A Freedom Ap for My Mind

I  always thought that people who needed an external blocker to make them stop Googling or looking at Facebook had no discipline and no willpower. Couldn’t they just tell themselves, “I’m not going to look at Facebook today?” 

Yeah, that’s what I used to think until I’d “come to” hunched over my keyboard scrolling, scrolling…

And then, last week I saw my weekly summary of social media usage. 

Before the COVID -19 quarantine I was using more than two hours a day. That was pretty shocking. 

Two hours is a lot of time. It is time to write or exercise or time to spend with my husband. 

Then as we moved into the into COVID quarantine my daily usage jumped to 4 hours. That is almost half of my waking time.

 It really shocked me. I recognized the signs: I wanted to stop. I said I’d stop. “I won’t do that again tomorrow” I promised myself. It was an addiction. I needed help to stop.

So I wrote myself reminders and I put a sticky note on my laptop screen to remind myself. But I would still take a “quick peek” at Instagram and then five minutes became 25 minutes.

I asked a writer friend if she used an ap blocker and she told me about the ap called  Freedom. I took the plunge. Last week I installed Freedom on my phone. 

Now I can choose what to block and for how many hours. When the Freedom ap is engaged I can’t access my favorites: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If I try to look at Twitter when Freedom is engaged it just spins and I get a message that says, “Tweets are not loading right now.” Dam. It works. So, I move on.

So, at the same time that I’m adjusting my social media behavior with the help of the Freedom Ap blocker I’m aware again of a longstanding, painful habit of  perseverating, persistent thoughts that race around in my head, and make me miserable. 

The thoughts are in two categories: “What is wrong with me” and “I’m gonna tell her.” The “her” could be a him or a her but always someone I am annoyed with or made at or—yes ugh—jealous of. You know those voices.

And I thought, “What if I could turn off those thoughts like I turn off social media?” Huh.

What if I  could install a resentment blocker in my brain to shut down my fear thoughts and resentment thoughts and those long  internal conversations that go like this, “Well if she does that then I am going to say this, but if she replies with that, then I will…” They are like little plays that are excruciatingly painful and distracting.

The weird thing about these imaginary mental scripts is that they are full of things I would never actually say, but I rehearse them and repeat them as If I am the boldest, bad ass in the world.

What if I had a Freedom blocker for my mind?

I pictured what that would be like. My mind would try to go to a fight, jealousy or resentment. It would try to make me angry, envious, or resentful, but it would stall out. That little spinning wheel of hell we see on our computer would spin.

I could choose the “people in my head” that I wanted to block for one day when I want some mental freedom or block those voices for four hours when I want to have a nice evening with my sweetheart—when I want to be present, fully present.

What if I could us this new mental ap to block my coworkers for the weekend or my mother-in-law for the day before we go to her house—that’s when I do my worst obsessing about what she is “probably going to say” but rarely ever does.

I love imagining this blocker. My “mental freedom ap”.  I’d try to worry, or maybe I’d try to stir up some fear or envy, and I’d feel the urge but then --just like with real social media—I’d see the little wheel spinning, the little dots hovering in place and it might say, “resentments are not loading right now.” It just wouldn't let me go there.

It would be like my mind was saying, “No, you can’t access your  fear and anger right now. Please come back later.”

I’d make a lot with the thought-stopping Freedom ap. And I bet it would be a bestseller.

The Wisdom and Willpower of Candy

As with many ideas and suggestions that were set out in the early literature of Alcoholics Anonymous, later scientific, medical and psychological research proved that our founders were onto very sound concepts.

We know that the guidance about prayer and resentment later turned out to be psychologically sound, and that the early AA structure also turned out to be the perfect sociologically to support changing habits.

But one piece of early advice that always seemed to get a good laugh was the suggestion that having a piece of candy could be helpful when trying to avoid a drink. I’m sure you have heard the laughter, or maybe you made a joke—I did for years. I even said pompous things like “Oh great, candy—isn’t it crazy to substitute one unhealthy substance for another?”  Maybe, also like me, you imagined that they were doing their best with what they knew, but really, “Who would give candy to someone trying to get healthy?”

Well, live and learn and get humble.

Today I’m reading the best-selling book, “Willpower” by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney. Published last year, this book integrates the latest and most comprehensive research on self-control, self-regulation and willpower. (You will want to read this book first if you have plans to change anything in your life—like your diet, exercise, work habits etc.)

