A Smart Approach to Overcoming Habitually Excessive Behaviors
Red Diamonds Features is an interview-rich publication with smart sources from different fields and professions that converses on topics related to our professional and personal lives, such as communication, decision-making, behavior, conflict, trust, better problem solving, courage, resilience, reputation and wiser, more successful crisis management.
Learning to identify what is happening in our psychology and with our habits is not simple, especially when problems and risk are developing or causing significant pain to ourselves or others.
Behavior appetites often negatively impact judgment, decision-making and actions. We conduct ourselves contrary to what is best, personally and professionally. Solving this dilemma can be confusing, frustrating and discouraging. There are solutions however to protect and improve our lives.
“Self awareness is the key to all change, the key to all growth. Life is lived inside-out. Your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, your actions determine your results,” says Patrick Wanis, Ph.D., a human behavior expert. “There’s only one thing you can control — your thoughts and actions. Know thyself.”
Self awareness is a common buzz phrase yet it’s fuzzy in interpretation to many people as to exactly how it works and can become beneficial.
“How do we become aware of what we’re thinking? There’s two ways,” Wanis says. “Look at what you’re feeling and ask what’s the thought behind this? Or you can have a look at some of your urges and say why do I want to do this?”
He talks about the technique of observation and disassociation as a remedy to effectively manage behavior in response to urges we should be controlling or not giving into at all.
“Imagine yourself as a third person and ask ‘why does Patrick get angry when the boss says ‘I want it on my desk by tomorrow.’” When I’m imagining myself as a third person I’ll get insights that I may not usually get,” Wanis says.
Practicing this technique to make it our default reaction to wanting to give into a behavior appetite of any kind can develop it into a reliable, protective and empowering skill.
“So as soon as you get an urge, use this disassociation distancing. You want to say ‘Oh, I notice I am having a feeling or an urge to shout (!) or an urge to tell that person off. Hmm, that’s interesting,’” Wanis says.
He explains why this is important and how the process works to someone’s advantage.
“What I’ve done is separate myself from the emotion, thought and behavior before the behavior occurs. Then I can say ‘hmm, why is Patrick having the urge or thought that he wants to pay back that person or tell off that person? Oh, he feels that person doesn’t respect him. Oh, this is triggering issues in him where he feels that people don’t respect him. What should he do?’” Wanis says.
Maybe that seems foreign, strange and unlikely to work for you yet he says it can and will.
“When you identify the thought and label the emotion you remove a lot of its power. You’re able to look at it from a distance as an observer,” Wanis says. “I always say ‘go to the deepest part of yourself possible; when did this thought begin, when did I first experience this emotion?’”
Teaching ourselves to communicate internally with smart, pertinent questions proves helpful in inspiring us to examine our thinking and thus, what we will do immediately, eventually and habitually.
“You can also ask yourself another question — ‘what would the consequences be if I follow through with this thought,” he says “‘How will I feel five years from now or ten years from now?’
Wanis remembered a story of a relationship breakup years ago where he wanted to return the deep pain he felt due to suffering a betrayal after his partner chose infidelity. An opportunity to do such presented itself because in his emotional trauma he had access to her email account.
The urge was there to reciprocate the pain he felt yet he conducted the disassociation distancing, asking himself questions and he discovered giving into the urges, while maybe providing immediate gratification would have cost him who he saw himself as being as a person, going against his values and who he wanted to be, so he refrained from being weak and impulsive in the moment.
Years later, he says, he has no regrets and that his former romantic partner and he are friends, which he says is much more rewarding than it would have been giving into the urge to inflict pain. Plus, he remained true and devoted to who he saw himself being as a person and who he is, when not emotionally overwhelmed.
Behavior appetites are strong. They are habits and difficult to replace with wiser thinking and responses, yet not impossible or unlikely.
“You get clear about what you can control and can’t control and focus on what you can control and the only thing you can control are your thoughts and emotions,” Wanis reminds us. “So if you recognize you created the thought, you can create another thought. You created the bad habit, you can create another habit.”
He goes back to having a conversation with ourselves, one that shows in essence, internal leadership.
“If you do choose to say to yourself ‘Listen Patrick, you always have other options,’ then you’re distancing yourself and you’re saying ‘this does not control me. I have the ability and power to control it. I’m bigger than the habit, bigger than the desire, bigger than the thought, bigger than the emotion,’” Wanis says. “This doesn’t come quickly. You might have to practice it a lot.”
His second recommendation is a modality he organically created over the years called Subconscious Rapid Transformation Technique (SRTT).
“SRTT identifies the behavior you want to change or the emotions you want to release and then we quickly discover what is the origin of that behavior and emotion,” Wanis says. “It is a highly creative and fluid process that works and achieves what years of therapy often fails to do.”
This incorporates the third-person approach he favors as a method to communicating effectively with ourselves to solve challenges and problems.
“We gently, safely and rapidly release all of the painful emotions and change the disempowering belief. Thus you now have a new thought or belief or a new thought pattern and you’re free of all painful emotions,” Wanis says.
People can often choose behavior appetites that become dangerous to our well-being or other’s well-being, in our personal and professional lives. We assume we always are acting in logical ways and are in control of our decision-making yet it’s important to remember that’s not factual.
“There is a constant battle between our conscious mind and our emotional mind; the subconscious mind. Between the prefrontal cortex and our limbic system. Our emotions always override our logic,” Wanis says.
That is how we can cause pain for ourselves, either now or in the future, as well as in the lives of other people.
The encouraging news is there are pathways out of that difficulty, stress, risk and wilderness.
Michael Toebe authors and publishes the weekly Red Diamonds Newsletter, Red Diamonds Features and Red Diamonds Essays (all on Medium) and hosts the Red Diamonds Podcast. He is a specialist for reputation, professional relationships communication and wiser crisis management.
