Self Sabotage

Lovely J - reader, e-mail friend, and fellow breast cancer survivor, sent me this fabulous article by Martha Beck on self sabotage (click here).

Martha's thinking is based on the famous 'rat park' experiment.

(Johann Hari's TEDD talk on addiction was inspired by the same game changing rodents. If you haven't seen it yet, go to my post: Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong).

Rat park was an experiment designed by a Canadian called Bruce Alexander.

He looked at the myriad of studies into heroin and opiate addiction, where rats, given the opportunity, would drug themselves into oblivion.

Eventually they'd ignore all the food and water until, pretty quickly, they died. Game over. Ex rats.

Alexander noticed something significant: in all these experiments the rats were on their own in small, featureless cages.

So, Alexander designed Rat Park, a rat nirvana. He put lots of rats in it with loads of fun stuff to do, and gave them a choice of water or morphine.

Most of them chose the water.

(I suspect that if I'd been in that cage, however much fun I was having, I still would have wanted to party with the morphine from time to time. I would have been rebel rat).

Reading about this experiment was Martha Beck's lightbulb moment. She says:

The Rat Park studies profoundly influenced my view of what many people call self-sabotage. I believe that most of us live in cages of our own creation.

Ignoring our actual desires, we try to do what we think is right (or good or healthy or admirable—pick your poison). Sometimes this arrangement works. Sometimes it doesn't.  

Martha reckons that we fall back on our bad habits (drinking, smoking, overeating, shopping, whatever) when our conscious self is fighting against our inner desires.

In effect, we're sticking our rat-self in a cage and not letting it near the rat park. All this does is make our inner rat rebel and dive for our bad habit of choice, as a sort of ratty f**k you.

So, for us, the greater the divergence of our actual lives from our perfect rat park, the more likely we are to reach for the booze.

I get this. I also think it becomes a vicious circle, because the more we drink, the less likely we are to create a stimulating and varied rat park. Over time, our cage becomes increasingly dull and empty.

Instead of doing anything constructive about the situation, we shrug our shoulders, feel a bit sorry for ourselves and pour another drink, just like the self destructing rats with the morphine water in the original experiments.

So, how does Martha suggest we break the cycle of self sabotage? How do we get out of the cage and into the park?

She says the key is to make yourself aware of your inherent desires, and when you're disallowing them.

So, sit down with a pen and paper, and write down all the things you're planning to do tomorrow, big and small.

Then, think about drinking, and what triggers the addict voice in your head.

Read through the list carefully, think about performing each activity, and how much it makes you want to self sabotage.

If it doesn't make you want to drink at all, give it a zero. If it immediately makes you want to dash to the nearest wine shop and drown in booze, give it a ten.

This exercise will reveal some scary, and helpful, truths.

You may find, for example, that your evening bubble bath and your yoga class are zeros, but calling your ex-husband, and meeting your friend Chloe, are tens.

Martha suggest that you take each self-sabotaging item on the list and think:

1. In a perfect life, would I do this thing at all?

2. If so, what would I change to make it more enjoyable?

3. If not, what would I rather do?   

Let your imagination run wild. Dream. Be adventurous. Create your perfect Rat Park in your mind.

Then keep that amazing place in view, and make as many tiny changes as you can over time to get yourself closer to it.

Do more of the zeros, and jettison the tens, or adapt them to make them more manageable.

Because, as Martha says, If you cease to betray yourself, the self-sabotage in your life simply stops.

Simples?

Happy, sober Sunday to you all,

SM x