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On January 28 I started a series of posts reviewing promising psychotherapeutic approaches to addiction. I managed to cover a few, though with stops and starts — mostly due to Covid hassles and anxieties. So today I’m continuing the series with a post on Internal Family Systems (IFS). I wanted to understand it better before trying to explain it, and I think I finally do.

For years my online therapy with people in addiction has relied on my early training in psychodynamic therapy, dobs of mindfulness-meditation, what I’ve picked up from emotion-focused psychotherapy, ACT, Gestalt and other gems, plus my own personal experience of addiction. Add to that 30 years studying developmental psychology with a focus on emotion regulation, and what I’ve learned about the brain processes that underlie addiction and drug use. All of this came together in my own hybrid style of therapy. And it usually helped. Yet there were people I couldn’t help at all. There were brick walls and false leads and levels of trauma, chaos and heartbreak that left me gaping, and left my clients no further ahead. I knew I needed more training.

Internal Family Systems has been around since the 80s, and more and more people are becoming aware of it. It’s not easy, primarily because its premises go against the grain of mainstream psychology. Instead of trying to fuse the parts of the person into one coherent whole, IFS allows the parts to remain parts, it sort of honours them, so that you can get to know them, listen to them, understand them, and eventually take care of them. With respect to addiction, you never hear “you must stop.”

What are these parts? Maybe you’ve thought of them as voices, or selves, or subpersonalities — it doesn’t matter. They appear as habitual perceptions or expectations with distinct emotional loadings (e.g., anxiety, anger, longing) — and they can be intrusive in the background or they can seem to take over.

In working with addiction, the parts are not hard to find. Addicts often identify at least two. One is the “addict self” who just wants to get high (or to binge or have sex). That part is powerful, it overtakes the system, it has no regard for tomorrow, and it’s very difficult to resist. In AA, it’s said to be doing push-ups in the parking lot. In psychology jargon, it’s called compulsion. NIDA calls it a diseased brain. But I don’t find any of these concepts at all helpful. From a neuroscience perspective, I can point to the part of the brain that “does” compulsion — the dorsolateral striatum — but all that’s really doing is putting a habit into play. And as we know, addictive urges are all about habit. So what happens if we consider this to be a part of a person that is young, energetic, one-track minded, and determined to overcome negative emotion in the only way it knows how? When you think about it that way, it’s hard to negate it or to hate it.

The other part addicts often identify is the voice that gives you royal shit for doing it, thinking about it, planning it, having done it (drinking, drugs, gambling, whatever) last night or every night for the last week or the last month. We often call this the internal critic, and its specialty is self-blame and self-contempt. So what happens if we see this part as a younger version of ourselves, who learned to be our caretaker or disciplinarian? You better be good! Don’t you dare goof up again! You’re going to be in real trouble if you do that!! Once we see this part as trying to help keep us out of trouble, it’s hard to feel alienated from it or even victimized by it. Instead, IFS asks us to open a dialogue with this part. For example: You come out whenever I’m likely to do something “bad” (like call my dealer), don’t you — I guess that’s been a full-time job lately. But then you get so upset with me that I get seriously depressed, and then I just want to get high all the more. Let’s try reducing the pressure a bit.

And there lies the problem for most addicts. (I use that word for convenience, as you know.) The critical voice and the “let’s get high” voice activate and augment each other. Endlessly. In IFS, both these parts are called “protectors” because their job is to take care of you. Neither one is evil. They just have radically different styles. The critical voice or “manager” thinks only of the future. The “getting high” distractor voice thinks only of the present. These two parts branched off and solidified, earlier in development, because you needed them. Or so it seemed. How many times a day do you suppose the average 6-year-old thinks about NOT getting in trouble? How many times did you do bad shit anyway? The trouble now is that those two parts are so busy trying to shut each other down that you can’t get anywhere. Neither part will stop doing what it’s doing. It all seems so hopeless.

