Why You Keep Running Out of Willpower

Willpower alone won't save you from addiction, but in order to develop a good strategy, you need to understand how willpower works, like the science of the issue, which is what we're going to be talking about in today's video. Understanding the science of willpower is going to help you make much smarter and more effective decisions. And if it's a loved one that you're supporting in early recovery, the same thing goes for you. Understanding the science of willpower is going to help you make more strategic, more effective decisions on how to support your For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I've been helping people who have addiction and their families for more than 20 years now, which means I've worked with thousands of people, and everybody's journey is slightly different. But there are some core issues that apply to pretty much every situation, which is what we're going to go over in this video. One of the first things I like to tell my clients is that willpower is kind of like gas in the gas tank. There is an infinite amount of it. Yes, you do have to use willpower when It comes to recovery. It's just that you want to be really smart about how you use the gas in the gas tank. Another way to think about it is it's like money in the bank, and you got to budget this stuff out. Okay? And yes, you have to spend some, but you need to spend it wisely. Now, your willpower tank fills up every night when you sleep, and research shows that a good 7 hours of sleep is optimal. If you can get 7 good hours of sleep, which means you have multiple REM, rapid eye movement, level 4 sleep cycles, then you're going to wake up and your willpower tank's going to be pretty full. So now let's take a look at what takes fuel out of the willpower tank. First of all, let's start with the sleep. We just talked about how a good 7 hours of sleep gets that willpower tank full, and we all pretty much need all the whole tank of gas to get us through each and every day, even on a normal day. But in my experience, early recovery, there's almost always sleep issues. Pretty much doesn't matter what substance or behavioral addiction you're coming off of, your sleep cycle is very likely to be interrupted. So you're already starting out this journey with less than a full tank. Now let's take a look at some of the other situations that take little withdrawals from that account. Okay? Like decision-making. Have you ever heard the word decision fatigue? Man, I struggle with this big time. I feel like I make decisions pretty much like all day for myself, for my clients, for the team. I have to make like technology decisions, all of these decisions, answering comments and emails, and I feel like I almost always Constantly have decision fatigue. So much so that when my birthday comes around and everyone says, "What do you want for your birthday?" I say, "I don't want to make any decisions for my birthday. I want you guys to decide it, and whatever it is, I'm fine." When I go to a restaurant and they hand me a menu and it's got a bunch of pages on it, I get completely overwhelmed. I just sort of look around and see what looks good and order something like that, or I just go to some kind of like basic go-to food. So given that, you can imagine that when you're in early recovery, you are making the decision to stay sober over. And over and over again, like sometimes 100 times a day. That's on top of all the other regular decisions that you have to make in any given day. You know, decisions about what to wear and what to eat and decisions you have to make at work and with your kids. Now, another biggie that's going to take a big withdrawal from the willpower tank is self-control. Any kind of resisting a temptation. And I don't even mean just the addiction temptation. I mean things like what food to eat, distractions, procrastination. Being polite, nice, using your manners. All of that has to do with self-restraint. It's your ability to manage your impulses. So as you could imagine, early in recovery, all of your impulses are screaming at you to continue this addictive behavior, whatever that addiction is. So if you just looked at that one issue alone, that right there is enough to drain your entire willpower tank because it's resisting, resisting, resisting. Now the resisting gets easier. On down the line, but in the early days, it is draining the tank. If you could just imagine like a gas gauge moving really fast, like you know, like super quick. And another thing that eats up your willpower is emotional stress and regulation. Now, not surprisingly, in early recovery, people are under a lot of emotional stress, and their ability to emotionally regulate is pretty depleted. And for a lot of reasons, like like being in withdrawal, like whatever happened that made you get to the point where you decided to address. The addiction when you're getting over almost pretty much any kind of addiction, your anxiety is going to be through the roof. Your restlessness is going to be way up there. You're going to be irritable. So not only are you resisting all day long, so let's put some of these layers together. You're making the decision over and over and over to stay sober, and you're resisting these impulses all day long, and you're trying to hold it together the best that you can, and your emotions are. Wild. So now that you got those 3 layers, let's add another thing on the top that eats up your willpower. And that is physical depletion. Like when you're exhausted and you're hungry and you're tired. This is pretty much like what being hangry is, right? When you're so