How Your Brain Tricks You Into Justifying Bad Habits.

have this way of making excuses or tricking us. In some ways, I guess you could call it tricking us into making excuses to continue bad habits. And so today we're going to cover 4 of the psychological principles behind that process and what you can do about it to get out of those bad systems quickly, even today if you want to. So for those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth and you are watching Put the Shovel Down. This YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can stay 5 steps ahead of it and get your life and your family back on track. And today's video is right in alignment with that. We are going to be looking at the psychology of bad habits, and addiction is just a big, very ingrained bad habit. And Those of you who have struggled with an addiction of some sort, which is most of us, right, know exactly what it's like to make promises to yourself, to have every intention in the world of doing things differently. And it just seems like maybe you'll do good for a while, but you continuously fall back into your old ways of being, even when you don't want to. And maybe you don't understand why. I think today is going to give you some insights into why that keeps happening to you, and better yet, some actions you can take to get out of that cycle. So the first one that we're going to talk about is something called moral licensing. And I see this one all the time. In fact, I see this one in myself all the time. Maybe that was a better thing to say. I do this one a lot. And basically moral licensing is when you Do something good that you feel proud of yourself about, and then you use that feeling as an excuse or a way to justify doing something bad. For example, maybe you tell yourself a lot, exercise this morning so I can eat dessert tonight. If you're guilty of this one, and I'm talking to myself here too, put a little hand emoji in the chat or comment section to let me know. Yep. I do this one. I hear and see this one all the time in my clients. The way that I hear it show up the most is something more along the lines of, well, I did really great all week long. I stuck to my goals for drinking. I either stuck to an amount I set for myself or I didn't drink at all. But then on the weekend I did X, Y, or Z and it got a little out of hand. But you know what? I was good all week. It's that way of saying, I was really good, so I deserve it. It's like this reward thing we're doing, um, to help us to reward ourselves for good behavior. Like, for example, if you've ever struggled with dieting, you might say, I've done good all week, you know, Saturday or Sunday or whatever the day is, is my cheat day. What ends up happening is we end up sort of undoing all of our good progress, but it's really easy to let ourselves off the hook. Emotionally, psychologically, and actually even from a willpower perspective. Because if we've been doing good for X amount of time, we've ran through our willpower and our willpower tank is probably running a little low. A lot of you've probably heard me talk about willpower. If not, you should check out my videos on willpower because it actually works. Our willpower works on little sugar ATP molecules in our brain the same way as Everything else works on, and there is a finite limit of it. And so, well, a lot of what happens to people struggling to overcome an addiction is they have every intention, but they run out of willpower. We're not going to talk a lot about willpower in this particular video because I have other videos on that. But we are going to talk about some of the ways that when we run out of willpower, we give ourselves an excuse and make it okay. So moral licensing is the very first one. The best thing you can do to get out of the habit of moral licensing distancing is to go ahead and preemptively identify a reward for yourself that's not going to sabotage all your progress. So instead of saying, I was good all week on my diet and Saturday is my cheat day, give yourself something else to look forward to because we do need a reward and it does help to positively reinforce us and give us something to look forward to. But when we, when we end up sabotaging all of our good progress, giving ourselves the reward of the very thing trying to overcome, it doesn't make us feel great. And then we end up needing sort of being in the hole in the days following that we didn't have to dig out of. All right, so the next psychological principle is called the sunk cost fallacy. And this is when we use our Past investments, and that can be money, time, energy, or whatever, to continue a bad habit. It's like the way that we justify. It's like when you're already making a wrong decision and then you kind of decide, well, I'm too far down this path to change my mind. I've already invested too much money to back out now. It's that kind of thought, but it doesn't have to be just money. It can be any, it can be anything that you've invested in. It can be your time. Your energy. It can also be like this identity that you've set up. I see this a lot when it comes to addiction. I've already sort of made this identity for myself. It's like I've branded myself this way and it's just the way everyone knows me and it's too late to back out, but it's never too late to back out. I like to say, if you're still alive, you're still in the game. You have a choice to quit digging. That's the name of this channel, by the way. Put the shovel down. It means you hit your bottom when you put your shovel