IFS recognizes a third class of parts called “exiles”. These are (usually) the really young parts that have experienced trauma or abuse of one kind or another. They are terrified. They’ve been hurt or shamed beyond their capacity to heal. We normally can’t or don’t want to re-experience that hurt, so we keep it buried. Hence the term “exile” (what psychoanalysts call the unconscious). But we don’t bury all of that pain…the hurt rises up inside us when we feel desperate, alone, misunderstood, or threatened. Addiction itself can trigger these feelings! And that’s exactly when the distractor — the “I need to get high” voice — gets activated. I can take care of this awful feeling, it says. Right now! Which of course triggers the manager part: Don’t you dare! You promised. Then the savage back-and-forth between these parts pushes the exiles further down, hides them even more, and douses them with more shame and fear…in case there wasn’t enough already.

Having practiced IFS as a therapist now for several months, I am sold on its efficiency and its power. (I’ve even begun as a client, myself, with an IFS therapist. What better way to learn the ropes…not to mention some timely self-improvement.) My clients “get it” almost at once. I don’t have to sell them on the rather esoteric imagery and jargon. They just take a look inside and say, Um yeah, that’s pretty much what’s happening. And then they start to change.

This is just a bare-bones intro. Let me end by saying that the goal of IFS is to let your Self (they spell it with a capital S) start to take care of your parts — appreciate them, comfort them, ask them to turn down the volume, to step back a bit. And reassure them that you — the present whole you, the Self, the calm centre that you may find in meditation — are going to take care of things, and take care of them — so they can begin to relax.

It’s pretty remarkable to feel that start to happen. You don’t feel so desperate. And all those layers of hopelessness begin to lighten and float away.

 

 

Obviously the impact of lockdown and social distancing has been serious for many of my readers, and I’ve struggled to think of what I could share that might help. Finally I think I’ve got something to say. Even as the world closes down around you, you have to stay open!

In my last scientific article on addiction and recovery, I set out a new and improved model of addiction (described in more detail here). I looked at addiction as a “narrowing” of the brain — a setting and solidification of neural networks focused on drug rewards — paralleled by a narrowing of the (available, meaningful) social environment.

This is not rocket science, or even brain science.

The main trouble with the “brain disease model” of addiction is that it ignores the massive impacts of the social environment. Yet we know that emotional challenges create the predisposition to later addiction. We know that the social environment (including one’s family history) matters hugely. We know that abuse (including emotional abuse) and neglect during our growing-up years are by far the best predictors of addiction in adulthood. The brain disease model simply can’t make sense of these facts. How could a brain disease develop from hard times growing up?

So in my model I emphasize that harmful social experiences have a shrinking or narrowing effect. If caregivers or peers make you feel off or wrong or insecure, or unable to trust, unable to just be, then you ingest what gives you the next best thing. Something that soothes you and defines you. And then, as time goes by, you connect with people more shallowly, you connect with fewer people, you connect with fewer people who might actually love you — family, friends, lovers. That’s the outer garment of addiction: the thinning, the contraction, of the social world. And it parallels the “contraction” of available neural networks in the addict’s brain.

The social shutdown isn’t just in the words and deeds you receive from people you know. It’s also a reduction in the places you go, activities, walks in the park, the freedom to be buffeted by babbling crowds shopping, living, watching, listening. When drink or drugs seem all that’s available to provide what you need, you let go of other possible sources of pleasure and satisfaction, energy, and identity. They were never that reliable to begin with. And before long you forget about them, you forget how to find them, you forget they even exist. That’s what locks addiction in place.

It’s what Johann Hari wrote about in Chasing the Scream: the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety; it’s connection.

So living through this pandemic, here’s the main problem. The impact of social distancing on many people is increased loneliness, greater contraction of the social world, an accelerated plunge into being by yourself. For people with addictions, that’s the opposite of what they need most, the opposite of what they need in order to forget about getting high, at least for awhile.

Maybe it’s obvious, but it’s also what I’ve been told by my psychotherapy clients, especially those who haven’t quite found their way back to a drug-free (or drug-reduced) existence. The four walls feel more like concrete barriers than dividers in a lively hive. The doors and windows start to feel like relics of an existence that’s no longer possible. You can’t go out, you can’t mix, you can’t meet up, except online. And that’s just not quite the same. All you’ve got left is your addiction…or so it seems.

