Four Steps, Plus One
This chapter outlines a specific method that I view as promising for behavioural addictions – for example, shopping, gambling and eating compulsions – or for anyone wishing to disengage from maladaptive habits of thinking or acting. Its other value is that it shed further light on the nature of the addicted brain and mind … They will not work if done mechanically, but require regular practice with conscious awareness.
The method Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues have developed applies conscious attention in a systematic, four-step fashion. On brain scans they have shown that the locked circuitry of OCD undergoes a change after a relatively brief period of consistent and disciplined practice by obsessive-compulsive patients. The demonstrated ‘brain lock’ opens up, and the person is freed from the nonsensical thoughts that formerly compelled her behaviour. Can the same four steps be applied to addiction? “I haven’t worked extensively with addictions,” Dr. Schwartz told me, “but given that addiction also involves problems with intrusive urges and repetitive behaviours, there is good reason to think that the four steps could be useful in treatment.”
The four steps should be practiced daily at least once, but also whenever an addictive impulse pulls you so strongly that you are tempted to act it out.
Step 1: Re-label
In step 1 you label the addictive thought or urge exactly for what it I, not mistaking it for reality … “I don’t need to purchase anything now or eat anything now; I’m only having an obsessive thought that I have such an need … Be fully aware of the sense of urgency that attends the impulse and keep labelling it as a manifestation of addiction, rather than any reality that you must act upon … It is strengthened every time you give in to it and every time you try to suppress it forcibly. The point is to observe it with conscious attention without assigning the habitual meaning to it. It is no longer a “need”, only a dysfunctional thought. Rest assured, the urge will come back – and again you will re-label it with determination and mindful awareness.
Step 2: Re-attribute“
In Re-attribute you learn to place the blame squarely on your brain. This is my brain sending me a false message.”
It represents a dopamine or endorphin “hunger” on the part of the brain systems that, early in your life, lacked the necessary conditions for their full development. It also represents emotional needs that went unsatisfied … It is not a moral failure or a character weakness; it is just the effect of circumstances over which you had no control. What you do have some control over is how you respond to the compulsion in the present. You were not responsible for the stressful circumstances that shaped your brain and worldview, but you can take responsibility now.
Re-attribution helps put the addictive drive into perspective … If you change how you respond to those old circuits, you will eventually weaken them.
Step 3: Re-focus
The key principle here, as Dr. Schwartz points out, is this: “It’s not how you feel that counts; it’s what you do.”
Rather than engage in the addictive activity, find something else to do. Your initial goal is modest: buy yourself just fifteen minutes. Choose something that you enjoy and that will keep you active: preferably something healthy and creative, but anything that will please you without causing greater harm.
The purpose of Re-focus is to teach your brain that it doesn’t have to obey the addictive call. It can exercise the “free won’t.” It can choose something else … This is not a hundred-metre dash but a solo marathon you are training for. Successes will come in increments.
Step 4: Re-value
This step should really be called de-value. Its purpose is to help drive into your own thick skull just has been the real impact of the addictive urge in your life: disaster. You know this already, and that is why you are engaged in these four steps. It’s because of the negative impact that you’ve taken yourself by the scruff of the neck and delayed acting on the impulse while you’ve re-labelled and re-attributed it and while you have re-focused on some healthier activity.
In the Re-value step you de-value the false gold. You assign to it its proper worth: less than nothing.
Be conscious as you write out this fourth step – and do write it out, several times a day if necessary. Be specific: What has been the value of the urge in your relationship with your wife, your partner, your husband, your best friend, your children, your boss, your employees, your co-workers? What happened yesterday when you allowed the urge to rule you? What happened last week? What will happen today? Pay close attention to what you feel when you recall these events and when you foresee what’s ahead if you persist in permitting the compulsion to overpower you. Be aware. That awareness will be your guardian.
Do all this without judging yourself. You are gathering information, not conducting a criminal trial against yourself. Jesus said: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you.”
Step 5: Re-create
Life, until now, has created you. You’ve been acting according to ingrained mechanisms wired into your brain before you had a choice in the matter, and it’s out of those automatic mechanisms that you’ve created the life you have now. It is time to re-create: to choose a different life.
… Write down your values and intentions and, one more time, do so with conscious awareness. Envisions yourself living with integrity, creative and present, being able to look people in the eye with compassion for them – and for yourself. The road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It is paved with lack of intention. Re-create. Are you afraid you will stumble? Of course you will: that’s called being a human being. And then you will the four steps – plus one – again.
