Thank you for the reply. I can absolutely see where & when to apply this in regards to building an audience. Just thinking about it makes my chest tighten. The work will be using my overactive imagination to move toward what I want more often than I use it to protect from what I don't want.
Exercising, is going to be trickier. I love exercising. I *want* to exercise. Everytime I follow through I feel amazing. But I'll have to really pay attention to the activation because I'm not sure there is one. It's more like a distraction or procrastination. And then suddenly it's 11:00 p.m. and I beat myself up for not getting to it again — whether I made other things a priority for too long, I didn't plan my day appropriately, or I just straight up forgot.
This will be interesting to see what I come up with for sure.
Very well written. Thank you for putting this together in digestible terms ❤️🙏. I do have a question: This is written from a standpoint of stopping a particular behavior. What about when you want to *start* a new behavior but your identity prevents you? How would one implement the steps?
One example would be starting an exercise routine. I know I need to. I want to. But yet I still don't. In this case I'm not being pulled to do a thing. I'm *avoiding* an action.
Another example would be starting an internet presence to build an audience. Again, I know what I need to do but I am *avoiding* taking the steps due to perfectionism, self doubt, and fear.
How would this process apply here, being that I don't have a "pull" to sit with?
The pull is still there. It is just pointing in the opposite direction.
When you avoid starting exercise or building an audience, you are not experiencing an absence of activation. You are experiencing an active pull away from the thing. That pull has a schema underneath it just as much as the comfort food did. The difference is that instead of being pulled toward a behavior, you are being pulled toward safety, away from threat.
So the question to ask is not “why don’t I want to exercise” but “what does my nervous system predict will happen if I do?” Because there is always a prediction running. Always a MUD underneath the avoidance.
For exercise it might be something like: I will try and fail and that will confirm I am someone who can’t follow through. Or: effort and discomfort are signs something is wrong. Or: my body is not the kind of body that does that. These are identity structures. Stories locked in place by emotion. The avoidance is not laziness. It is the nervous system protecting you from a predicted outcome that feels threatening.
For the internet presence it is even clearer. Perfectionism and self doubt are not character traits. They are schemas. The prediction running underneath them is usually something like: if I put myself out there and it is not good enough, I will be exposed as someone who does not belong here. Or: visibility is dangerous. Or: who am I to say this. All of that is MUD. Formed early. Locked in by emotion. Running the show from underneath every good intention.
So the three steps apply identically. You just have to find the activation first because it is not as obvious as a craving.
Step one: Activate and hold. Sit down to exercise or open your laptop to create content. Feel what actually happens in your body in that moment. Do not do the thing yet. Just notice the felt experience of being about to do it. That feeling, the resistance, the tightening, the sudden urge to check your phone, the voice that says maybe tomorrow, that is your activation. That is the schema firing. Stay with it. Do not act on the avoidance and do not force through it either. Just feel it fully.
Step two: Bilateral stimulation with imagery. Cross your arms and stroke your upper arms slowly, left right left right, while vividly imagining yourself doing the thing and it going fine. Not perfectly. Fine. You showed up. You did something imperfect. Nobody rejected you. You are still standing. The nervous system needs a detailed felt simulation of the prediction failing to come true, which in avoidance patterns means the threat not materializing. The more sensory and specific the imagery the better. What does it feel like in your body to have posted something imperfect and survived it. What does it feel like to have done ten minutes of movement and still be okay.
Step three: Anchor with genuine gratitude. Find something real to feel grateful for in that moment. This shifts the body’s emotional state and consolidates the new simulation as positive evidence rather than just neutral evidence.
Then do the smallest possible version of the behavior immediately after. Not the full workout. Not the perfect post. The smallest unit. Five minutes. One sentence. One rep. Because the Retrain layer needs real behavioral evidence to file alongside the imagery work. A tiny real action taken right after the schema updating sequence is neurologically more valuable than a perfect action taken when you finally feel ready, because you will never feel ready until the schema has already been updated. And the schema updates through evidence, not through waiting.
The avoidance pattern and the craving pattern are the same architecture. One pulls you toward something that used to mean safety. The other pulls you away from something the nervous system has filed as threat. Same MUD. Same emotion as rebar. Same identity structure running the prediction. Same three steps to update it.
The only difference is where you feel the activation. In a craving it is a pull toward. In avoidance it is a tightening away from. But the reconsolidation window opens the same way in both cases: feel it fully, introduce the mismatch while it is live, consolidate with genuine positive emotional signal.
Really enjoyed this! IMO, the most important work as a human is right here in this essay.