exhausted, you're so tired, you don't have any energy left. Maybe you've been working hard all day. You've been dealing with whatever, all the stresses, all the physical energy is drained out of you. Even more out of that willpower gas tank. Another thing that drains your willpower tank is any kind of new habits. Oh my gosh, overcoming addiction hits every single mark of willpower depletion because of course you're trying to create new habits and you're trying to resist impulses and you haven't gotten enough sleep and your emotions are crazy. Now, if that's not bad enough, let's layer some more in on top of that. Social interactions deplete your willpower, especially social interactions that require like confrontation or assertiveness or politeness. You know, the ones that take like a lot of thinking where you're not just comfortable, like in your own home, like, you know, the ones that take like a lot of thought when you have to have on your best self. All of those drain out your willpower too. Oftentimes in early recovery, what people are doing is they're joining recovery groups, right? They're meeting new people. They're trying new situations. They're forming new habits. You're trying to be polite to people when everything inside of you just wants to melt down. Now, here are 2 more things that drain your willpower: multitasking and trying to achieve long-term goals. And Of course, sobriety is a long-term goal. So these are the 8 things that drain your willpower tank. And as you can see, pretty much all of these things in early recovery are on maximum overdrive. So as you could imagine, you need to budget that willpower really well and strategically. So hang tight because in just a minute, we're going to talk about how to budget it strategically. But first, I want to tell you a big mistake that I frequently see people making. I'm going to call it testing yourself. A lot of people in early recovery actually feel like they need to prove that they mean it. They need to prove how strong they are, and they will put themselves in difficult situations to see if they can resist. And I'm guessing that now, since we've talked so much about willpower, you can see why that is a ridiculous, crazy idea. But there's this notion out there that if they really mean it, no matter what, they're not going to relapse. Well, that notion is ridiculous. People are human beings and we only have so much willpower. So for goodness sake, don't intentionally put yourself in a difficult situation. What are you doing? This recovery thing is hard enough. You don't need to make it any harder. Seriously, people do this. I've had so many clients who literally keep some version of their addiction around. Maybe it's a way to access their addiction because there's this little naggy urge inside that's like, what if I change my mind? So in some ways you're keeping it around as a safety net, but you're saying out loud to other people, question you on that, you're going to be saying some other reason. You're going to be telling yourself some other reason. You're going to be telling yourself, well, I need to learn how to resist this. I have to be sober in the world. And you come up with all these good sounding justifications and rationalizations. But the truth of it is you're leaving yourself the option, which is only making it harder because it goes to the whole point about making decisions and about how that eats at your willpower. And so if you're keeping the opportunity around, you are having to make the decision so many times over and over and over And yes, you mean it, but eventually you get wore out. Eventually you get hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Eventually you are stressed and you're going to cave, not because you don't mean it, but because you're human. So probably one of the most effective strategies I try to help my recovery coaching clients with is the idea of, as much as possible, take the option off the table. If there's anything you can do that makes relapse a non-option, do it. If it's getting rid of electronic devices, Devices, do it. If it's getting rid of phone numbers, do it. If it's changing your phone number, do it. If it's getting rid of all your paraphernalia, do it. Whatever you got to do. If it's getting off social media, you want to narrow down as much as possible any other option. Because honestly, when you take the option off the table, it actually becomes a lot easier. That's why they say, you know, getting sober, like in rehab or sometimes even in jail, it's easier because you don't really have a lot of other options. So you don't have to do all that back and forth. Will I? Won't I? Should I? You know, all the things. And And so you're conserving willpower because you're having to make the decision much less frequently. Another mistake that I see people make when it comes to early recovery is this idea of trying to fix everything all at once. And it's noble, and I respect that people are like, okay, I'm cleaning up my life. I'm getting my act together. I need to fix my marriage. I need to quit smoking. I need to quit drinking. I need to quit gambling. I need to quit looking at social media. I'm going to quit it all. I'm going to be my best version of my best self starting today. I probably don't even to explain why that's a bad idea. So I'm not, because I know you're already picking up what I'm putting down. Now, when it comes to the idea of new habits, I do think that it's super helpful to create new habits in early recovery, especially if you have rituals and routine around when and where you engage in your addictive behavior. You especially want to plan for those. Don't