You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life

by Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Remember, we defined craving as an uncomfortable sensation and acknowledged that it is difficult for people to see how craving something that brings pleasure and feels good also is an uncomfortable sensation or experience. When people are so focused on the reward, they don’t recognize the pain that precedes it. However, if you really stop and experience it, the actual craving is painful—your body feels off, your emotional sensations are unpleasant, and you want those sensations to go away, so you do something that makes you feel better. Once you act, you experience a rush or flood of satisfaction. It’s the same process that happened in Kara’s brain, but the associated relief is far more pleasurable and gratifying—which makes it all the harder to stop the behavior. This means that you truly have to see how detrimental the behavior is for you to change your ways. The biology generating pleasure is strong for a reason—nature wants us to take care of ourselves, so it developed a region of the brain (the accumbens, also known as the Reward Center) to make sure you kept engaging in important survival-based activities, like eating, by making them pleasurable. The problem is many of the things we do, while pleasurable, are not good for us in the long term. Since the Reward Center is intimately connected with the Habit Center, this can mean trouble if the Habit Center is left to its own devices and we do not manage our responses in helpful ways. This is precisely how addictions and...