For those who are taking care of kids who are also stuck at home, the increased contraction of possibilities is laced with stress. You have to attend to these little buggers all day long. You love them, okay, but they’re kids. They’re not there for you. You’re there for them. So, infused in your isolation are the toxic currents of stress, not only boredom but frustration and anger and a sense of inadequacy. All of which derive from the situation, but it feels like they derive from you, from your own shortcomings. There you are, trapped inside your bunker, with heightened demands and anxieties that would be hard enough to deal with if you were free to get out and mix with other parents and relatives and the world at large. Forced captivity with junior cell-mates is nothing like being free to wander and connect.

So here’s what you should do. If you’re trying to quit or control substance use (or other addictive activities — porn, online gambling, whatever), get your ass out of the house! Social distancing doesn’t mean solitary confinement. Here in my city in the Netherlands, I’ve seen more and more people strolling over the last two or three weeks. People walk, and when they’re about to pass by, either they or you or most likely both of you move aside, so there’s a good two meters (six feet) separation. That separation doesn’t prevent, in fact it seems to enhance, people’s tendency to smile at each other, say Hi, wave, even utter a few words of greeting.

And it’s springtime! (at least in the northern hemisphere) The bushes and trees are budding and leafing like crazy, the flowers are coming out. My mood improves about 300% after I’ve walked around for awhile. And when you get home, call or zoom someone you care about. Ask about them. They’ll ask about you too. It’s easy to imagine that our isolation is some kind of penance for imagined wrongdoings. It’s not! The world is still full of people. And you still have an instinctive need to connect with them, in whatever way you can.

Getting out of your home is going to make you feel like you’re a part of the world rather than a prisoner on Rikers Island. And that’s going to help you feel like you don’t need to get loaded, or maybe have two drinks instead of eight, or maybe watch a movie, read a book, and fall asleep gently, wondering about the mysterious mix of chance and destiny that’s landed us in this crazy time. Together.

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…by Colin Brewer…

Last post I suggested that we can attend to (rather than reject) our cravings and pursue integration rather than abstinence. Today, a contrasting view: Colin Brewer, a renowned and controversial addiction doctor, explains how Antabuse and naltrexone can free us from endless ruminations while new habits take root and grow.

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Having plenty of spare time on Covid lockdown, can I float a couple of evidence-based ideas to this experienced readership? (My own experience is only as a physician who treated assorted addicts. Unlike many US addiction medics, most European ones are not ‘in recovery’.)

1. Though not all substance abuse represents the drowning of internal and external sorrows, quite a lot does. However, the main difference between those who drown them and those who don’t is not that the former have bigger sorrows to drown; it’s that they have got into the habit of drowning them while the others have not. Addiction is therefore to a large extent a matter of habit and habits can be unlearned as well as learned. One of our main habits is speaking only one language. To learn another language requires the unlearning of that habit for long enough to allow another linguistic habit to get established. Research — lots of it — consistently shows that the best and quickest way to learn a new language and become fluent is to be forced to speak the new language exclusively from Day 1 for hours at a time, however badly. Language schools charge big fees for creating an environment where this happens and students routinely achieve at least basic fluency within a week. You can do the same by living on your own in a village where nobody speaks English. Necessity is a great teacher.

2. In the case of drug addiction (including alcohol of course) the evidence strongly indicates — as does common sense — that people who have not responded well to previous treatment and have had several relapses with no more than a few weeks or months of abstinence, need at least 18 months of abstinence before they change their self-image from “I’m an addict/in recovery” to “I used to be an addict but now I’m different.” Keeping these treatment-resistant addicts drug-free — or at least free of their main problem drug — for 18-24 months is made a lot easier by the consistent use of drugs that deter their use. Disulfiram (Antabuse) deters alcohol use by the prospect of an unpleasant physical reaction and naltrexone deters opiate use by the prospect of an unpleasant psychological reaction.

