Anyone who’s tried dieting has been lambasted with the concept of “willpower.” It’s a voice in your head that barks, “don’t eat this and that or you’ll get fat.” In the case of eating disorders, willpower also translates to willing yourself not to binge or purge or restrict.
That may sound like the right approach to healing. But if you think about willpower this way, healing is submitting to a punitive, parental force that tells you “don’t” when some other child-like part of you says "do." Maybe not such a good healing tactic.
Brain researchers think of willpower in an entirely different way. Willpower, in science-speak, is about choices and decision-making. Your mind makes a plan to act and then (here’s the willpower part) you choose whether or not you will carry out your plan. That’s the hard part. But you are in charge. You get to choose.
Scientists at Case Western Reserve are studying why the execution part of the plan is such a tough thing. It turns out that the brain resource you need to draw from in order to follow through on your best intentions is limited. It’s a kind of mental gas tank that can be overtapped.
Scientists know this because they recruited volunteers to do an impossible-to-solve puzzle. At the same time, the volunteers were also asked to eat radishes, a bitter but “good-for-you” food. Of course, no one really wanted to eat the radishes. And to make the distaste even stronger, the researchers presented other volunteers working the puzzles nearby chocolate chip cookies. This is the worst nah-nah-you-can’t-have-it temptation. Not surprisingly, the radish eaters gave up more quickly on the puzzle -- eight minutes sooner and nearly half as quickly as the cookie eaters. The conclusion: your willpower runs out sooner if you have to spread over two challenging tasks.
In recovery, the translation might be if you are trying to stop bingeing, for example, you shouldn’t file for divorce or go back to school to change careers – at the same time.
However, a common theme of recovery is that once a person starts to move forward, many aspects of his or her life start changing at once. You can use this reality to your advantage. If you time these changes things right after the other, rather than on top of each other, you actually can strengthen your willpower. The Case Researchers found that when volunteers did several unrelated tough tasks in a row, they were more effective having learned “I can do this” on a previous task.
“Willpower” is a brain muscle that thrives on training.
So, according to this research, a good way to plan to curb unhealthy behaviors is to clean your plate of as many other stressors as you can -- before you start. Then take on one life change at a time. If you can. Willpower, not self-punishment.
Comments (1)
"Your mind makes a plan to act and then (here’s the willpower part) you choose whether or not you will carry out your plan. That’s the hard part. But you are in charge. You get to choose."
I like this concept a great deal, for the freedom and ability to choose that it honors. I do believe in choice as a real and enduring possibility, endlessly renewing itself as hope and will strengthen. I do not believe that we are at the mercy of our cravings, but getting stuck in the rut of them (whatever they are - for excess or lack or some combination of the two) is probably quite common. Unfortunately it can also be extremely painful and difficult to move out of that rut. I kept trying and failing until something deeply painful (yet, ultimately renewing) sort of "blasted" me out of the rut of uncontrollable cravings (or, so they seemed at the time, so, they might as well have been). Now I feel stronger, but if/when I make wrong choices and get stuck again, I have to somehow pull myself back from the brink. It will be difficult - maybe even impossible - to not use the punitive, parental, inner voice of scornful rage against myself. Even though I know it only hurts me, a desperate part of my psyche keeps using it as a form of would-be control. I guess every woman has it, maybe every person. For people w/eds, this hating voice is devastating in the consequences it unleashes, which include extreme self-hatred and despair. It's really Not a voice of strength, though it can very much seem as if it is. True strength comes from deepening my belief in my ability to make choices for myself that truly serve me in the most authentic way possible to achieve - as I am, at this time. These are strong, yet Flexible choices of healing, for both body and mind. A lifelong task, of course. But it's my choice to take it on, rather than die into the ed of endless pain and inner, twisted self-hatred that chokes off my spirit. I just have to remember that I Can chose to be well, no matter how bumpy the road gets.
Posted by Fauve | May 21, 2008 1:09 PM
Posted on May 21, 2008 13:09