There are three cognitive positions in play whenever we make a decision.
For any of us to move forward with an action, we confront anticipation, action, and recollection.
Addiction results from an over-activation of the middle state: the actual experience.
Addiction is essentially defined by a behavior we know will be pleasurable, is pleasurable in the moment, but brings us guilt or shame in the after-experience. We become addicted in spite of ourselves because the addiction produces an experience so pleasurable, it overwhelms our connection to the aftermath.
The opposite experience is found in the motto of the Navy Seals; “Your last easy day was yesterday.”
If I’m a Seal, I activate to a job I anticipate will be dangerous, difficult, and unpleasant, the experience is every bit, and perhaps more, dangerous, difficult, and unpleasant as I imagined. What allows me to activate is the feeling after. It may be pride, heroism, patriotism, spiritual fulfillment, loyalty to a cause or my fellows in arms, often all of the above. If I develop a strong enough connection to the after-action sense of fulfillment, I can endure almost any suffering before and during.
Paradoxically, much of what makes treatment for addiction effective is found by adopting a similar construct to what activates a Seal. We concentrate on the aftermath.
Resistance to addiction is unpleasant. Not only are we forgoing a pleasurable experience, once the addictive pattern is laid down neurologically, there are usually symptoms of withdrawal: physical and psychological, that result in, at least an unpleasant experience, and often real pain.
A traditional twelve-step program proceeds with a full awareness of the three cognitive states involved in activating an addiction: the pleasure of anticipation, the pleasure of the experience, the shame of aftermath; and a full awareness of the three cognitive states involved in countering an addiction, the anticipation of the addictive hunger, the actual experience of addictive hunger, and the satisfaction of successful resistance.
Engagement in the Twelve Steps is designed to heighten the sense of guilt or shame regarding the aftermath of addiction and heighten the sense of purpose to the aftermath of resistance. The community of addicts provides reminders of the shame of the addiction aftermath, provides distraction from the hunger of addiction at the moment, and gives a vision for success that heightens the anticipation of the satisfaction of the resistance aftermath. It’s a brilliant integration of the three cognitive states underlying our choices.
For any of us trying to engage a behavior, cease a habit, or change a behavior, there’s power in recognizing the relative influences of these three states. St. Bernard of Clairvaux – Dante’s last guide in the Divine Comedy – noted Hell as the final resting place for so many good intentions. Most of our intentions flutter their way to the nether world through our failure to recognize the complex interaction of these motivational states.
A friend, Bill, observed one principle of behavior change with the Twelve Steps is doing something that doesn’t make sense until it does make sense. This, he explained is the essence of turning something over to a higher power.
As noted regarding the motto of the Navy SEALS, life often involves doing things that don’t make sense in the moment. We do them in the service of a higher power.
As humans, we like to choose our higher authorities. Sometimes, we don’t get to. It’s the primary conundrum of childhood. We are asked to eat icky things, do boring tasks, say, thank you, when we’re not grateful, because the power who is bigger, stronger, and who controls the food supply says so. We have bosses, clients, stockholders who may have some level of authority in our lives without sharing our immediate interests.
When we’re trying to do something and we’re experiencing internal resistance, it often means we haven’t identified our own authority for which we are working. It could be for God and country; it could be to put the children we love through college; it could be as simple as we enjoy compliments. Identifying the third cognitive position is often necessary for us to get through the first two.
To say this from a cognitive point of view, if we want to achieve something we have to experience three states: anticipation, action, and recollection. The less reward there is in anticipation and actualization, the more we have to hold a powerful vision of a satisfying aftermath.
There are times when
counter-intuitively we have to experience pain to get to pleasure; thus the bromide: no pain; no gain;
counter-intuitively we have to do a lot of stupid things to do something smart: Thomas Edison failing seven hundred times on his path to the light bulb;
counter-intuitively, we have to give up something that feels good in order to feel good: addiction and recovery:
counter-intuitively we have to do a lot of things that aren’t creative, to achieve creativity: practicing scales to learn music,
counter-intuitively, we have to appear to be going nowhere to get somewhere: all that time on treadmills in the gym.
To activate when there’s no fun in the anticipation or actualization, we have to have a vision to carry us through. Often the aftermath generates an experiential reward as in standing on the podium while the national anthem is played. It’s harder when there’s a delay in the experience of aftermath gratification as in a slow return to health and fitness or a long path to Carnegie Hall. We have to hold a vision of an uncertain future.
What’s truly amazing about our humanity is this ability, when we can’t see a viable aftermath, we can access a faith there is an aftermath we can’t yet see or imagine. This ability to access the third cognitive state in a faith-based way, is a powerful force in human activation. Faith is integral to religious belief, but as humans we exert faith in secular way, when we envision and move toward an outcome when evidence for success is not certain.