Changing your brains habits — Rewiring Automatic Drinking Patterns Through Awareness

Changing Your Brain’s Habits

Rewiring Automatic Drinking Patterns Through Awareness

We experience life through our senses. Alcohol will numb these senses and make our experience less clear. The raw sensory data is being processed so fast, and very hard wired in the brain, and there is not much we can do about this. Think of it as burning your fingers on something hot, the reaction is almost instant. My guess is that our sensory data would be quite the same for all humans, up until we get into the brain part where our thinking is done. This is where we start to think about the feelings the input data has left us with.

A burnt finger might result in a feeling of anger, annoyance or surprise maybe. Someone smiling at you could lead to a whole range of emotions depending on your previous experience and the current situation. We have little control over the first wave of feelings that comes to us.

The paths in our brain

The pathways in our brain are formed over time, and automate much of the processing we need to do. The important thing to know is that these paths can be changed, just like paths in nature. But this might be hard, depending on how long things have been going on for.

Picture this one path down to a gully, which has thick shrubs all around. It’s not easy to start a new path there.

All new paths start with curiosity, effort and an open mind, willing to try something new.

Stereotyping is a way for the brain to categorise people and automate a huge amount of thinking by just a glance. We do this automatically hundreds of times a day, and it’s not just people that we can simplify, it is feelings, images, sounds and so much more. This is for the most good, but can also get us into trouble.

What I’m working on now

For me it is mostly two things, shutting down my feelings and not dealing with where they come from. And secondly, turning to drinking when sitting with feelings I don’t know what to do with. Alcohol being an addictive substance, and how the craving cycle works on us, is a huge contributor to my depression and isolation.

To put this into context, the reason for me talking about paths in my brain, was to acknowledge the paths I have formed. And my work now to change them. To deal more with my feelings, and to see what alcohol really is, and to move away from it. It is not easy, but I am striving for a better life for me, and in return the ones around me.