The German OLITA study — probably the most important (and encouraging) alcoholism treatment study bar none — showed that once a group of very unpromising alcoholics with numerous treatment failures had taken disulfiram under supervision (and thus stayed dry) for at least 20 months, most of them stayed dry without disulfiram (and mostly without other treatment) for the next 7 years of follow-up. In other words, by simple daily practice and repetition, their alcohol-using habits had been abandoned and replaced by habits that didn’t include alcohol. We don’t yet have similar long-term studies of naltrexone for opiate dependence but with naltrexone implants that can last six-months or even a year in existence or in development, we soon will have. I predict that the longer-acting the implant, the better the results will be because fewer decisions to continue treatment (compared with monthly Vivitrol injections) need to be made in the crucial first few months.

A recent New Zealand study showed how disulfiram effectively removes one of the most annoying features of being an alcoholic — the endless internal arguments and conversations that patients have with themselves almost every minute of the day about whether they should or shouldn’t drink. Some patients described it as a sort of “internal homunculus that demanded alcohol.” Disulfiram replaced those endless ruminations and temptations with a mind-set in which alcohol was “simply no longer an option.” One patient described how, when he wasn’t taking disulfiram, after all the internal arguments, “at the end of it, I just go ‘fuck it, fuck it’… When I’m on Antabuse, it’s just like. Well, I can’t.” After a year or even less, that ‘Well, I can’t’ increasingly morphs into ‘Well, it doesn’t seem that important now. I’m learning to manage without it and I’ve found other things to do instead.’

Some people who have learned to become indifferent to alcohol can even progress to cautious experiments with controlled drinking, though if it gets uncontrolled, they should get the message and not try again. And I doubt whether trying controlled opiate use is ever a good idea. However, there are undoubtedly people whose brains do not adapt to long-term opiate abstinence and who are better off on long-term methadone, buprenorphine or — in Britain at least — morphine.

I’d really appreciate the views of people for whom those internal arguments are a daily experience — or were until recently; or who have left them behind. I am fortunate only to have encountered them at second hand.

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Brewer C, Streel E. Antabuse treatment for alcoholism. An evidence-based handbook for medical and non-medical clinicians. Foreword by William R Miller. CreateSpace IPP. North Charleston, SC. 2018

At the heart of the discussion about addiction and recovery lies a trilogy of questions: whether abstinence is necessary or even helpful, what “harm reduction” offers in its place, and what is the best way to deal with cravings. These questions are intertwined. In fact they merge into a single issue. Today I want to approach this issue from the perspective of part-selves, and look more closely at harm versus care.

You probably know the parts better than you think. My addict self comes out of nowhere and roars into life. She’s incredibly determined, so I end up giving in before I even know it. Twelve-steppers say she’s doing push-ups in the parking lot. That part seems so evidently not-self, and yet it obviously is a part of the self. Or: I give myself such shit the morning after. You’re just a fucking loser, addict, drunk. You don’t deserve sympathy. You don’t even deserve to be alive! Again, that voice comes at us, so it feels like not-self, yet it obviously is a part of the self as well. Who else could it be?

Those are “parts” we recognize most easily. But according to IFS, Internal Family Systems therapy, there can be many more parts to us. I wanted to be at an IFS workshop this week. I’d paid the fee, bought my ticket to Bristol, reserved an Airbnb, cleared my calendar. And then the coronavirus came along and dashed my plans, as it has obliterated plans, wishes, normalcy, for so many of us. So I won’t write about IFS today. I don’t understand it well enough yet. But I already practice a kind of psychotherapy that recognizes “parts” — so I feel an intuitive connection with this approach, and my reading on IFS continues to flesh it out. More on IFS later.

For now, here’s my take on the parts:

Clearly craving is the single biggest challenge to people who want to overcome their addiction. The recommended methods to deal with cravings are (1) urge surfing — watching the craving come, peak, and then dissipate, while maintaining a mindful objectivity, and (2) developing new thought patterns, usually with the help of others, that result in abstinence until the cravings subside over time (or, less optimally, “white-knuckling” until you can start to relax). If these work for you (or your friend, family member, client) then that’s just great. And sometimes, when the consequences of substance use are dire and immediate, abstinence may be the only sensible choice.