down. Don't tell yourself, I've already gone this far in, I've caused this much trouble, I might as well keep digging, because there's nothing good in that hole. There's nothing good. The further you dig, the more consequences, the more self-hatred, all the not good stuff. The further you go, the worse it is. So go ahead and put the shovel down. Don't worry so much about the fact that you've already dug 10 miles down. You don't want to dig 20. It's not going to make it better. But this sunk cost fallacy, it's like this automatic thinking thing that our brain does. Like, for example, an everyday example might be if you are used to sort of doom scrolling every night and you find yourself starting down that process of doom scrolling. Do you guys know what doom scrolling is on the internet when you're just sort of like in the vortex? I call it, maybe you're watching like TikToks or Shorts, or you got yourself, you're researching something and then you just got from one thing to the next to the next and. Before you know it, you're eating up hours and hours. You feel yourself doom scrolling. It's easy to let yourself off the hook by saying, well, I'm already this far in, I might as well keep going. It's hard to U-turn it around, but it absolutely can be done. A better counter strategy for that, rather than telling yourself I've already gone this far, I might as well keep going, is to make the present or the future be the value for which you make your decisions on your current behavior, not your past behavior. So I'm going to make decisions moving forward based on what I want in the future, not based on what I've done in the past. That right there is a game changer. If you can let your future dictate your present, you can break all kinds of old bad habits, even breaking out of like Old childhood trauma routines and habits. I mean, deciding what you want instead of deciding where you've been really will change the way that you view everything, the way that you make all your decisions. It's a big, big game changer. Principle number 3 is called loss aversion. If you see me looking over here, it's because I got my notes over here. Loss aversion. This is the idea that losing something, the loss of something feels bigger than the perceived gain of something new. So we're more averse to loss than we are seeking gain because it really has to do with pain. We're more focused on avoiding pain than we are like seeking something positive. A lot of times. So for example, this might be for people who are like, let's say, thinking about giving up drinking or something like that. The immediate thought that comes to mind is, well, all of my friends are going to think I'm weird. I don't have a way to connect. Am I going to have to give up all of my social events? How will I do my business networking? We have those immediate loss thoughts. How will I de-stress at the end of the day? And it's a lot easier to let our brain get focused on that as opposed to looking at what we're going to gain. For example, we're going to gain having a lot more energy. We're going to gain the fact that we're going to feel so much better about ourselves. We're going to gain the fact that we're going to have a lot more motivation and enthusiasm for other things in our life besides drinking. So when you Feel yourself focusing on what am I losing? I want you to ask yourself, what am I— why am I really doing this? What am I going to gain? And that also connects to the number 2, which is about shifting to the future focus instead of the past focus. Focus on the gains and not the losses. Principle number 4 that keeps us In this making excuses for bad habits cycle is called— this is a big one, you guys ready? It's called self-determination theory. And this has everything to do with autonomy, competence, and relatedness or connectedness. This is this rebellious piece of us that we all have inside, you know, from the time we're like 2. Till 100, 102, that we just want to, we want to be the boss of ourselves. And that's natural. So I see this all the time with my clients. Someone in their life is trying to push them to change, usually for some pretty good reasons, to be honest. And even though the person themselves, even though we might also want to change, we might also not like something that we're doing and we want something different for ourselves, the fact that this other person is encouraging us to do it, it hits that little rebellious button inside that doesn't want to do it just because someone else wants us to do it. It's that whole, I'm the boss of me thing. You're not the boss of me. And when we stop and think about it, we can get a little bit more honest with ourselves. We can realize, actually, I don't like this either. Actually, I kind of agree that This isn't great for me. Actually, I kind of agree that life would be better without it. But we have to set aside our ego in order to get honest with ourselves about this. We have to bypass that rebellious side of us, which to be honest is a little bit immature, right? That going against someone just for the purpose of going against is essentially letting someone else control you. You know, your thought is, I'm the boss of me. I'm controlling me. But if you have an automatic no inside of you, an automatic rebellious go against, Then you're essentially letting someone else control you because if they say left, you say right, and that still has control over you. So it's an irrational automatic button that we have that if we just take a few seconds, a few moments to just