Amber Hollingsworth explains how self-criticism and shame drain the willpower you need to resist drinking. When you beat yourself up, you exhaust the emotional energy required to handle triggers, making relapse more likely.
Self-criticism drains our willpower. Every time you beat yourself up, every time you shame yourself, every time you spiral into self-hatred, you're depleting your willpower. You're exhausting your brain. Think about it. You're trying to function during the day while you feel physically terrible and emotionally terrible. You're fighting through physical withdrawal symptoms. You're managing your shame and guilt. You're trying to keep it together at work, with your family, in public, and it takes massive amounts of energy and willpower to do that. So by the time you hit that crucial moment, the time of day when your body is used to drinking, when the habit pattern kicks in, you basically have nothing left in the tank. Your willpower is pretty much completely gone. You've spent it all just getting through the day and hating yourself. And then the trigger happens, and that's when you need your willpower the most, but you've already used it all beating yourself up. This is why the shame-based approach is actually just setting you up for fail. Not because you're weak, you're failing because you're trying to use a resource Willpower already been completely drained and exhausted by spending all day feeling like crap and being mad at yourself.
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