But abstinence has a huge drawback. It’s incredibly difficult! It can feel like turning your back on your best friend, on love and comfort, forever! It can feel like kissing goodbye to the one thing in your life you could control — changing how you feel. It can leave you staring into an existential void, facing an abyss of emptiness and meaninglessness. So, abstinence very often leads to “relapse.” We know this story well, and it provides a (false) rationale for defining addiction as a chronic disease.

Abstinence erects a steel fence around the part of us that wants and feels it needs to get high (or get full, in eating disorders). But what if we were to take that part and, instead of turning our back on it, telling it “No, never again!” what if we were to embrace that part, listen to it, and comfort it. What if, instead of banishing the needy part, we were to get to know it, maybe even get to love it, so that it doesn’t have to feel so walled off, shunned and hated.

The logic is simple: as long as we wall off this part of us, it not only continues to exist, it gets more desperate and determined. Now it has to weaponize and force its way through. In psychodynamic parlance, the more you suppress a powerful urge, the stronger (or more devious) it becomes.

So, instead of banishing that part, in IFS and other psychodynamically-oriented approaches (including ACT and my own cobbled-together approach), the idea is to listen to the craving and connect with it. Can there be value in this?

It’s such an outlandish idea in many people’s minds, that I’m not at all sure this approach gets tested very often. (Research on IFS is still in its early stages.) But I’ve seen it work with some of my clients. And obviously I’m still developing the relevant skills.

Little kids crave what they can’t have, and the cookie jar doesn’t lose its appeal by being placed out of reach. So we give the little kid something else to eat, maybe a piece of fruit or cheese (think methadone). And/or we create a bridge to the treasured outcome. We say, you can certainly have a cookie, in fact two cookies, when it’s dessert time. That’s after dinner, at 6:30. Do you think you can wait that long? Let me help you. Let’s get busy doing something else.

Connecting with cravings doesn’t mean you have to be stupid about it, run out of your apartment and score as much coke as you can snort. In fact, being smart about cravings is one way to hold and soothe the part-self that feels so needy.

But the benefit of accepting and embracing the needy part isn’t just scaffolding it and keeping it from tearing the house down. Its greatest benefit is the feeling of integration you foster in yourself. The craving part is young and wild, defiant, and very much alone. But it’s a part of you! Finding out where it comes from — in your growing up years, in your efforts to control troubling emotions, in your battles against depression and anxiety — allows it to relax and connect with the rest of you. This opens the door to self-acceptance and self-love, which often seem so elusive in addiction.

And when the need is no longer desperate and isolated, that’s when you can manage to count your drinks, call a friend, watch a movie instead, shift from whiskey to wine (my target these days — I’m down to one scotch and a glass of wine most nights) …and taper, gradually — develop a schedule of controlled use or stop entirely. Once you feel less fragmented, once the warring factions have laid down their arms, you might find that place much more accessible, and it’s a lot less likely to give way when life throws its next curve-ball…or its next virus.

To me, this is harm reduction. Specifically, a psychological approach to harm reduction that makes sense and feels right.

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The coronavirus pandemic reminds us not only of the proximity of death (and other fun stuff) but of the contradictions we face throughout our lives. Some of which seem truly unsolvable. Here’s one that’s had me chasing my tail for awhile:

How should we address ourselves with compassion and love when in fact, according to the Buddhists (and according to neuroscience), selves don’t actually exist. The self is an illusion, says the Buddha, and I have a hunch he’s right. What has any of this to do with addiction and recovery? You’ll see.

(I’ll get to the neuroscience view of the self another time. Just wanted to throw it in as a teaser for now.)