Baumeister, a pioneering research scientist, through years and years of study discovered that willpower has a physical basis and that it operates like a muscle—it can be strengthened with practice and yes, weakened by overuse. And his surprising discovery is that willpower is fueled by glucose. His book covers how we get willpower, how we can increase it and the careful ways we have to manage our lives to have the stores of willpower we need to make any life changes—even changes in our thinking.

So the knockout discovery in my reading today is that a small piece of hard candy does in fact, give your nervous system enough glucose to fuel an immediate boost of willpower. That means that a piece of hard candy can help you to not take a drink. 

Here is what is interesting, and certainly misunderstood: It is not that the candy is a substitute for the drink, but that one hard candy is the right amount of glucose to fuel the willpower to choose to not take the drink.

No, Bill and Bob did not know that bit of physiology. Baumeister's research has been done in the past 20 years—but the instinctive wisdom and solid advice to our early AA’s turns out to be medically and neurologically sound. 

Don’t you just love that? I do.

So maybe—especially folks in later recovery—you will want to study Baumeister's book along with the Big Book and use both of them when you want to tackle a new way of eating, a new fitness regimen, or even to begin a new meditation habit. 

Like it says in our favorite book, “More will be revealed.”

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Lots more on longterm recovery and making life changes in my book, "Out of the Woods" from Central Recovery Press.

An Addiction to Scaring Myself

I’ve been much more aware of my thinking recently. The slogan, “I came for the drinking but stayed for my thinking” is very true. Even with all—or most—substances removed it’s my thinking that causes me trouble. I find that I just slide into telling myself scary stories: He will leave me, I will get fired, they won’t like me, this or that bad thing will happen. The end of the story is always the same though: I am abandoned and I am defective. We all have some of these patterns or habits of faulty thinking that keep us form being happy. In cognitive therapy these would be my “schemas”.

But today walking around the track at the gym I was aware that my mind really wanted to scare me and upset me. I kept trying to shake the thoughts and redirect and distract myself but it was harder than ever. And then I got this idea: These persistent thoughts that seem to want to derail me are like cravings. I understand cravings and this is what they feel like, the tempting or insistent voice that says, “Come here” and “just one more” and now, “think about this.”

If I view these thought patterns as an addiction and I approach the change as if I am dealing with cravings then I can apply AA principles here too: When cravings strike what do we do?

We can: “Move a muscle change a thought”, pick up the phone and tell someone, and just decide to not “pick up” the thought for one day, one hour, one minute at a time. And Pray for this “craving” to be removed.

And What to Do When You Do Take Things Personally

Well, that good intention of mine from earlier in the week: “Don’t take things personally” seems to have gone out as an invitation to my character defects to come to a party.

Within hours of my new experiment I was taking lots of things personally and worse, I was noticing it and feeling unable to wrassle the defects down. Not fun!  I found myself particularly challenged by an old habit of thinking that I thought I had dealt with ages ago: “What About Me?” And “I’m important too.” Not attractive and miserably uncomfortable.

But here is the value of long-term recovery: it becomes so hard to entertain those thoughts and feelings for very long. Not that they shimmer once and disappear but it’s hard to pretend that issues belong to other people and are not mine.

In the same way that AA can ruin your drinking, AA can also ruin the pleasure of being right and the dark joy of holding onto a resentment. Even while my hand is on my hip and I am certain of my superior self a tiny voice is whispering,  “What is your part in this?”

My “personalization” had attached itself to two people and I knew that I needed my recovery toolbox and some outside help. So here’s is what I did…and what I am still doing:

First: I began to pray for help. The first prayers sounded like this: “Oh God what is this crap in my head? Help me. Yuck. I hate this. Remove this. Come on, come on, come on…get this out of me. Hurry up.”

Second: I knew I had to tell on myself so I emailed my sponsor and a close friend. I told them my mean thoughts and the nasty burning feeling I was having about people. I admitted that I was actually wishing someone ill and that while I knew it was my yuck, I was mad.  I was also sad and scared to find myself in this yuck.

Then: I changed my prayer to something like, “Please help me. I think this is old family stuff and its getting attached to someone who triggers old jealousy and fear. I know this is mine but I can’t see my way out. Give me courage to do what I need to do to get clarity. I want to be free. Help.”

Fourth: The written word. I got on the train to go to New York City. The rhythm of the train and the beautiful river views from Albany to Manhattan helped me and I kept praying. I had my Kindle with me and I opened it looking for some kind of help and there I found the book, “Drop the Rock.” Perfect. It told me that this was all about Steps Six and Seven. Bingo. I know that, so I began to pray the Seventh Step prayer. That helped too.