leave it up to a game time decision of, well, I'll just get through it. Like, for example, if you usually smoke weed when you get home from work every day, don't just leave that up to chance. You need to make a plan for what you're going to do instead. And you need to already have it mapped out if you're going to make plans with someone else, whatever, because don't rely on the fact that you're going to have willpower at the end of your workday because your tank is almost empty at the end of your workday. Okay? So don't just rely on yourself to figure it out when you get there. Go ahead and have a plan in place so that you can just move into it on autopilot. Now, another giant thing that pretty much always comes up with my coaching clients is the fact that they're trying to fix relationships. At the same time, they're trying to get sober. In fact, most of the time, it's the relationship that probably has prompted the decision to get sober. A lot of you may be thinking, "Well, that's not good. You have to do it for yourself." But those of you that know me, you're not thinking that because you know how I feel about that. I got plenty of videos on that. I'm not going to go into it. There's no bad reason to do it if it's for somebody else. Fantastic. So it seems reasonable that you want to fix the relationship while you're getting sober, and a lot of times that involves a lot of very difficult conversations. And hey, even if you're not. Trying to fix the relationship, your loved ones, oh, they want to talk about it. They want to have lots of conversations because what they're looking for is that you get it. They're trying to figure out, do you really mean it this time? Are you really going to do it? And of course, the reason they're doing that is because they're trying to protect themselves. So in the willpower department, what I'm going to suggest is that you have some standard sort of answers and approaches on how to deal with these very difficult Early relationship dynamics that basically can kind of buy you some time and give you a little space until your new habits and your new routines become easier, and then you have a little bit more willpower to budget out to have some of these deeper conversations. So if you're watching this as a family member, I know it's not fair. I know it's been going on for years. I know you deserve an apology. You are 100% right. It's fair, but it's not a good idea to be pushing on this issue in these early days because all. the reasons we just talked about. Plus the fact that they're so emotionally dysregulated, they're probably not going to give you the answer that you're looking for. And you're probably going to leave the conversation feeling more upset because more often than not, they're just going to respond with defensiveness because they don't have enough willpower, emotional regulation, all that stuff to really think through these heavy decisions, these heavy conversations that you're wanting to have. So if you're the person in early recovery and your loved one wants to have these conversations, I want you to have like these little statements. I call I like to think of them like they're in your back pocket. Not literally, although you could put them in little note cards in your back pocket if you want to. But you need to have some kind of like prepared go-to things that you say. And what you want to do is you want to validate their concern and let them know that you're taking the issue seriously. And you can say, hey, I don't have all the answers for you right now, but I totally get where you're coming from. And we definitely need to talk about this right now. I'm not sure if I have the bandwidth to do it, but I want you to know I am taking it seriously and I'm working on getting there. Sometimes statements like that is enough to kind of buy you a little time with your loved one. What you don't want to do is get blindsided by these conversations because then you're going to feel defensive. You know your loved one, you know your family, you know what they're likely to say and do. So let's just go ahead and think about it right now. What are my go-to statements? And you have to kind of do it where you don't exactly sound like a robot, you know, so don't literally pull the note card out and read That's not going to be a good look. But if you understand the formula, which is sort of validate their feeling, let them know that you're taking it seriously and that you will come back to the conversation. For most people, that's usually enough. They may not like it because they have this big urge to hash it out with you, to get into your head. They want to know what you know. You just don't have the energy and emotional resources to get into all that right now. So as you can see, you've got to pair willpower with strategy, and your strategies are all about how do I conserve or budget budget my willpower so that I can get through these early days. Now, the good news is, as these early days move forward, it takes less and less and less willpower to stay sober. And those new habits you're forming are getting solidified. And now some of those new habits are your new routines and they're your instinct. And you're learning to navigate difficult relationship dynamics. So you're setting down some new neuropathways and it It gets easier. I promise you it gets easier, but your best bet is to kind of plan for how am I going to sidestep some of these landmines. Now, if you want to know more about what it's like to be in early recovery, I want you to watch this video next because it goes in depth into exactly what to expect in those first days and weeks.