Cravings are natural, not failures. Using Inside Out as an analogy, the speaker explains how to acknowledge cravings without acting on them, and why shame and fear make recovery harder. The key is observing them with compassion instead of judgment.
I think it's important, first of all, to normalize cravings. Cravings are a part of everyone's life. I still have— I mean, you can crave anything, right? You can crave anything. I think that the experience of being frightened or afraid and then consequently feeling shame around cravings is something I see a lot of. And I think that's what you're describing to me, this idea of feeling shame or feeling like a failure because I'm experiencing cravings. So I'll start with my highest level fun sort of analogy that I work with quite frequently, and we can sort of delve deeper into this. But I like to somehow incorporate cravings into people's psyche because they are a reality of recovery and they will be a reality of recovery. And that's not in a way to say that like you should be frightened of them, but really we're trying to like find a way to incorporate them, see them, but not have them lead to action or lead to circumstances that we don't want to be a part of, right? So the way that I like to introduce this is by the movie Inside Out. Have you seen the movie Inside Out, Dallas? I have not, but I know what it is. The concept. So the concept of Inside Out is basically like there's a whole— I'm sure most of your viewers have seen it.
