end and turn into an “addict” when they get a taste of feeling good. 

But when we find an experience that makes us feel good, it’s never, ever a bad idea to just pump the brakes. 

To take a step back. 

To take a deep breath, and survey the situation. 

In order to live a life of meaning and value, we need to frequently check in with ourselves and make sure we’re being authentic and honest about who we are and what we need. 

And we need to make sure we’re not letting experiences of passion or pleasure mess with our judgement. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

I strongly believe that we all need to get very familiar with the principles of psychological influence. 

There has been a great deal of research done on the tactics used by people who wish to get us to feel things and do stuff. 

There really ARE many people (and organizations, and institutions) who spend a GREAT DEAL of time trying to get us to think specific things, feel specific things, and do specific things. 

The list of people who wish to “brainwash” us for various reasons is seemingly endless. 

“Brainwashing” might sound like an overdramatic term for their attempts to persuade us…but I truly think it fits for one reason: those who wish to brainwash us aren’t terribly concerned about our consent. 

It would be one thing if people and institutions were all about providing us with information and options, and trusting in our autonomy and judgment to make good decisions. 

But that’s not how they operate. 

Many would-be brainwashers think that their agenda is too important to be left up to our judgment, or to attain our consent. 

And there is an entire category of would-be brainwashers who actively fear that if “consent” entered the conversation, they simply wouldn’t get what they wanted. 

And what they want, to them, is way more important than we make a “free choice.” 

So I strongly think we all need to be familiar with the principles of persuasion and influence. 

We don’t need to be paranoid or anxious. But we need to be realistic and educated. 

Luckily, it’s not hard to get up to speed on would-be brainwashers’ playbooks. 

The psychologist Robert Cialdini, in particular, has thoroughly researched and written about the principles of influence that seem to be more or less universal— and that are used, to one extent or another, by would-be brainwashers, from politicians running for president to Girl Scouts selling cookies. 

Cialdini’s principles include reciprocity (we tend to do things when we’ve had something given to us or done for us, and we feel obligated to return the gesture); commitment and consistency (we tend to do things that will help us feel consistent with who we believe we are, or which we view as following through on implicit commitments we’ve made); social proof (we tend to engage in behavior that has been visibly “validated” by other people); authority (we tend to do what we’re told by those we perceive to be in positions of legitimate authority); liking (we tend to do things for people with whom we feel an affinity); and scarcity (we tend to value things that seem scarce— whether or not they actually ARE scarce). 

The social psychologist Albert Bandura did pioneering research in the power observation and modeling has on our feelings and behavior— that is, we tend to do things we see modeled (behavior, in other words is “catchy” or “contagious”). 

There is an entire GENRE of books written specifically for men interested in attracting women for sex and relationships. It’s often called “seduction” or “pickup” literature, and, while it might sound cheesy, those books contain a great deal of “field tested” speculation about what men need to do and say to attract and manipulate women. 

(Notable among this genre are books by Ross Jeffries; “The Game” by Neil Strauss; and “The Mystery Method,” by— who else?— Mystery). 

The pseudoscience of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), while not the most robustly researched and validated body of theory, offers many real-world hypotheses about what word combinations, facial expressions, and even hand gestures can influence behavior in persuasive ways. 

So why am I telling you all this? 

Do I want you to read all of these books, and become an expert on persuasion? 

No. 

But I want you to be very clear on the fact that there are absolutely people out there who make it their life’s work (and very often their financial livelihood) to persuade, and even manipulate, you. 

I want you to at least Google the names and titles in this blog post, and achieve at least a nodding familiarity with these systems and techniques. 

I’ve seen far, far too many people walking around without a working knowledge of psychological influence and persuasion— and I’ve worked with many people who have been manipulated into unsafe relationships, poor decisions, and difficult to escape situations. 

It’s not our fault if we get manipulated or lied to. 

Some people are just going to manipulate and lie to us. It’s just going to happen. 

All we can do is what we can do— be as familiar with the techniques of influence as we can, and pay attention every day. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!