Talking Your Way to Change

This episode defines cravings and discusses treatment approaches. The American Psychological Association defines a craving as an unrelenting desire, urge, or yearning. It is often a criterion for the diagnosis of drug addiction or alcoholism. It includes a recording that was originally created by Linda A Curran. It focuses attention and awareness on the breath, body sensations, and emotions can be used to promote distress tolerance , self-empowerment, and self-efficacy within the treatment of addiction. It uses imagery to target and work with longings and cravings. 

Brewer, J.A., Elwafi, H.M. & Davis, J.H. (2013). Craving to quit: psychological models and neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness training as treatment for addictions. Psychology of addictive behaviors, 27(2), 366-379.

Brewer, J. A. (2017). The Craving Mind: From cigarettes to smart phones to love - Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. Yale University Press. New Haven and London.

Wise, R.A. (1988). The neurobiology of craving: Implications for understanding and treatment of addiction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 97: 118–132.

Witkiewitz, K. & Bowen, S. (2010). Depression, craving, and substance use following a randomized trial of mindfulness-based relapse prevention. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 78(3), 362-374.

The Sober Curious Podcast & Sober Curious Book By Ruby Warrington

Update about release schedule. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Kelly+JF&cauthor_id=32159228

AA’s 12-Step approach follows a set of guidelines designed as “steps” toward recovery, and members can revisit these steps at any time. The 12 Steps are:9

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
   
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
   
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
   
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
   
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
   
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
   
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
   
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
   
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
   
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
    
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
    
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
    

In this episode I talked with Matt S. Boone, co-author of Stop Avoiding Stuff: 25 Microskills to Face Your Fears & Do It Anyway about his book and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Matt leads me through an experiential exercise in which I become more in touch with what I am trying to avoid while doing paperwork. This process helps listeners to identify what they might be trying to avoid  or control in their own lives. It educates the listeners about ACT. It discusses how our mental processes such as evaluating and judging despite being evolved processes for our survival can work against us. He touches on our values can act as motivators to helps us overcome our experiential avoidance. He differentiates between what is cognitive restructuring and cognitive diffusion. Finally, the interview ends on a personal note in which we both discuss how ACT has influenced our paths in coping with chronic pain. 

Sections: 

1. Introduction
2. ACT and Avatars
3. Experiential Exercise with Case Note
4. How to identify what you might be avoiding.
5. Evaluate Behaviors-Mental Processes 
6. Making Values a Verb
7. Cognitive Defusion
8. Personal Disclosures

How to buy Matt's book: Stop Avoiding Stuff: 25 Microskills to Face Your Fears & Do It Anyway

https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Avoiding-Stuff-Microskills-Anyway/dp/1684036054

http://matthewsboone.com/

Alcohol abuse causes complex changes in the brain that drive the addiction, and understanding the powerful chemicals that are at play in driving such compulsive behavior is the first step toward developing self-compassion if you have an alcohol use disorder. Everyone has something about themselves that they don’t like, something that causes them to feel shame, to feel insecure, inadequate, not enough. Self-compassion does not mean that we are not responsible for dealing with our lives, it doesn’t mean we should be self-indulgent. Having an alcohol use disorder means you need support to fully recover. In our last episode I gave a few resources for getting this support. Today another resource is called Smart Recovery Online. They have weeklyonlue meetings, discussion forums, and support. Go to smartrecovery.org

The topic for today’s episode is about problematic drinking. Alcoholism is a Form of Addiction

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism 1-888-308-4164

Hazelden Betty Ford: 1-844-569-8656

Recovery Happy Hour Podcast

Addiction Unlimited 

Telling your life story can be paradoxical: it can be empowering and it can be limiting. I offer three psychotherapy approaches to telling your story. Narrative, ACT, and the drama triangle. 

Narrative Therapy https://www.narrativetherapyinitiative.org/

Acceptance Commitment Therapy

The Karpman Drama Triangle Explained: A Guide for Coaches, Managers, Trainers, Therapists - and Everybody Else Chris West 

My message today is to use your little bits of leftover time. Those minutes between tasks that we tend to throw away. Gretchen Rubin in the Happiness Project identified the one-minute rule to create order in your life and the 5-minute rule is from CBT used for issues of procrastination. 

Self-esteem is the sense of personal worth and a sense of personal competence, or put another way, my belief in my ability to have an effect on things. In this episode, I break this down even further: into 4 domains: Lovability, interpersonal power, meaningful work or engagement, and having a moral compass. 

Roberts, E. (2017, September 1). How Helping Others Improves Your Self-Esteem, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2021, April 3 from 

https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/buildingselfesteem/2017/09/how-helping-others-improves-your-self-esteem

Godin, G. and Kok, G. (1996) The Theory of Planned Behavior: a review of its applications to health-related behaviors. American Journal of Health Promotion, 11, 87–98.

Harter, S. (1999) The Construction of the Self. A Developmental Perspective. Guilford Press, New York.

Seligman, M.E.P. (1995) What You Can Change and What You Can't. Knopf, New York.

Macdonald, G. (1994) Self esteem and the promotion of mental health. In Trent, D. and Reed, C. (eds), Promotion of Mental Health. Avebury, Aldershot, vol. 3, pp. 19–20.

Are your boundaries workable? 

Nedra Glover Tawwab. Set Boundaries, Find Peace A guide to reclaiming yourself. A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself

Harriet Lerner. The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Courage in Key Relationships.

Podcasts: Recovery Rocks; SobrieTea Party, Addiction Unlimited

https://al-anon.org/

https://www.oprah.com/spirit/how-to-set-boundaries-brene-brown-advice#ixzz6qYBpo4ei