self-reflect and look at, we might see it totally differently. Most people historically that have come in to see me come in because they're leveraged in by some outside person, which is fine, and they spend a lot of time. Resisting the idea of change because they're feeling forced. And I get it. We don't like to feel forced. But when I start asking them questions about, is there anything you don't like about it? Is there any reason why you might want something different? It's not even hard for people to come up with and tell me even more reasons than their loved one has. Deeper, more impactful, powerful reasons. We just get distracted by that little kid part of us that wants to say, no, you're not the boss of me. And I get it. We all— autonomy is a human need, a need to feel in control of ourselves. But when you can reframe what being in control of yourself means, you'll see it completely differently. If you're having someone in your life that's trying to control you, not always, but a lot of times it means you're not controlling yourself Very well. Like, like if you have a kid or a teenager and you're wanting to micromanage them to do their homework, my thing with my kid is always like brushing your teeth and washing your face. I don't know why that's my sticking point because I'm not very power struggle-y. Those of you that know me, y'all know I'm not very power struggle-y. I really don't like rules because I don't— it takes a lot of energy to enforce rules, so I try not to have them. But the whole brush your teeth, wash your face thing, it's like the bane of my existence with my son. He's 14. Like, brush your teeth. He's got braces on, so I'm constantly thinking like, oh my gosh, all that sugar and everything's trapped underneath those braces, you're going to get them off, your teeth are going to be green under there, you know. And that's something that once you mess your teeth up, yeah, your grown-up big people teeth, you can't go back on. So I, I find myself getting stuck on that even though I know it's probably not helpful. And the more that I push that, the more you probably resist. I have to kind of keep myself in control with that one. So which of these 4 psychological tricks work on you the most? I'm going to say for me personally, the one that I find myself doing the most is the first one. It's the moral one. It's the one about like, I did something right, so I deserve this. Or I worked really hard. Who cares if I slack off with this? I am notoriously terrible for letting myself off the hook for self-discipline. Especially after I've accomplished something. That's my big one. But maybe yours is something different. Maybe yours is the rebellious one, the autonomy, the one that's called self-determination theory. Maybe yours is the loss aversion one. Or the other one that we talked about is, hold on, let me go back to it, is the sunk cost fallacy that I'm already this far down the road. If you have a tendency, especially to do a lot of what I call big talk, and a lot of people who have addictions somewhere along the way, one of the ways that they deal with their uncomfortableness, their kind of embarrassment or shame and guilt is they just sort of lean into it. Like they make theirself the identity of the guy that drinks too much. You hear people say like, I'm going to drink you under the table. That kind of thought, that bragging thing. I call it big talk, right? It's big talk. And it happens a lot because it's a way that we normalize something or even not even just make it okay, but make it something to be proud of. It's the way we deal with our own shame and embarrassment about things. So maybe you've done a lot of big talking and it can be hard to backtrack on that big talking, but sometimes it's okay to say, you know what? Maybe I was wrong about this. Or you know what? Maybe I felt that way about it at that time, but now I feel different. Maybe I'm in a different phase of life. Maybe things have changed for me. It takes a lot of humility to backtrack on some of that, but you're gonna come out better in the end. And it's okay to just say, you know what? I'm halfway down this road, but I think I'm lost. I think I'll turn around now. I think I'll. Autocorrect this route. Which one of those is biggest for you? Let me know in the chat or the comments. Is it the loss aversion, the I'm already this far down the road, the moral compass? Which one is it? I know we all do these things, but some one of these probably has more hold of you over than the other. We are about to the point in our talk today where we're going to take some questions and comments from those of you who are watching live. Thank you for those of you who show up live. If you're watching the replay, we're happy you're You're here too. We are live every Thursday at 1 Eastern, 1 PM Eastern. And so if you are watching the replay and you ever want to join us live so you can join the conversation, ask questions, give feedback, we would love to have you here. All right, Bree is behind the scenes. She's being our moderator. She's going to be looking for your questions and your comments. So go ahead and get them up there. And while we get those questions up there, I will remind you, as always, there are additional resources in the description. We're coming up on the end of August. I'm pretty sure there's a couple of open spots coming up for recovery coaching in September. And there's also lots of other additional resources in description, so don't forget to check those out. All right, Bree, do we have some questions