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hey there everybody and welcome back to the addiction and mental health Disorders Treatment
manual this is unit 1 Part 12 enhancing cognitive motivation I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes
now if you've watched other videos on my YouTube channel you know that I am cognitive behavioral
by Nature so this is one of my favorite units in this unit we're going to explore how does how to
enhance cognitive motivation or the your thinking in order to get motivated to make your change
as with other parts you're going to spend about 45 or 50 minutes exploring logical reasons for
making this change how is the new Behavior logical and helpful to achieving your goals
if you make this change for example if you decide to improve your sleep hygiene so you're getting
better quality sleep and not sleeping as much or improve your nutrition or stop using how is
this new Behavior logical and helpful to you achieving the other things that are important
in your rich and meaningful life like improved relationships or improved health or promotions
at your job whatever your other goals are how is the old Behavior unhelpful to achieving your goals
if you are sleeping all the time it keeps you from engaging in
positive interactions with the people that are important to you in nurturing relationships it
may keep you feeling groggy all the time so you're not able to concentrate as well and
impair your ability to function at work so think about how the old Behavior whatever it
is was unhelpful to achieving the things that are important in your rich and meaningful life
how did you rationalize that the old Behavior was a good idea whether it
was drinking to quote help you relax or taking lots of naps sleeping all the time because you
figured if you could just get a few more hours sleep you'd be energized or what whatever the
behavior was that you were engaging in how did you rationalize that that was going to help you
a lot of times people rationalize in the short term they they're not thinking how will
It ultimately help me achieve my goals they're thinking how is it going to help me get through
today and yes I want you to get through today and tomorrow and next year and the year after that
but it's important to recognize that one of the contributors to addiction and mental ill health is
focusing on immediate rewards instead of focusing on long-term goals
for your beliefs guarding how the new Behavior might not work as well
and and the validity of those beliefs if you are thinking okay I'm going to improve
my sleep that way I have more energy and more time that I'm not actually in the bed that I
can devote to the things that are important in my life well how might that not work as well
and you may not find a whole lot of reasons or you may but it's important to address
those when we talk about motivation we've got to look at the benefits as well as the
drawbacks to change and the benefits as well as the drawbacks to staying the same
in what ways did your thinking or your attitude contribute to your addictive behaviors anxiety
anger depression guilt grief or illness in the past stinking thinking is something that we talk
about a lot in addiction but I see it a lot in people with trauma depression anxiety as well
when you are in that state where you're hyper Vigilant where you're constantly scanning and
anticipating bad things happening and looking for threats it can put you in a negative mindset which
makes you pay more attention to the negative and ignore the positive which can increase
your anxiety anger depression and you also notice the negative things about yourself
too you may notice that when you're in that state you're not being the type of person
that you want to be which may cause you to feel guilty for example and all that stress reduces
your immune system and increases your illness and increases inflammation and increases pain
so think logically about all of the ways that your attitude your stinking thinking your
attitude and your perceptions contributed to your situation now it's also important to remember that
when we experience something our brain forms what we call a schema or a Cliff's Notes version so we
can anticipate it in the future you have schemas about stop lights for example you expect when
you're coming up to a stoplight based on your past experience if it's yellow it's going to turn red
so you have schema about the things about people about places that are designed to hopefully help
you anticipate what's coming next to stay safe unfortunately if you had bad experiences in the
past those schema may tell you to anticipate the worst in people in in the future the worst in
events in the future so adjusting and addressing those schema for the present context is also going
to be important looking at the present context and going okay I'm expecting this to be unpleasant
but that's based on past experiences in this context at this time what do I know to be true
and we're going to talk a lot more about that in future units but it's important to recognize how
you're thinking how your expectations about the world may be contributing to your distress and
that may be one of those things that you might consider addressing