Addictions & Habits
Speaker 0: Welcome to Takeout Therapy. I'm Rebecca Hunter, a therapist who knows therapy is actually very expensive and believes that mental health education should be free. Stick with me for the next few minutes, and you'll learn something that will help you think about life differently, or maybe manage things better for yourself. This podcast is authentic. It's unedited and without a bunch of ads.
All I ask is that you pass it along. Please forward an episode to a friend in need. And if you like my style and you wanna do some work with me, come join the club at takeout therapy dot com. Let's get to work. Hey, hey, before we start the episode, I quickly want to tell you a bit about Takeout Therapy Club.
It's my new project, and I'm really excited about it, and I think you will be too. For a ridiculously low price every month, I'm leading you through an in-depth workshop meant to help you really dig into some deeper stuff as part of your personal growth work. It's the same length as a therapy session with about ten times the information you'd actually get in the office. With, of course, You know me, an action plan to follow. This takeout therapy club for me is about helping people change their lives through mental health education because there's just too much we don't know.
This month, we begin at the beginning. With the fundamental things that every person needs to know to have a baseline of decent mental health. Every month you'll get tools to put into your life. These are the things we teach in the therapy office year after year. The human survival skills tools.
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I'm so glad you decided to drop in today, and I hope that this podcast finds you somewhere sunny. Your Oregon girl wishes for you sunshine this spring and flowers, wild flowers, We have amazing wildflowers in the Pacific Northwest. Right now, we can take any number of high and just be absolutely blown away by the wildflower beauty. So I hope that for you. Maybe sometime this weekend, you could get out for a walk and see what's growing in your area.
Today's subject is a little bit touchy. And so I'm a little bit nervous, and I've already you know, the way I record my podcast is it's a one shot. I push record and I talk and then I push end and then I upload it and off we go. Like, I don't have a ton of time to be cutting and editing and trying to make things perfect. And so I take very minor notes, and then I just come in here and I just talk to this microphone, and I am just talking to you, my friend.
Today, I'm talking about addictions. And it is a touchy subject because I think that in our culture, it's very, very stigmatized to be addicted to things, but here's the deal. It's twenty twenty three. We're all addicted to things. Myself included, my friend.
And we can't all go around just calling ourselves an addict. Or saying, well, I have an addictive personality. When the things that we're becoming addicted to are really addictive things. Because I want you to know that there's a big difference between having things that you're you feel addicted to and being an addict. And so today, I really wanna talk about addiction in the context of it being like a behavioral pattern that is a choiceless action, choiceless being the keyword there.
It's things we don't feel like we have a choice over. It's like these funny or not that funny kind of automatic things that happen, that were like, wow, I just really don't have self control right here. And the problem with these behavioral addictions that we have, and I'll get to what I'm talking about in a second. But the problem is it's like this self made battle. Right?
We're like fighting with either an inanimate object or a state of being that we either do or don't wanna be in we're fighting with chemicals in our body so much of the time, like dopamine and endorphins. Right? And it's really a self made battle a lot of the time, addiction, behavioral addictions, they're so disempowering. So, like, what am I talking about? Specifically, I've had so many conversations in the past few weeks with people in my family and people in my therapy office and friends about behavioral addictions like cell phone addiction, social media addiction, YouTube problems, nicotine.
Problems moderating alcohol use or marijuana use, things like nail biting and picking and cleaning and right? Like, I could go on. Gambling, playing poker online, choiceless action, meaning, you don't really feel like you said yes and you never really said no either, but you want too. Do you have these kinds of addictions? So today, I'm really gonna focus on a cell phone.
Addiction. Because I think, like, hello, we're all sitting in the same bathtub on this one, people. The cell phone addiction is so subtle and it's so pervasive and it's so under everyone's radar, like, we have no idea how addicted to our machines. We really are unless we really start paying attention. So if you're listening to me and thinking, oh, boy.
She's really getting after something that I'm struggling with. Stick with me. Because as usual, I'm here to deliver you a plan of action, my friend. Hey, one of the I'm gonna pause, and then I'm gonna get to the plan of action. Like, what in the heck are we gonna do, you and me, about these silly and not that silly, addictions that we have in our life.
This is really important stuff. In terms of personal growth, because personal growth is all about feeling empowered. And I wanna mention that my Takeout Therapy Club is underway. And one of the things that we're going to get to and actually it's the subject of June is like are you living a life in which you've picked your values? And you follow those values every day as much as you can.
Right? And so in the subject of who are you in the Takeout Therapy Club, I'm super excited to dig into this with people because we don't think about who we are. We don't think about what we're doing all the time. We're a little robotic. Aren't we?
But the point of personal growth is to step back. From robot land and to be present and be connected in our environment and be connected to ourselves and so that we know what the heck we're doing and what the impact of it is. Right? Because through the course of a day, you do a million things and you think a billion things. And do they have a positive impact overall on the world, on your community, on your family, on yourself, or negative impact overall on the world or the community.
Or your family or yourself. That's how we wanna look at addiction. We wanna look at, like, What is the impact of my choiceless actions? I'm looking at it for myself today. As I talk to you about things in my podcast, I'm really being self reflective because I've noticed as I've been noodling on this subject this week, I'm on my cell phone all the time.