and comments? Holly says, for my spouse, it's moral licensing or something you mentioned in another video about sneaking because you can get away with it. Okay. So moral licensing, Holly, it's one that I see a lot. I've heard even the clients I've seen just this week, I've heard this multiple times. One of the people I see every single session says, I work hard, I make plenty of money. She should just get off my case. And that's actually pretty common. It's not just one client. I hear it from a lot of clients, but I've heard it a lot this week. So that's one. And then there's also this other thing that you're saying, Holly, is the sneaking around because you can get away with it. There is, we didn't talk about this one, but there is this sort of adrenaline dopamine that we get from being sneaky. It kind of relates to the autonomy one, but it's slightly different. Like there's a thrill we get out of getting away with something. So maybe it's a combination of both for your spouse. Pisha says, my loved one has had 5 therapists in the past 3 years. None have helped. Is it possible to reach sobriety without one? Also, my loved one found a tracker in the car that was left by accident when he was on a binge. Why? Excuse me. So, um, I don't know if I can answer the second question, but I I can probably answer the first one for you, which is your loved one's had 5 therapists in 3 years that have not helped. Is it possible to reach sobriety with that one? Yes, it is absolutely possible to reach sobriety with that one. It can definitely be helpful, but if your loved one isn't connecting to the therapist or they just don't trust the therapist or they resent having to go or something like that, then it can backfire on you. So. Sometimes not only will it not work, but sometimes it can backfire on you, especially if someone feels pressured to go. Then they'll go and they'll not tell the therapist the whole story, which is normally the case, but even worse, they'll tell them the story in such a way to get the therapist to sort of validate their thinking and feeling and their decisions. They'll tell certain parts and not other parts. You guys know how this goes. And so sometimes it can even make it worse. I hope that's not happening in your case, but no. You don't have to have a therapist. I do think it's helpful to have someone in your life that can speak positive words into you, advice into you. And that can be a mentor. It can be a spiritual leader. It can be a sponsor. It can be a really good friend. But we do need someone that has some influence in our life that can kind of lead us in the right direction. I think that that is very helpful. But it does not have to be a therapist. Whoever your loved one trusts— maybe it's a good friend, maybe it's, um, a mentor from the past, an uncle, whoever— if they trust them and they're a good influence, then that can go a long ways too. I don't know about the tracker in the car. I'm not sure what the question is. Found a tracker in the car left by accident when he was on a binge. Why? Like you left the tracker in the car? I guess I'm confused by that one. I don't know about the second part of that question. Does addiction and acting out go together? How much chance that an addict is off of drugs and still continuing to act out? Let's see. I'm going to take that in 2 parts. Do— does addiction and acting out go together? Yes. But can someone be acting out and be clean and sober? Yes. Because not only do we develop a habit of engaging in an addictive behavior, of course that's there, like a habit of drinking or smoking or whatever the habit is. Yes, we develop that habit. But as we develop that habit, we also develop a lot of other defense mechanisms. And those defense mechanisms also become habit. So just because we quit the substance doesn't mean we quit like some of these other habits that we just talked about, some of these other psychological principles. Like maybe we're in the habit of being defensive. Maybe we're in the habit of lying. Maybe we're in the habit of sneaking. And just because we give up drinking or drugs or gambling or whatever it is, we also have to focus on breaking these other habits that kind of have come alongside because we've practiced them so much. They're their own. Things at this point. So yes, it goes together and yes, it can still be happening even if someone's sober. Cindy says, can someone with BPD get better without DBT? It's hard to find a therapist certified in DBT. Okay. So BPD, for those of you don't know, stands for Borderline personality disorder. And one of the really common, most well-known therapies for that is something called dialectical behavior therapy. So that's what Cindy's asking. So can someone with borderline personality disorder get better without DBT? Borderline personality disorder is something that can't really be cured, but can be managed. And a lot of what DBT is, is about teaching Emotional regulation skills. And that's why it can be so helpful for someone that has borderline personality disorder. It's how do I emotionally regulate myself when I'm stressed, tense, when I feel myself getting worked up? And so I do think that it's very helpful, but no, it's not the only thing that can get someone better. But I will say, if you're looking for that, if you maybe you live in a city that's not a big city and maybe they don't have a lot of Therapist trained in that. These days you can find online therapy so easily. I would suggest you look into that because I feel certain you can find someone that does