Trapped in the living room

For the last four days my family and I have been camping out at home. On Tuesday, my wife Isabel told her grad students and colleagues that she’d meet them via Skype of Zoom. She said group meetings at the university weren’t safe. They thought she was nuts. Over-reacting. How many times having have you heard that term this week? On Wednesday, she decided to keep our boys (almost-14-year-old twins) home from school, and left me to explain to the school authorities that, no, Ruben and Julian don’t appear to be sick at all. We’re just being cautious. Um, you can’t really do that, they said. The law is that children must be in school. But growth curves show no mercy. On Thursday, the university announced that large classes were cancelled, were shifting to online lectures. On Friday, the university announced that it was closing completely. And the boys’ school sent out an urgent email: keep your kids at home. No more school this week. Not much joy in saying I told you so. We figure that here in the Netherlands we’re about a week behind Italy (a close neighbour) and quickly approaching the UK scenario.

Our boys have been studying, reviewing, forging ahead with new chapters in schoolbooks whose names I no longer feel I need to know how to pronounce. They earn an hour of screen time for every two hours of studying. So…not a total loss in their view. Sometimes it’s eerily quiet in the living room, while four medium-to-large-sized mammals sit and whisper to themselves, until the sounds of clashing swords tear through the silence. No, not the long-awaited Gen-Z rebellion. Just somebody’s headphones coming off during a video game. And I watch Alexios, Julian’s ruggedly good-looking ancient Greek mercenary, try yet again to defeat Medusa and her guards. That’s father-son bonding, right? — justifiably my homework. I love it.

We Dutch (we’re actually Canadians, still searching for an identity) are known for our confidence, everything under control, we know how to deal with floods and such. And we’re super industrious and smart, highly skilled at cooperation. In fact this has evolved into an almost animal instinct to follow rules — all rules, any rules (e.g., the rule that kids must be in school unless they’re really sick, even during a pandemic).

How to torture the Dutch

Want to know how to torture a Dutch person? (I say this with real affection, and  just a bit of mockery. I’m allowed…after living here for nine years). When there is absolutely no traffic, anywhere, in any lane, as far as the eye can see, you cross the street, EVEN THOUGH THE LIGHT IS RED. (This can be done either on a bike or on your feet. It works best when it’s raining, which is pretty much always.) Halfway or more across, gaze back at the people still huddled on the sidewalk. Look at their faces, twisted in the agony of, not only indecision but true existential paralysis, a sense of doubt (that extends back to the Big Bang and covers everything up to this morning). They see you crossing, they want to cross, they wish they could cross, but the light’s red. Their expressions reveal horror, confusion, contempt, envy, and most of all shock. Because there it is: the fundamental impossible-ness of life — the paradox that can’t be mended, the incompatibility of two totally logical, obvious, unarguable truths. The epitome of unsolvability. (see above) And you know, some of them will cross and others won’t, and regardless, in both sets of people, you can detect the early signs of mental breakdown. I’m no Buddhist scholar but some of the stuff I’ve read, like Robert Wright’s “Why Buddhism is True” and Sam Harris’s “Waking Up,” suggests that the Buddha might have been deliberately trying to get you to have a mental breakdown anyway.

The point

Here’s another paradox, a logical polarization, that could drive you as crazy as the Dutch people on the sidewalk facing freedom directly, right now, but longing for a green light regardless.

What’s the worst that can happen, coronavirus-wise? It’s obvious: you can die. Or perhaps worse, one or more of the people you love can die. So, there’s death. And we’re all going to die anyway. So, is death really such a big deal? According to Buddhism, and as expressed so starkly by the authors I mentioned, the problem with death is that we are attached to the illusion of having a self. When you get right down to it, the self just isn’t real. The stuff going on inside you and the stuff going on outside you is all just stuff going on. (I realize this is a truly inadequate summary of the main tenets of Buddhism. I’m no Buddhist scholar, as mentioned, so why pretend.) True, consciousness seems to illuminate the stuff going on inside you and around you in a particular way, but the idea that you own this stuff, the idea that it’s special, that you’re special, is just a convenience that we stumble upon some time in the first year or two of life (and that gets reinforced by some ill-conceived strains of parenting, perhaps designed to foster life-long anxiety. I mean, being the centre of the universe has got to be hard to keep up).

