oh, i distracted myself.

[cpolk]

nobody's fault. it's just that i'm very data-responsive and something caught my attention before I started working.

so let me back up a bit. a few months ago someone suggested that one minor thing I could do was not let myself look at the distracting internet first thing in the morning. Just. Don't look at it. go about your day.

so i tried it out and it was very effective, and I was happy. I did it consistently for about a week, and i pumped myself up with how good it was to do this thing, how well it protected me from getting lost in unimportant stuff that sapped my energy, etc.

and then one morning I forgot about it completely and opened the internet.

and then when I did that, naturally, when I realized it, i immediately spiraled into the stupid useless deadweight who can't do anything right and I had ruined my entire day. I didn't get any manuscript work done that day. I was ashamed and angry and useless.

and that is what i think every time i forget and catch a glimpse of scrolly read-y stuff. it's amazing to me how easily i can turn a technique that is supposed to help me into another weapon I can turn on myself.

Comments

[havocthecat]

/hugs

I'm sorry, I know it's hard. We're all doing the best we can! I know you are amazing.

[kore]

Hoo boy, is that familiar from relapsing on various things, yeah. (I got CBT-like therp advice about it but do not want to be helpy.)

[cpolk]

Oh actually if you have an advice I'd love to hear it

[kore]

Okay! So (I forget if that's the opening of the new hip Beowulf translation, but if it isn't, it should be) --

So the thing about RELAPSE is, it is a totally normal part of trying to shake loose of something like, say, checking the internet every day. The point isn't to never ever relapse or be so Virtuous that you are not even tempted by relapsing (I know this goes against some 12-step stuff, bear with me). Most people don't seek help for problems with the internet or booze or whatever until they've relapsed repeatedly. (Yours truly included.) Relapses, or setbacks, are seen as moral and psychological FAILURES by the person trying to quit. Shame, anger, self-blame, the whole day being wrecked, that's all really familiar. But setbacks are actually more like results of not having a plan for encountering various situations or lack of coping strategies. You can't avoid all high-risk situations (there's a bar on every corner, the internet is entwined with how most of us live now). The negative self-labeling, the catastrophizing, the feeling you can't do anything right and will never be able to fix this problem -- the good news (lol) is this is stuff you can deal with. Like when you say, you tried out not immediately going online every morning, and it was very effective and you did it, consistently, and that made a real difference and you felt a lot better. That is GREAT and also, you DID that. (There's actual statistics on how people often need to quit repeatedly for longer and longer periods of time, I could look them up.) Just because you wiped out after a whole week (which is not chopped liver!) doesn't mean that did not happen. You set a goal, you wanted to do something to improve your life, you tried, and you DID IT, even if "only" for a week. You succeeded in that respect. That is absolutely not nothing. But now it's like you feel you FAILED at that, so now the negative self-talk is revving up every time you're in that same situation of looking at the net.

This is where the thought exercises come in. One very, very common technique is to visualize the cravings, for internet or whatever, as a wave (I know, I know, but it works). Some of the waves are gentle, some are giant towers. You're not being pulled under by the wave or wiping out, you can picture yourself riding it, or if that's too much, picture it rolling in to shore and crashing on the beach, harmless. The internet is HIGHLY addictive (and arguably, designed to be so). Automatically going to it first thing every morning (I do the same thing too) is creating a high-risk environment that's difficult to avoid. There are all kinds of stoppages you can put in your way, like closing the laptop and leaving a note on it, or setting an alarm to go off if you spend more than 15 minutes on the internet in the morning, or blocking certain sites, and it sounds like maybe those might be helpful since you say you forgot and turned on the internet and then got stuck in that shame spiral. (I do this with biscotti. The ENTIRE box of biscotti is gone after one day? How did that happen? I don't even remember eating it.)

Then there's stuff like writing out the short-term and long-term negative and positive consequences of going on the net/not going on the net. Like, short-term positive: I will feel better about myself, I will get more done; long-term positive: I will not feel enslaved to this habit and like I can't control myself and am a failure who can't even do this one simple thing. It doesn't have to be long, just a couple of sentences. If you tack this up somewhere you can see it every day, or even by the computer, it can be a constant reminder of your real goals and help you not just unthinkingly go back to the old pattern. It sounds like you were already doing this mentally, with "pumped myself up with how good it was to do this thing." That is great! That is what you WANT to do. It just helps to write it down and have it available, so you can remind yourself of how that felt and what you did to feel that way. That way it isn't all just "I wasted my time and fucked up AGAIN and the reason is I SUCK." No, the reason is the short-term enjoyment wiped out the long-term suffering and set off the blame cycle and that happens to everybody. It's important to get short-term positives in there too, like "I will feel better" and not just "I will be more Virtuous and finally Do Stuff." (One big thing for me was, oh god, it was so nice to wake up in the morning and not feel immediately like I had to throw up and wonder what the fuck I had done hours before, since I couldn't remember it. To just wake up and luxuriate in the sheets a little bit and enjoy the feeling of that continuous memory, being a whole person. etc.)

Then there's the exciting part, the BEHAVIOURAL PLANS. Now that you maybe have a way to deal with cravings (visualization, waiting it out, seeing it as partly a learned habit rather than a moral failure), and some clear evaluations of the consequences of doing X and not doing X, it's still true that you can't magically vanish all the coke in the world or blow up the bars or kill Facebook with the power of your mind, but you can make your environment safer. If you have blocking software, maybe set that to be automatically on when you get up, if you get up at a regular time -- then you don't have to worry about turning it off and on. If you sit down at the computer with a cup of coffee first thing, get up and take your coffee to a window or different place to sit instead. (Boy did I realize the power of habits when I quit smoking and was suddenly a JUMPY WRECK after dinner.) Figure out something you want to do first thing in the morning instead that you will like -- jump in the shower, start fixing a nice breakfast, meditation (yes), going outside, a walk around the yard (some superhumans do mile runs but I figure they're robots), whatever. The point is not to NEVER feel the craving, or possibly relapse, or even just say "fuck it I can't do this" and toss it all for a couple of weeks. You figure out how to get a handle on it so you can lift it, my first sponsor told me (apparently the face I made in response was hilarious, she nearly fell off her chair). You interrupt the craving and the negative self-talk tapes and the habits. You make it easier to do what you want to do and harder to do what you don't really want to do. Sounds so simple amirite??