DBT that's at least online that you can have access to. If you live in the States, you'll need someone that lives in the state that you're in, like a therapist. But like BetterHelp, you can find therapists that do that. But there's a lot of other organizations too. So if you don't have one in your city, look online for someone that does that. Because not only is that specific therapy really good for people that have BPD, it's also that people that practice that kind of therapy have a lot of experience in dealing with people who have borderline personality disorder. So it's not even so much, it's not just the fact that they can teach these skills, it's the fact that they have skill in and of itself with dealing with this particular kind of issue. Kind of like I have skill of dealing with people who have addictions. Like that's what I've dealt with for 20 years. I totally understand them. I get them. It's easy for me to click. And as a therapist, it's not easy for every therapist to work with someone who has borderline personality disorder because there's a lot in that diagnosis that can come into play even within the therapeutic relationship. And so I do think it's helpful to have someone that does DBT, but it's not the only thing. Naomi says, "Oh wait, Chef. I don't know how to say that name. Sheffernan. I'm probably saying it wrong. I apologize. Any advice for dealing with uncertainty over a spouse's safety when they're away from home? Today I have blocked my spouse's phone number as I know she's drinking on a trip, but I feel guilty." I think you have to remind yourself that you're not responsible for someone else's choices. And, you know, you, you hear people even say this sometimes, but it comes up a lot, like, I can't live with myself if I gave someone $20 and they overdosed and used. I can't live with myself if I let someone get in the car and they got in an accident. If those things happen to your loved one, here's the thing. It's addiction that caused that, not you. So if you gave your loved one money and something happened to them, if your loved one got in a car and got in an accident, I just need you to understand that that's because of addiction, not because of you. So you need to separate where your responsibility lies. You cannot be 24/7 responsible for someone else's safety. And anything that you do that you think is doing that is probably just an illusion anyway. So you're going to have to kind of let yourself off the hook for that. My sister did inpatient rehab a year ago and relapsed a few months after. We've let her try everything like AA, therapist, IOP, which hasn't worked. She won't go to inpatient again. How do you know what to do next? This is a really good question, Stephanie, and it comes up a lot. People will say, well, I did therapy, I did rehab or whatever, and it didn't work for me. In my experience, it takes more than once for most people. I call it like round 1, round 2, round 3. And just because you did something once and didn't get the result, it may not mean that it didn't work for you. especially when it comes to addiction, it probably means you didn't follow the instructions more than it didn't work for you. And in my years of doing this, what I find is that almost all of the incidences of getting help plant some kind of positive seed. And sometimes that doesn't blossom till later. I've been working on a recovery stories series lately, and last week I did an interview with somebody and that'll come out soon. So you guys be on the watch out for it. And this was a young person. This young person was talking about how he did this rehab and that rehab and this therapy and that therapy. And he just, as soon as he would get out, he would just go right back on, do everything he was doing before. But he says when he finally decided to get better, all of those things, and he talks about this in the story, which is so helpful, but all of those things he learns, all those seeds he planted when he decided to do better, he decided to start doing all those things he learned. And so he was like, it was all right there. I just decided when to use it. And so what I would say to you, Stephanie, is it's probably not that it hasn't worked. A lot of this is about timing. And my guess is that, that your sister has learned a lot of things along the way, and those seeds will blossom at some point. She'll come back to those seeds when she's ready to do something different. She'll know what to do and how to do it. All right, guys, we are out of time for today. Thank you so much for those of you who show up live. You guys are the best. Makes it so much easier when I'm not talking to myself. And thank you for those of you who show up on the playback. I know we can't all show up live. You're working, you got lives, and maybe you even live in a country where it's the middle of the night. Who knows? So I'll see you guys next Thursday at 1 if you want to be here live. And if not, keep your eye out for that recovery series that is coming your way soon. I've been doing a lot of recording. It's going to be great because it's not just recovery stories, but it's recovery stories from multiple angles. So it'll be like the person who struggled with addiction, their story, then a separate part 2 where you'll get to hear the same story from their loved one's point of view, which is particularly interesting because as we know, there are multiple angles to look at this thing from. So I'll see you guys next week. Don't forget to check out the resources in the description. Bye everybody.