Do you blame these 5 for distracting habits?

The mobile phone calls to you.

• Sometimes, it’s the next episode of your favorite show on NETFLIX.
• Sometimes, it’s your favorite game.
• And then there are your social media feeds.

Before you know it:

• 1 episode turns into an entire season
• 10 minutes become an hour
• You don’t remember opening Instagram, but you’ve been surfing for hours.

Every now and then, you resolve to break the distracting habit:

• You delete apps
• You try to switch off the phone
• You leave the phone in your locker at work

For some time, it works!

And then the cravings start.

You know these patterns:

1. When you turn off the morning alarm, you check your messages.
2. You can’t wait for breaks to access your phone at work.
3. During family time, you try to browse furtively.

Soon, you give up and blame:

1. Your internet service provider
2. The creators who made things so addictive
3. Your circumstances, environment, etc.
4. Your parents who contributed to your DNA
5. Yourself for lacking willpower

Is there more to mental abstinence?

Let us look at the cycle:

1. You resist distractions
2. You ruminate about the distraction
3. You experience a rebound/relapse
4. You feel relief

Why does this happen?

Mental abstinence does not work — it backfires.

In his essay Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (Vremya, 1863), Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky noted:

“Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.”

Over one hundred years later, professor and social psychologist Dr. Daniel Wegner proved Dostoevsky true with an experiment involving two groups of participants. Both groups vocalized their thoughts. He instructed the first group of participants to suppress the thoughts of a white bear for five minutes and then to express thoughts of a white bear for five minutes. For the second group of participants, he reversed the instructions: express thoughts of a white bear for 5 minutes and then suppress thoughts of a white bear for 5 minutes. Every time the thought of a bear entered their mind, the participants had to ring a bell. On average, every participant in the first group thought of a white bear at least once per minute in the first five minutes or the suppression period. The first group visualized the white bear more often than the second group in the expression period.

Interestingly, at the beginning of the suppression period, many participants mentioned that they would think of other things. However, at the end of each sentence or thought, they would think of the white bear. Silence also triggered thoughts of the white bear.

Dr. Wegner is not the first psychology researcher to study mental abstinence or thought suppression. According to Freud’s fundamental insights, people have unwanted thoughts and try to suppress them. When this process of thought suppression becomes a conscious one, people cannot efficiently perform the cognitive transformation.

Researchers found that mental abstinence does not work when breaking habits such as cigarette smoking or sugar consumption. Studies found that abstinence from food in extreme diets can lead to binge eating and consequent weight gain. A small trigger that causes a minor violation can snowball into a relapse of the habit.

Dr. Wegner called his thought suppression theory “The Ironic Process Theory.” He went to find the mechanism: when we try not to think about something, one part of the brain avoids the thought, while another part checks in to make sure the forbidden thought does not pop up — ironically forcing us to think over.

What does this mean for you?

If you blame your DNA or yourself for the relapse of distracting or addictive habits, PAUSE. Understand that this is not about the addiction genes. Acknowledge that you are not to blame, for self-blame does more harm than good. Try to notice the patterns and observe the triggers. Once you know the triggers, you can naturally choose healthy methods to break the patterns.

References

Wegner, Daniel M., et al. “Paradoxical effects of thought suppression.” Journal of personality and social psychology 53.1 (1987): 5.