EP 52: Reader Question – How To Overcome Cravings? скачать в хорошем качестве

EP 52: Reader Question – How To Overcome Cravings?

When we truly believe that alcohol is not helpful to us in any way, but still find ourselves craving it, how can we stick to our decision and fight against cravings? Annie provides an explanation for what a craving is and where it is coming from and shares a significant amount of research with us to give us some amazing advice and information on overcoming these cravings. Online Community Resources: TNM Community - https://www.thisnakedmindcommunity.com/ Hello Sunday Morning - https://www.hellosundaymorning.org Club Soda - https://joinclubsoda.co.uk/ One Year No Beer - https://www.oneyearnobeer.com/ Ride Out Cravings Charlotte asks a great question today that I hear so often. How do you ride out cravings and urges to drink when you really don't want to drink? What do you do to overcome what you've done for so long and don't know how to cope without it? What Is A Craving? Emotionally a craving is an unconscious or conscious belief that alcohol is doing something for you. That it will provide some relief or pleasure or pain. Emotionally, my best advice on how to overcome those unconscious beliefs is just becoming aware of why you believe what you believe and then comparing that against reality. Your unconscious and your subconscious mind actually dictate what you desire. Liminal Thinking Changing your unconscious beliefs lies in liminal thinking. There's blog posts on thisnakedmind.com/blog with all the liminal thinking points right there, so you don't need to buy the book, you can just go and read through the blog posts. Get the book, deal with the emotional part. I think that's really important, but there's this whole other aspect to cravings that's very physiological and it's actually neurological and it involves different parts of your brain if you've been drinking for quite a long time. There's two aspects. There's the habitual nature of it, and habits by their very nature mean that we think less consciously, so if you get in the habit of driving to work, you can often drive to work without even thinking about it and you won't even remember the drive. Neuropathways Your brain is forming pathways within your neurons. These neuropathways where all of this stuff happens automatically, and that happens inside your brain with drinking. These habits are very strong. Interrupting these habits and interrupting those neuropathways and laying down new neuropathways is really important. Dopamine Response There's also the dopamine response, and often after you've been drinking for years and years, there's a theory, and it's called the dopamine sensitization theory. It's by Kent Berridge. What he theorizes is that eventually you become hypersensitive to a certain substance. In fact, this has been demonstrated in rats and different animals where eventually something changes over to the brain. When that substance is introduced or even when the triggers preceding that substance are introduced, for example-the bell in the Pavlov's dog experiment or the bottle of wine as you're pulling it from the shelf, dopamine releases to such a degree that actually what happens is your ability to make good decisions is reduced. Mindfulness  Mindfulness is something  people get confused about. You think that it's meditation. Monks sitting there and being very blissed out in some Zen part of the world. Mindfulness is defined as nonjudgmental observation. It has three components. Attention, awareness and remembering. The remembering is remembering to bring your attention and awareness to whatever you're being mindful of. Studies show that mindfulness drastically helps you ride out cravings. A study published in the proceedings of National Academy of Sciences found smokers trained with mindfulness around their smoking habits curtailed their smoking naturally without any effort by over 60 percent. There have been all sorts of reports of mindfulness reducing cravings. Keep Listening Listen to the complete podcast to find out the science behind cravings, how to ride out cravings and the best way to deal with it all.