And I'm also on my Kindle reading my book, and I'm also, you know, kinda like watching Shameless again. The whole series for a second time because it's so brilliant. But I'm like really hooked in to my cell phone. So how do I deal with this? How do I, like, get this thing out from front and center in my life.
Because to be honest, like, it doesn't follow my value at all. Because my value is like, just show up, just be present. Right? Read your book. Yeah.
Watch TV and check out your cell phone every now and again, but like, I don't want anything running my life. Not the beverage in my glass and not something that I need to take to feel differently feel better or alter my mood in any way, but rather just me, the stripped down version of me, I want to leave my own life. I don't wanna be roped in without choice to something that my body and my system, my mind, and my body need to do just to feel better. If you listen to the Huberman lab, which I highly recommend, because this man is brilliant, and he knows how to talk about really complicated scientific crap in its very simplified manner. Are you listening to the Huberman lab?
It's really long, which is literally the opposite of the work that I do. But, hey, you know, he's got some great information about addictions and the role of dopamine and endorphins when we start talking about behavioral patterns, choice lists, action. So you want some help. You want some help starting to conceptualize how the heck you take a step back from your behavioral addictions. Okay.
Let's make a plan. First of all, you wanna decide what is your why? Why? Why do you wanna get rid of this habit? Why?
Is this not having a good impact on your life? Or why is it not impacting your whole environment? Well, Okay? So you really when you start to think about making a plan to ditch a habit or an addiction, You wanna think about why you're doing that. What are you gonna get out of it?
What negative things are coming from it? Have people been like, dude, you're on your phone literally all the time. That has a negative impact on your relationships. What people are saying underneath the surface of that statement is I wanna connect to you. I don't want to sit around watching you on your cell phone.
I like you. I'm gonna be with you. Whoa. That's so nice. Remember always to look underneath the words for the meaning of the words from the people that care about us.
So as you explore maybe one behavioral habit that you would like to let go of, what's your why? So if I explore my cell phone problem that is for reels, then my why is like, I just like, think it's a waste of time for one thing. Like, there's a finite amount of time that I have on this Earth and I'm spending it looking at freaking metal box. It's irritating to me. That's not how I want to be spending my time.
It doesn't develop me as a person. I don't think either. Because it takes me out of my environment. And it it disconnects me from my environment and whoever is in it. And so as I think about my why, I think, like, I just I wanna be free.
I wanna be free to choose. When I pick it up and when I don't pick it up and what I look at on it. I wanna be free to be present and not have to answer things right away, I want to be free from all of that because I think I'll be happier. It makes me feel really anxious I noticed when I'm on my cell phone a lot. It's like I feel like I'm like a hamster on a wheel.
And so as you're making a plan to start thinking about ditching some of your behavioral habits. Start thinking about why you wanna ditch these habits and what is the impact that they're having in your life and we cannot stress any more or do much more research to prove that writing things down in a journal as we're processing our lives and doing personal growth work is so impactful. It's like putting the bow on the present. Right? It's it's just a way to cement in the growth.
Okay? So the way to get rid of a behavioral addiction is to make a plan using your y Your why is your front and center statement about what you're doing? And why? And your make a plan is about, like, how are you going to slowly back away from this thing? Now some people really believe in the cold turkey model.
And I believe it it too, sometimes. Like, for example, I have lots of clients that are addicted to all kinds of things like marijuana, an alcohol, pornography, cocaine, you name it, baby. And when they're dealing with these things, sometimes these behavioral addictions have a ton of negative consequences, and the best thing to do is go cold turkey. When that's possible. Okay?
So things like that, sure, cold turkey. Cell phone stuff. You're gonna wanna kinda back away slowly if you wanna do it in a way that doesn't totally shock your system and cause a bunch of withdrawal and freak your brain out and make you want it even more. So I always recommend making a plan to taper gently from more, you know, like not super, super harmful. Addictions.
So taper gently, what does that mean? That means you make a plan that has numbers on it, that says, like, right now, I'm using my cell phone for six hours a day. By next Monday, I will only be using my cell phone for four hours a day. And then you make a plan about how you're gonna do that. And so one of the things that you can do as part of your plan is you substitute other things.
Okay? So here's an example from my own life. It's like I don't drink every day anymore. I used to do that. I used to have a glass of wine every day, and it was great.
Right? I used to also not moderate my alcohol use at all. So I learned how to moderate my alcohol use Now sometimes I drink, but most of the time these days, I'm not really interested in using alcohol. And so what I've done is I substituted my alcohol for something that I really really like. And I get like that, oh, this week I got this jalapeno limeade from Trader Joe's.
Have you had that? It is so good. And I'm also sessed with these beverages. There are these little drinks. They come either sparkling or not, and they're called moment.
And they have all these like calming herbs in them, and they just kind of make you feel a little bit more subtly relaxed. I really like that. So I'm talking about like drink substitution. But also, sometimes when I'm trying to kill off a behavioral habit, I actually will hold a yummy belly in my hands instead of doing the thing. Right?
