jnoc63 – Macquarie Street Drug and Alcohol Counselling Center

The 6 Key Skills for Controlled Drinking, It’s a Mind Skill

What are the key skills for controlling your drinking?

This post is part of a short series explaining the key skills for gaining control of your drinking or for that matter your drug use. This post describes the main areas of skill, the mind skills and the psychological skills. In the following post’s we’ll go into specific skills in order of importance, so you can learn them.

What Are the Skills for Controlling your Drinking?

The skills for controlling your drinking are the same skills that you use for controlling drug abuse, alcoholism or for that matter they are the same skills you use for keeping yourself focused and achieving anything. Whether that be you’re training, and studies or a career goal or just changing a habit that you’ve wanted to change for a long time.

In fact the skills you use for controlling your drinking are the skills that drive you to achieve anything in life. When you take a look at them a bit closer they are a combination of mind skills and psychological skills.

What’s the Difference Between Mind Skill and Psychology?

Psychological Skills are all about changing what you believe so you can change what you feel and do. While on the other hand mind skills are the skills you use to focus your, mind on an objective or goal and excluding any other possibility until you achieve that goal.

When it comes to drug and alcohol misuse we use both psychological and mind strategies to control and change our urges and habits. But really at the end of the day why we need to change our psychology and our mind is the more important question.

Why Control Your Mind?

Controlling your mind is the singularly most important skill you can never learn. It is the skilled drives you to create solutions to the problems of life so that you can overcome those problems and go on to thrive. Both skills aim at changing your brains so you can get control of your life. In short learning to control your mind will help you achieve the life you want. If you don’t change your mind and psychology and ultimately your brain you won’t have control of your life and you’ll likely lose control of your life and get what life gives you. You won’t be the master of your own destiny.

Both skills, whether they be psychological skills or mind skills intend to create changes in your neurology, that is your brains wiring. By creating new circuits that drive better habits and eliminate unhelpful habits you in turn become more empowered to get what you want in life. This includes getting control of your drinking and eliminating illegal drug use. In turn by changing your neurology or the way your brain is wired up you are able to change your habits, your urges, and for that matter anything that needs to be changing.

It’s more of a Question of What Happens if You don’t Control Your Mind?

On the other hand if we look at what happens if we don’t learn to control their mind and our psychology, we see that things won’t likely go our way. You see all I’m talking about is the process of growing more and more empowered and capable of getting more and more out of life. But the equal and opposite is also true. If we don’t learn how to control what goes on in our minds we are likely to get whatever life gives us. We won’t overcome our problem behaviours. We won’t overcome our problem urges. We won’t be able to develop the kinds of sophisticated strategies that enable us to thrive in life and living.

In short we want you to learn how to control your mind and control your psychology so that you get better and better at getting what you want out of life by developing more and more effective and sophisticated empowerment strategies

In The Next Post

that’s all for this post. In the next post we’re going to look at how you control your mind and psychology. For now just think about the importance of getting control of your mind so you can control your urges habits and develop more and more effective problem solving strategies that make you a more and more happy, secure, and empowered person.

Taking Charge, Getting Motivated.

Motivation is Key When it Comes To Taking Charge

Have you ever wondered why you know what to do and you still don't do it. The answer is often simply a matter of motivation. It's all well and good having all the knowledge and skills to do something but if you don't have the motivation to do it you simply wont take action. Motivation comes in two basic forms. The motivation for getting away from something, eg the motivation to avoid a conflict or to avoid pain. The other form of motivation is the motivation to get something. This usually means the benefits of doing something.

If you don't have motivation you wont push through the struggle to achieve the thing your trying to achieve. When it comes to drugs and alcohol it's really important to be motivated because you have to push back against a bunch of urges and habits that just make you want to use. This isn't so complicated to understand. If you have to push back against your urges and habits you have to have the motivation to do that. This is usually the motivation to eliminate the costs of drug and alcohol misuse such as poor health, low vitality, risks of getting caught, fights and arguments with partners, and a lot more. The other side of the equation that pushes you through urges and habits and not giving in to them is to have the motivation to receive the benefits that come from not being addicted. For example our clients routinely feel healthier, have more money in the bank, stop having arguments, get better sleep and a whole bunch more.

It's all about taking charge.

The idea of taking charge is simple, be in control and make good choices. What you need though is the motivation to make you take charge when your urges and habits are saying the opposite. You need the motivation and persistence to achieve the state of automatic healthy choices. You need the motivation to create the kind of life you really want without dependence and addiction.

Control or Abstinence is About Taking Charge

This is different for everyone. I would say that it's wise to try and eliminate illegal drug use. I don't know many people who don't become addicted with any regular drug use. Perhaps some can but the majority of people just become increasingly addicted over time. On the other hand I do know a lot of people who drink in a controlled manner and are able to maintain safe levels of alcohol use. However I must say, not everyone can control their drug and alcohol use. These people are best advised to eliminate drug and alcohol use all together.

What is Controlled Drinking?

Controlled Drinking Is

Controlled drinking is as the name implies, drinking using conscious control. In simpler terms it means drinking in a way that you wont regret it the next day. This usually means drinking fairly slowly. The real trick is to get the motivation to drink in a controlled manner. If you are fully enjoying your drinking or if you enjoy getting drunk and don't have any regrets about it you probably wont be able to learn to control your alcohol consumption. On the other hand if you are starting to worry and regret how much you drink then a controlled drinking program will teach you how.

How do You Get the Control You Need to Master Controlled Drinking

Really it all comes down to education, motivation and practice. Just about anyone can learn to control their alcohol consumption if they really want to. The real trick is to have the motivation to control and the perseverance to keep going until you control your drinking without really having to think about it. I must say however some people are unable to learn how to control their drinking and may have to adopt a non-drinking policy.