Throughout the day in New York my mantra was, “I turn my will and my life over to you.” It wasn’t perfect. My yuck kept breaking through to remind me about “her” and “him”. But I used 6 and 7 and my mantra prayer. By the time I was back on the train to come home the grip was lessening.

Then: The next day I went out to walk and took my IPod Shuffle along. The Shuffle is a God tool. I’ve got a mix of music, talks, and recovery stuff on the Shuffle and as you know—it shuffles—so it’s unpredictable. And what popped right up as I began to walk and listen? A Joe and Charlie talk on Steps 6 and 7. Uh huh. Again 6 and 7. By now I’m laughing.

But I listened and here’s what they had to say about Six and Seven: God will remove what God can remove and God will do what I can’t do. But God doesn’t do what I can. Yeah. And what I can do in steps 6 and 7 is “Do the opposite”. Brilliant but shocking.

“Do the opposite.” God will remove the defect if and when we start doing the opposite of the defect we want removed. Want lying removed? Start telling the truth. I wanted jealousy and scarcity removed so I had to start sharing and praising and being really emotionally generous. Ha! Not easy but I was motivated by wanting relief so I began. And because I like to measure everything I began to count my new behaviors. I made a game of it. How many times each day can I do the very opposite of the thing I am struggling with? (Of course, you see that making it into a game lightened the weight and gave me some power back—in a good way.)

So here I am days later. No, not fixed. But hyper-aware of my part and of a simple set of actions that I can take to shift a defect of character while God does his thing with it. And yes, I am still praying “hurry up, hurry up” cause I hate discomfort just like you. But I can see my part and I have some steps to take and the light is there at the end of this tunnel. And that, I am taking very personally.

No Complaints

Just yesterday I noticed that I have been complaining a lot. Grumbling. Whining. Just kind of fussy. It got my attention was when I greeted someone who said, “What’s up?” by starting to list the people who I was not happy with. Yikes! I heard myself.

I started to pay attention. (That’s the thing in Buddhism and in Recovery—paying attention). What I heard coming out of me was a lot more about what wasn’t right than what was, and what bothered me more than what pleased me. And all of this at a time when there are many wonderful, good and great things going on in my life. Now, there has been some stuff that has not gone so well too, but on balance…

So what’s this crankiness about? And what to do about it?

I like challenges and I’m a believer in taking baby steps toward new behaviors so today I am starting “A Week Without Complaints.” Bear with me for these next seven days as I see what’s under this habit—I think complaining is a kind of habitual thing—and what happens if I can make this change.

So I’m putting myself out here where I can watch myself. No complaints. No gossip. (Gossip is a kind of complaining, I think). That includes gossip-by-concern, you know the kind that begins, “I’m so concerned about so-and-so because she is just so…”. Yeah, that’s a complaint.

What I’m most curious to discover is what my patterns are: When do I complain most? And about whom? And what do I do or feel instead when I catch myself complaining? I have no illusions of perfectionism here, so what’s most interesting is what happens when.

From Head (and sticky note) to Heart

Has this happened to you? You know some stuff. You have been around a long time; you understand how your mind and emotions work. You know the best ways to respond or to not react to certain triggers in your life. You know your family role and how that influences you; you know your Myers Briggs or Enneagram Type and how that influences you; you know the character defects you are working through and you can visualize how you’ll be different and many days you are different. You even—like me—have sticky notes—in your planner, on your desk top, on the mirror that tell you things like, “The critics do not matter, being in the game does.” or “Humility is perpetual quietness of the heart.” or my new one, “The cure for resentment is boundaries.”

And when you look at those sticky notes, or hear yourself giving similar advice to another person, you think, “My God I really am growing; I really am changing.”

And then…

And then a day like yesterday happens and it feels like I never saw the 12 steps, never heard a spiritual teacher, and never understood that detachment and forgiveness are the handrails to my emotional freedom.

Instead I felt slighted, hurt, petty, competitive, angry, and like a very young girl in a crazy family.

The only good news is that now it mostly happens inside of me, but that’s also the bad news—it happens inside of me. Serenity? Poof!

That hardest part is knowing so much and understanding so much and really meaning what I see on my little sticky notes but having the feelings of a newcomer. My prayer last night—and it was a long tossing, turning night—was to have what I write on those sticky notes make the journey from my head to my heart.