So instead of picking up my phone. If I have, like, a drink and a book and, like, a couple other things that I can choose from that aren't technology right there, I'm using behavioral substitution. So you're not sort of like cutting the brain off from an action that it always takes. Because when you do that, it goes, what's happening? Something's changing?
Nothing's good. We gotta have that thing. Right now, gotta have it. Right? And so instead of that, we want a substitute.
So start making a list of things that you can substitute for, right, social media or YouTube, cell phone use, nicotine, social drinking, nail biting, whatever your deal is, playing that Silly Candy Crush Game twenty four seven. The cell phone is the worst. Right? And so when we're substituting, take it out of the picture. So if you're like, I'm on social media way too much.
Okay. We wanna talk about discipline. We wanna talk about boundaries. Because here's the thing, in your relationship with others, you need to have boundaries. Right?
We've talked about this. You need to have boundaries. You need to have rules or ways to teach people how to be in relationship with you. Like, I don't like it when you fart at the kitchen table is a boundary. Right?
I mean, I'm gonna get up and leave when you do that. It irritates me. Okay. I don't want to be around it. That's just a boundary.
And it gives somebody this idea of like, well, I can fart if I want to, but she's not gonna hang out with me. It's just a boundary. But we also have boundaries with ourselves, friend. Like, no, you may not use your cell phone. When you're supposed to be working or doing your schoolwork.
That's a boundary. And then to, you know, do things for your body and your system to help you enforce the boundary. Is super helpful full. Like, people that are trying to quit using social media, just go and get one of those site blockers and put it on your computer. And get the app that blocks other apps and sites from your cell phone, like discipline yourself.
Don't bring things into the house that you don't wanna be eating like sweets and cookies and booze or whatever. Right? Like, whatever you're trying not to do, have boundaries around that. And then the boundary, basically, use kind of start loose. Meaning I can only do that when or I'm not gonna do that in less.
Right? Or and then you start to tighten the boundary. Like, that was fine for last week, this week, the boundary gets a little bit tighter. Right? Get a little bit tighter about your behavior, get a little bit more disciplined.
So you gotta make a plan and it has to include substituting other things and having good boundaries and disciplining oneself. And I think another thing that's really helpful is just to talk about it. Just to talk out loud with the people in your life, about what you're struggling with and what you're doing about it. Have some accountability by speaking it out loud. Like, I'm totally gonna work on my cell phone use.
I am. And I'm saying it to out loud. And that makes me feel like pretty empowered, to go and now make some changes. You know, when we talk to people about things, Usually, what they say is, oh, dude me too. Don't they?
I mean, especially this one. It's like the more people I kind of tell, like, I'm really not gonna be available to text you back all the time because I'm putting my phone, on do not disturb, I'm putting it in the other room, I'm taking more time away from it than I'm spending with it, when we talk about it, It's really encouraging for other people too because guess what? We're all struggling with the same crap. Okay? And so talk about it.
Get some support. Have some accountability. Quit with a buddy. And then a couple more things I would say is, like, please make visual reminders of your why and what you're trying to do. And in in the club and in my other programs and in my therapy office, I call this mantra work.
And what it means is, like, there's a phrase that you could write really big on a whiteboard or a piece of paper that every time you look at it, it will remind you of why you're doing what you're doing and what you're doing. You know? Like, for example, I think my why would be be willing to be present. Leave the cell phone behind. That that's my why.
That's my what am I doing and why am I doing it? And I have it written on a piece of paper. And I don't have it written on very many pieces of paper. Maybe I could save it as my background. I'm pretty good with Canvas.
I'm gonna go do that. I'm gonna make a really cool background that says my mantra and I'm gonna stick it on my cell phone so that every time I pick it up, I remember, like, Oh, right. I don't wanna be picking this thing up all the time because I I am like lost in it as soon as I get there. Right? And then my last pieces of advice for you, if you're trying to start the quitting of a behavioral addiction of some kind or a bad habit is just be willing to make mistakes and fall back a little and begin again because that's actually how change happens.
I don't know who the hell told us that change is like we should just be able to do that, and it works out the first time every time. That is not true. And I don't know many people that have had success with that model. But I have had a lot of people who've had a lot of success with the beginning again model, which is like, okay, so you ate the chips. Begin again.
Begin again by reminding yourself of your why, and reminding yourself of what you are looking for in your life, what you do want, and what you don't want. Of the negative impacts of choiceless actions on your life, in your sense of self, in your heart, and just begin again. So I'll make mistakes in my journey to deal with my addictions, and you'll make mistakes in your journey too. But the moment you wake up again? You may begin again.
And so will I? Good luck. Hey. If you want some support around this and a community of people who are also doing their personal growth work, Come join Takeout Therapy Club. I'd be thrilled to have you.
The link is in the show notes. See you next time. Thanks for listening. The goal of this prod is really to provide mental health education to everyone who needs it. So if you want to help me with that, forward an episode to a friend or write a kind review, please And if you like my style and you're ready to dig in, do some work with me, come join the club at takeout therapy dot com.
Where I'm now hosting a monthly mental health maintenance club. I also do classes, groups, and one on one coaching in therapy. It's time for change. Are you ready?