There's at least like two parts to a relapse/setback/whatever, and the big first one is IMPULSE. The bottle is right in front of you at the supermarket, the internet is RIGHT THERE in the laptop, a friend offers a bump at a party, whatever. Almost INEVITABLY the first response is "fuck YEAH" because it's classical Pavlovian conditioning. You pair A (bell) with B (juicy steak), and after a while A, the neural stimulus, will evoke the physiological response. You look at the computer, there is the internet. The IMPULSE is what feels great in that second and kicks off the "lapse." Then the second stage is when after that first hit or drink or Facebook scroll or whatever, the "RElapse" (cute, right?) which refers not just to repeatedly doing the behaviour, but going "fuckit, I fucked up" and then feeling that self-blame or even self-hatred which can lead to more using. One doctor made a comparison to binge eating (I know, I know) -- once someone had that first drink or biscotti when vowing NOT TO have one for at least the ENTIRE day, bam there goes the self-hatred and "I'll never succeed at this, I'll always fuck it up" and before you know it, the uncontrolled behaviour kicks in because in a way it's the problem but it's also a way of coping with the problem. When it itself is the problem. Yeah. (The classic example here is the alcoholic who drinks to avoid the shame caused by drinking.)

There's other behavioural stuff too, like giving yourself a kind of treat at the end of every day, whether it's just crossing off the day on a calendar (doesn't work for everyone!) or using a sticker or saving up to buy yourself something nice at the end of a week or month or three months. I like that, but for one thing counting days doesn't work for everybody (I wouldn't have been able to sober up or quit smoking without it, my partner doesn't even like REMEBERING how long it's been since he quit smoking. No rly. "I just don't find that helpful," he says, "rather the opposite." Weirdo). I prefer a small daily reward, like biscotti buying a cheap ebook or re-watching a favorite ep of a show or just giving myself a couple of fucking hours off from having to BE PRODUCTIVE OR ELSE.


Anyway the tl;dr of all that gassing on is

- Lapses are perfectly normal and something you can deal with
- You can interrupt the cycle between lapse and relapse and focus on what you did right instead of what a horrible failure you are ("doing right" includes interrupting the relapse)
- There are a lot of behavioural strategies and thought exercises to deal with cravings and slipping unconsciously back into well-worn habits
- The real key is doing it in a non-blaming way. Another big example is to refer changing behaviour to a marathon. You can't do it all at once, but every step, every day of training, counts. If you miss a day, that doesn't put you back at square one, but you have to keep on going. Sometimes you miss a lot and have a big disruption and lose a lot of training days.
- And also, just being....sort of....kind to yourself, in a way? IDK. "Self-care" is such a loaded and capital-ized phrase these days, and I personally can't deal with happy-talk ("I can do this! I am a champion! Day by day I am improving!"). But more like, "I stayed off the internet in the morning for a whole week, now I know I can do that," or "I was able to ride out the craving by using the 15-minute technique"* or "I set a loud alarm and was able to get off Facebook after an hour." You have to kind of flip your thinking. It's really difficult for depressives because we're so self-conditioned to go "i HATE myself I will never do ANYTHING right I will just be like this until I DIE and that should actually be SOON because the pain and waste and shit of living like this sucks." (This is where CBT comes in.) And yeah, depressive pain is all that, but it's not everything. It's like trying to focus on other things, or at least include them in your field of vision.


*This is how I quit smoking. I would sit there and feel THE MOST TERRIBLE CRAVINGS EVER, because I was a nearly-2-packs-a-day chain-smoker by the end. So the deal I made with myself was, if I feel EXACTLY THIS terrible in 15 minutes, I will have a cigarette. But I have to wait the 15 minutes. Surprise, typically by the time 5 minutes had passed, the craving had gone. Sometimes it had to be 10 or even 5 minutes, but usually if I held out through that very first impulse, I could make it a bit longer. I didn't know then about any fancy "interruption" concepts, but apparently that's what that is.

[kore]

LOL well hopefully SOMETHING in all of that was MAYBE helpful, and if not, feel free to tell me to piss off! there's also no cites or whatever because most of it is stuff I read in books/papers/online or got in some therapy sessions.

But the point is, you DID change your behaviour. Now you know it's possible. One thing I learned was, everybody thinks that the first step of recovery is being able to say "No" to whatever and smile in a saintly manner (which is why so many people are shamed and angry of themselves in early recovery, and find it so hard to resist slipping, because They Should Be Better &c &c). But in actuality that's the last stage, and some of us may never even get there, which is okay. The cravings and lapses and thinking "aww fuck THIS" are all really normal. (I have known people who were sober for decades and then they relapsed. There is no magic cure.) In a way those don't matter. What matters is keeping on with the changing. Eventually, it sticks.

[cpolk]

AW YES

this is what i needed to know! this right here. thank you! i kind of knew vague stuff adjacent to this, but I didn't know this.

[kore]

AWESOME, I'm so glad it helped! and that I didn't sound like a total crackpot (well any more crackpotty than usual, LOL).

[cpolk]

no it all made sense to me!