Thanks for reading my brother
Always my pleasure, Thanks for putting it out here!🤝
Love this! Be aware/feel the pull and sit with it❤️
So glad you loved my friend
Thank you for the reply. I can absolutely see where & when to apply this in regards to building an audience. Just thinking about it makes my chest tighten. The work will be using my overactive imagination to move toward what I want more often than I use it to protect from what I don't want.
Exercising, is going to be trickier. I love exercising. I *want* to exercise. Everytime I follow through I feel amazing. But I'll have to really pay attention to the activation because I'm not sure there is one. It's more like a distraction or procrastination. And then suddenly it's 11:00 p.m. and I beat myself up for not getting to it again — whether I made other things a priority for too long, I didn't plan my day appropriately, or I just straight up forgot.
This will be interesting to see what I come up with for sure.
Thank you again ❤️🙏
Let me know how you do
Very well written. Thank you for putting this together in digestible terms ❤️🙏. I do have a question: This is written from a standpoint of stopping a particular behavior. What about when you want to *start* a new behavior but your identity prevents you? How would one implement the steps?
One example would be starting an exercise routine. I know I need to. I want to. But yet I still don't. In this case I'm not being pulled to do a thing. I'm *avoiding* an action.
Another example would be starting an internet presence to build an audience. Again, I know what I need to do but I am *avoiding* taking the steps due to perfectionism, self doubt, and fear.
How would this process apply here, being that I don't have a "pull" to sit with?
The pull is still there. It is just pointing in the opposite direction.
When you avoid starting exercise or building an audience, you are not experiencing an absence of activation. You are experiencing an active pull away from the thing. That pull has a schema underneath it just as much as the comfort food did. The difference is that instead of being pulled toward a behavior, you are being pulled toward safety, away from threat.
So the question to ask is not “why don’t I want to exercise” but “what does my nervous system predict will happen if I do?” Because there is always a prediction running. Always a MUD underneath the avoidance.
For exercise it might be something like: I will try and fail and that will confirm I am someone who can’t follow through. Or: effort and discomfort are signs something is wrong. Or: my body is not the kind of body that does that. These are identity structures. Stories locked in place by emotion. The avoidance is not laziness. It is the nervous system protecting you from a predicted outcome that feels threatening.
For the internet presence it is even clearer. Perfectionism and self doubt are not character traits. They are schemas. The prediction running underneath them is usually something like: if I put myself out there and it is not good enough, I will be exposed as someone who does not belong here. Or: visibility is dangerous. Or: who am I to say this. All of that is MUD. Formed early. Locked in by emotion. Running the show from underneath every good intention.
So the three steps apply identically. You just have to find the activation first because it is not as obvious as a craving.
Step one: Activate and hold. Sit down to exercise or open your laptop to create content. Feel what actually happens in your body in that moment. Do not do the thing yet. Just notice the felt experience of being about to do it. That feeling, the resistance, the tightening, the sudden urge to check your phone, the voice that says maybe tomorrow, that is your activation. That is the schema firing. Stay with it. Do not act on the avoidance and do not force through it either. Just feel it fully.
Step two: Bilateral stimulation with imagery. Cross your arms and stroke your upper arms slowly, left right left right, while vividly imagining yourself doing the thing and it going fine. Not perfectly. Fine. You showed up. You did something imperfect. Nobody rejected you. You are still standing. The nervous system needs a detailed felt simulation of the prediction failing to come true, which in avoidance patterns means the threat not materializing. The more sensory and specific the imagery the better. What does it feel like in your body to have posted something imperfect and survived it. What does it feel like to have done ten minutes of movement and still be okay.
Step three: Anchor with genuine gratitude. Find something real to feel grateful for in that moment. This shifts the body’s emotional state and consolidates the new simulation as positive evidence rather than just neutral evidence.
Then do the smallest possible version of the behavior immediately after. Not the full workout. Not the perfect post. The smallest unit. Five minutes. One sentence. One rep. Because the Retrain layer needs real behavioral evidence to file alongside the imagery work. A tiny real action taken right after the schema updating sequence is neurologically more valuable than a perfect action taken when you finally feel ready, because you will never feel ready until the schema has already been updated. And the schema updates through evidence, not through waiting.
The avoidance pattern and the craving pattern are the same architecture. One pulls you toward something that used to mean safety. The other pulls you away from something the nervous system has filed as threat. Same MUD. Same emotion as rebar. Same identity structure running the prediction. Same three steps to update it.
The only difference is where you feel the activation. In a craving it is a pull toward. In avoidance it is a tightening away from. But the reconsolidation window opens the same way in both cases: feel it fully, introduce the mismatch while it is live, consolidate with genuine positive emotional signal.
I think k this could work for addictive behavior like PMO.