So let’s say the Buddhists are right and there really is no self. I believe this to be true. And yet: I have advised many clients (and other people) and myself (frequently in fact) to talk to oneself (Notice that words containing “self” reappear annoyingly often.) In particular, if you’re depressed or feeling empty, or a dark, anxious state is settling over you, as is often the case AFTER (or during, or even before) a period of addiction, then one of the most helpful things you can do is talk to yourself, either out loud or in your head, in a friendly way. This corresponds to “self-compassion,” which is all over the Net these days, which I sometimes discuss on this blog, and which is one of the driving principles of “lovingkindness” meditation: you start by loving yourself, and that makes it easier to love others. Addicts are notorious for self-hatred. We’ve discussed the reasons why over many previous posts. I see it as a key goal of addiction psychotherapy to get rid of this self-hatred before it gets rid of you.

I often advise people specifically to say things like “Good morning Jo (one’s own name). Hey, how’s it going? Not so great? Don’t worry. You’re not a bad person. Even if you slipped up last night, even if the label “addict” still hangs in the air, you’re not some despicable reptile. You’re just trying to hurt less. Self-blame and self-hatred simply aren’t appropriate. You didn’t ask to have the life you’ve had, to be exposed to that kind of pain and then discover an escape route, and you’ve been doing your best to get it under control — and succeeding! When you switch to first-person and say these friendly, nurturing things to yourself, it sounds like, “I’m okay…I really am trying…I’m not bad” and then you start to feel different. Whether you pitch this conversation in terms of a you or in terms of an I, there’s an explicit assumption that there’s a self, a self that you are trying to accept, comfort, nurture, and love.

But what if the self is an illusion? Maybe something like that tortuous stoplight? How would we make sense of this paradox?

Here are three approaches:

1. Tonight I had dinner with a good friend and his 15-year-old daughter, Bo. When I revealed my conceptual conundrum at dinner (Pieter is a philosopher, so this would be acceptable table talk) Bo said: If there’s no self, just a bunch of thoughts, then don’t try to be nice to your self. Just be nice to your thoughts. (Brilliant, don’t you think?)
2. Saying to yourself that you really are a good self, and you shouldn’t carry around this load of self-blame and so forth, is absolutely the right thing to do. Because, first, it works: it makes you feel happier, lighter, more open, less depressed. And second, talking to your “self” this way doesn’t mean there has to be a real self in operation. The reason it works, the only reason it works, may be that it dilutes or refutes the conviction that you are a BAD self. Not even that you have a bad self; that you are a bad self. Getting rid of that just brings you back to neutral, back to zero, which seems approximately where the Buddha wanted you to end up. Not so you could just be dull and blank and detached, but because “neutral” in this sense is an open gate, or maybe, better yet, a roundabout…from where you can move in any direction.
3. Here’s an extension of #2. You probably do blame your “self” for all the shit you’ve done, all the trouble you’ve gotten into, all the hurt you’ve caused others AND yourself. Not only from being an addict, but probably from well before that started, when the lesson filling the blackboard in the kitchen was that there is indeed a you, who happens to be selfish, and greedy, and envious, and probably many other not-nice characteristics, like mean and manipulative. (What kid isn’t manipulative?) That’s a lot of badness to have to face every day of your life. Certainly no advantage when you’re trying to stop drinking or snorting stuff. And wouldn’t it be something if this flawed and fantasized vessel, the self, just happened to be the most effective means for packing guilt and shame — hence anxiety and depression — into your sense of being alive. So, being nice to yourself, being friendly to yourself, might already be accomplishing something fabulous, even if the self was always just an illusion: using one side of the illusion to dispel the other.

So, talking to your “self” in a friendly and comforting way simply diminishes the enormous weight you carry around, consisting of the sense of having a very big, very central self, who’s defining characteristics are really quite unpleasant, even ugly and revolting. In other words, maybe, if the metaphor works, when there are no cars coming, when you’re really not in any danger, then don’t worry whether the light is red, or green, or even real. That’s no longer the issue.

And here’s a little secret that I think fits just about perfectly with the thrust of ACT, which was the topic of last week’s post. If the light remains red for a very long stretch of time, and there really are no cars coming or going, then the light is probably broken. That could be an ideal time to see if you can approach things in a completely different way.