I know I have shared this in a few posts already, but it applies to Kahneman’s book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” It is used elsewhere also but is a big focal point for those in recovery \u2013 the acronym HALT \u2013 Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.<\/p>\n
Being self-aware is critical to staying sober. It is also extremely important in any type of decision-making. Any of those five scenarios can cloud judgment, be more susceptible to biases, and lead to poor decision-making, keeping people stuck in system 1 thinking rather than system 2 reasoning. There is a lot of selfishness in drinking and using, and I have to wonder if selfish people tend to be more in system 1 and have an “it’s all about me” attitude and make rash decisions because of it.<\/p>\n
Kahneman writes: “The most “rational” subjects\u2014those who were the least susceptible to framing effects\u2014showed enhanced activity in a frontal area of the brain that is implicated in combining emotion and reasoning to guide decisions.”[1] If I understand correctly when faced with making a decision, we need to be sure we are in a “rational” frame of mind, and the HALT method may be something to check on ourselves.<\/p>\n
My opinion is that people with addictions tend to be System 1 thinkers. It’s all about the impulse. I need a drink now because (insert reason). Bad decisions are made because of the impulsive actions that are taken rather than taking a step back and rationalizing the cause and effect of why they want to drink. There is no rational thought of long-term impacts on their momentary impulse. I am trying to figure out how to implement rational system 2 thinking in my project!<\/p>\n
When I was going to meetings, one of the things that struck me was the woe-is-me attitude. It drove me crazy when they would call people who don’t have a drinking problem “Normies” (meaning normal people). The thought that you aren’t good enough or different from society cannot help healing and positivity. Kahneman writes, “Your moral feelings are attached to frames, to descriptions of reality rather than to reality itself. The message about the nature of framing is stark: framing should not be viewed as an intervention that masks or distorts an underlying preference.”[2] If the description of reality is that because you are a recovered alcoholic is that you are less than others, I don’t know if you will ever get ahead in life and will always be in some state of depression. It is not reality. There are very successful reformed drinkers (and drug users), but it is all in how it is framed.<\/p>\n
Also, lining up with sobriety and Thinking Fast and Slow is the concept of overconfidence that Kahneman writes about. When people who have been drinking for a long time stop drinking, and after the cobwebs are swept away from their brains and they start feeling good, there is a considerable tendency to think that they have the drinking problem licked and go out and try it again, which rarely works. Kahneman writes, “And it is natural for System 1 to generate overconfident judgments because confidence, as we have seen, is determined by the coherence of the best story you can tell from the evidence at hand. Be warned: your intuitions will deliver too extreme predictions, and you will be inclined to put far too much faith in them.”[3] Remember, people in recovery have used System 1 thinking for a very long time of living on impulse, so again, the answer to this might be that they need to be steered into System 2 thinking to lean more on the rational side of decisions. Recovering people talk about their days of “stinking thinking,” which is what got them there in the first place (I struggle with calling it a disease). Suppose we can work with them to understand the concepts of systems 1 and 2 and how the mind reacts to the stimuli that come at them. In that case, I believe there is room for change \u2013 to change negative thought patterns and to be empowered to have a more positive outlook on themselves and their situations. That thought takes me to another well-worn AA saying, “Easy does it.” People in recovery tend to be very hard on themselves for all the failures and past hurts they have caused. I would like to think that each good decision, followed by another good decision, will slowly bring a sense of peace and victory over the bondage they have been under for years if not decades.<\/p>\n
This book has brought me hope.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1] Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), 366<\/p>\n [2] Ibid., 370<\/p>\n [3] Ibid., 193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know I have shared this in a few posts already, but it applies to Kahneman’s book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” It is used elsewhere also but is a big focal point for those in recovery \u2013 the acronym HALT \u2013 Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Being self-aware is critical to staying sober. It is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36216"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36298,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36216\/revisions\/36298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}