3 November 2021
Most people look back on big changes in their lives with appreciation. The change may have been hurtful, costly, or even life-threatening (e.g., major surgery) but the other side offers an enriched perspective for which most of us are grateful.
The reason we’re thankful is that we’ve leaped another tall building. And we feel smarter and wiser for the views provided by the leap, the downward glance, and the view from the other side. But here’s the truth: we rarely choose to change. It’s forced upon us by downsizing, illness, divorce, or some other more-less external factor.
If we understand the reasons for our reluctance to change, presumably we can overcome them.
The most fundamental reason is rooted at the core of social animals: homeostasis, A state of physiological equilibrium produced by a balance of functions and of chemical composition within an organism (Morris, 1975). This is a brilliant definition for our purposes as it discusses a balance of functions.
If we look at our own, or any other human life, rudimentary understanding tells us that a human life has many parts. Earlier this year (Resilient Balance: First Things First, 14.iv.21), the generic version of those parts was itemized as consisting of emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual parts. Depending on age, life stage, well-spiritedness etc., the weight assigned each of those parts will vary. Homeostasis is the strong tendency to keep us centred within a range that makes life-sustaining efforts as efficient as possible. For example, if you are out in the cold for too long, you will start to shiver. Shivering causes muscles to contract and expand in a quick, repeated way that generates heat in the skeletal muscles in the body’s attempt to regulate temperature.
But does homeostasis keep us locked into contextual, behavioural, and social modes that we’d rather not be locked into? For example, if someone has lived in a place for decades, and feels unhappy there, are there internal forces keeping her there? What are they? How do they work? To answer this query, I did some Googling for previous research and came up with some sterling research by Alicke, Sedikides, & Zhang, (2020). To my delight, they argue that “…preserving psychological homeostasis (i.e., emotional equilibrium) is as important as preserving biological homeostasis” (p. 572).
If you think about preserving emotional equilibrium, in a state of addiction, you have another reason that sobriety and recovery are so difficult. That is, your own emotional feedback is telling you that you are unable to withstand the emotional/psychological pain associated with not using—not to mention the consequent withdrawal symptoms—so you keep using.
Alicke et al. (2020, p. 573), characterized internal tension, as a battle between the person you want to be versus internal, external, and circumstantial feedback. For example, if your desired personal identity is as a healthy, well-spirited former user your internal opponent is the addictive drug or behaviour and the stress that brought you to use. The part of you able to see a better self is in a daily fight against a homeostatic force that says, “You’ll upset the whole apple cart if you stop using—it’s too much, don’t do it.” That’s the internal feedback at war with your better self.
The external feedback was described as social, or performance based. If you have tried to quit before—and failed, as most of us do—you have past performance feedback keeping you locked into your present psychological home: addiction. On the social level, you may have peers who are using and need your reassuring company as another one of the group. Or it may be more violent. You may have a pimp who wants to keep you on the street and a dealer who wants to keep you shooting product. Or a family who won’t welcome you home. The list could go on, but the point is that the outside world can also be a force pushing you not to rock the boat.
Finally, their third static (homeo-static: keeping you at home) force was circumstance. We all use circumstance as a rationalization. “I don’t have enough money to leave this soul-killing job.” “I can’t start my own business while I still have a mortgage!” “I can’t start building personal computers in my parent’s garage—are you crazy?!” For the person suffering addiction, she may have nothing but her next fix. No home, no money, no real friends. And this is where homeostasis comes down to the wire.
At the top, we started by saying that we may be able to control that which we understand. Homeostasis works for and against you, depending on where you’re at and where you want to go. Once you understand that in addiction, psychological homeostasis maybe a set of chains holding you down, that understanding allows you to see the chains in order to free yourself. In simpler terms, we can’t remove chains we don’t know we’re wearing. Now you know. And with knowledge comes choice.
Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understandings of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.
References
Alicke, M. D., Sedikides, C., & Zhang, Y. (2020). The motivation to maintain favorable identities. Self and Identity, 19:5, 572-589. Routledge.
Chalykoff, D. R. (14 April 2021). Resilient Balance: First Things First. https://understandings.ca/2021/04/14/resilient-balance-first-things-first/
Morris, W. (Ed.) (1975). The Heritage illustrated dictionary of the English language. American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc.
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