I’m adding one more touch to the picture of this blog: impulse control. This time a fine touch that makes a surprisingly big difference in how a behavior, a habit, can be changed: compulsive eating sweets, for example.
Temptations and impulse control
Oana is a beautiful woman in her 40s. She talks about her compulsive eating of sweets. Here is a sequence from our work on impulse control:
– I got fat. This divorce messed me up. I do things without realizing I’m doing them. I tell myself every morning: today is a day without sweets. And after I finish a whole chocolate, I realize what I’ve done. And I’m in such a state of dissatisfaction that I can’t even tell you. So, the problem I want to solve in the next sessions is this uncontrollable eating of sweets.
– How do you get to sweets?
– Easy. I put them in the shopping cart.
– I understand, then, that the problem is not eating sweets.
– Do you mean…my problem is that I buy them?
– One step back.
– I can’t get the point.
– What do you do before you put the sweets in the basket?
– I take them off the shelf.
– That’s the point.
– Can you believe that I don’t realize it?
– I believe everything you tell me.
– I’m exaggerating now, of course. Actually, I can’t help it.
– Here is the key. In this sentence. Can you, please, change the statement in the question?
– “Actually, I can’t help it?” Wow! What resonance it has!
She repeated it several times, with different intonations. She seemed to have a particular thought and I forced the note a bit.
– Do you have an answer to your question?
– I do not know. Between Yes and No it’s a very fine line, I don’t know which to choose.
– I suggest a decomposition exercise and a little movement.
– Movement yes, math no!
– Not math. Logic.
– Done.
– Choose a space in the cabinet and imagine that you are in the store, in front of the candy shelf. Break down every thought, and every gesture and put them into words.
Oana looks at the cabinet space as if she has just discovered it and sits facing the very wide windowsill, on which I have a collection of antiques.
– “I shouldn’t eat sweets today. This is dark chocolate. It’s not that dangerous. Maybe I’ll leave it for tomorrow. After all, what am I doing so wrong? But today I ate some slices of cake from Adela. Okay, that was at noon. I will have this chocolate.”
Oana looks at me as she reaches for an object that now symbolizes the innocent chocolate. I move closer and stop her gesture halfway through.
– Breathe and say: The gesture is controlled by my will. Now repeat the whole exercise and everything you said, but in the end, add the phrase I suggested. You can formulate another one on the same note if you don’t resonate with mine. The important thing is that there is control between the starting point of your gesture and the point of contact with the sweet…object. Impulse control. Be sure, to be aware that is your decision. No matter what, take the chocolate or not, but feel, and realize that it’s only up to you. So you won’t say anymore: I don’t realize when I’m doing this.
Oana resumed the entire series. With additions this time. Her wording was: It’s my choice whether I take it or not. Even better than I suggested, because she put it in place of I will have this chocolate.
We analyzed some more information and towards the end of the session, Oana requested another game tour. There was something left suspended and she needed to understand what it was.
The secret from the bag
Before the last game sequence, Oana took an unwrapped chocolate out of her bag and placed it between the objects on the windowsill. She repeated the whole exercise and when she reached the climax, she turned to me:
– I realize that my uncontrollable gesture of taking something sweet, from the store shelves or my kitchen, frees me to find other ways to keep myself away from the feeling of sickness caused by my memories and thoughts. It’s an instant gratification. I deserve it, I tell myself, for all the suffering. Doing nothing, in fact, but causing myself even more suffering in the long run.
I now have an answer to the question I generated earlier. And I have something else, a tool at hand: this game you proposed that I just have to turn into a new habit. The gestures are mine, not the other way around, I’m not theirs. You’re right: the problem I have to solve is not eating sweets.
That’s why now that I’m leaving, I’m taking my chocolate with me.
What followed is not hard to imagine
We usually criminalize the result of our lack of self-control and not the lack of self-control itself. How to work in therapy with a consequence if you don’t go to the causes? Is it strange to say that you did not gain some extra pounds from sweets, but from the absence of control of your gestures? I do not think so.
Before you eat, you open the fridge. Or, as in the case of Oana, before reaching the cash register with the sweets, you reach them for the shelf.
I continued to work with Oana. She resonated the most with the wording: “between the starting point of the gesture and the point of contact with the sweet object, there should be control. Be sure, to be aware that is your decision. No matter what, take the chocolate or not, but feel, and realize that it’s only up to you. So you won’t say anymore: I don’t realize when I’m doing this.