Should I learn to Control Or Simply Abstain?

If your alcohol consumption is causing you worries, regrets, actual physical harm, relationship damage, or is making you do other things like gamble and take drugs then you need to learn to control or abstain. In other words if your drinking is causing you some kind of harm, putting you at risk of harm or generally causing you to be discontent then you need to learn to control your alcohol consumption.

What is drug and Alcohol Counselling?

What is Drug and Alcohol Counselling

Drug and alcohol counselling is a specialist field of psychology that helps people overcome urges and habits that may be harming their lives. It is usually practiced in a one on one or group situation. All professional drug and alcohol counsellors must have thorough training in the field and must have a lot of experience working with people struggling with dependence if they are going to be helpful. An effective counsellor will usually have a masters degree in psychology or psychotherapy or counselling and will have at least five years experience.

Most of the work in drug and alcohol counselling is done when the therapist helps a person struggling with dependence change their views on drugs or alcohol and helps the enjoy life more with out dependence. Some people need to abstain from alcohol while others can just change their drinking behaviour so that it isn't causing any harm in their lives. On the other hand drug use problems need to be eliminated, if for no other reason illegal drug use is illegal. Very few people are able to use drugs with any regularity and not become dependent.

Some therapists uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help a person change their believes and behaviours around alcohol or drug use. Others use an interpersonal approach while others use a more directive approach. Each of these approaches has merits however what is important is you chose and approach that works for you.

Drug and Alcohol Counselling is really about helping you eliminate the urges for excessive alcohol use and drug use all together.

How does it work?

Who needs drug and alcohol counselling

Where should I go to get drug and alcohol counselling

The Power of Focus, What You Imagine You Create

What is focus?

Focus is really what it sounds like it is. It's focus. But what is it you're focusing? People say that focus is focusing your mind, but that is a bit of a red herring. It doesn't really explain what you are doing when you focus. The answer is simple enough, your focusing your attention on one thing and that focuses the mind. To understand focus is to understand that you are really focusing your attention on something. What's more when you focus your attention you are also focusing your mind. This brings us to a principle that we will describe later. What you focus on is what you move toward. We can go into a lot of details about focus, primary focus, secondary focus and peripheral focus and all the rest. But that starts to get a bit complicated. What you really need to know about is how do you focus and why learning how to focus is so important.

How Do You Focus

The human mind can focus basically on three things simultaneously. The central focus, which is the thing your putting most of your attention on. The secondary focus which are the things that are immediately around it. Then there is peripheral focus. These are the things that are as the name implies on the outside or periphery of your attention field. Think of it as what happens when you focus a torch on something. Right in the center of the torchlight is the object that the beam is focused on. Then moving toward the edge of the light beam where the light is becoming weaker, you can see the things around the object but not quite so clearly these are the secondary foci. Finally on the edge of the on the very outside of the beam of light you can see things that you can't quite make out but you know are there this is your peripheral focus.

What's interesting is that even when you are focused on one thing with your central focus, your secondary focus and peripheral focus are operating so that when things change you will have your attention drawn toward them. This is both a benefit and a curse. If your someone who struggles with attention you might find yourself constantly being drawn away from the main point only to shift your attention to a secondary thing.

In order to focus you need to put all your attention on a central object. It could be something you are looking at, or it could be something that you are seeing in your imagination. If you don't center your focus the tendency is for the human mind to wander around looking for something to focus on. When we focus our minds, whether it is through doing a crossword puzzle or doing meditation, we are simply anchoring our attention on one central point and or thing. This is necessary so we can bring all of our minds power into the task of solving problems, or imagining solutions. The one thing that is always available to us is either sound or breathing. In meditation and visualization exercises we often use breathing to anchor our focus because it's always available and it is generally relaxing.

The Link Between The Mind and Body and Focus.

The body follows the mind and the mind follows what ever you focus your attention on. So think about this. Imagine you are at a horror movie and you are completely focused on the scene, your body is getting tense, as you wait, wondering if something scary is about to happen. Then when the evil character jumps out of the cupboard and kills the hero or heroine you jump in fear. Sounds pretty normal right. But have you ever thought why am I jumping when I know it's just a made up story, projected onto a digital screen, that it is just a bunch of flashing lights, performed by actors and it's not even real. Why does your body respond as if it is real? The answer is your body doesn't discriminate between and the not real. Your body just responds to what your mind is focused on. This highlights the principle I described earlier. The body doesn't think, it just reacts to what your mind is paying attention to whether that is real or not. The body follows the mind and the mind follows what ever you pay attention to.

This principle works whether you are deliberately focusing on something or your brain is just randomly choosing something to focus on. In other words, what your mind pays attention to, your body and emotions will react to for good or ill.

The Reason Why We Need Focus.

This has big implications. Think about this, what do anxious people focus on. You guessed it. They focus on threats and scary stuff. What do stressed people focus on. Simple they focus on worrying possibilities. What do depressed people focus on. That's simple, they focus on hopelessness. So what does this have to do with drug and alcohol use? Well that's simple enough. Users focus on the benefits of using and they never consider the down side until they are drowning in it. But it also works in the exact opposite direction. If you chose to focus on something better, then you will start to move toward it. So when it comes to drugs and alcohol learning to not focus on just the upside of drugs and alcohol and to focus on the whole story including the downside and the ugly side you will start to change inside.

So the take away here is what you focus on, changes the way you see and engage in the world. The short answer is, what you focus on you get. Which means if you have a drug or alcohol problem then you must be focusing on the benefits of D and A and not the downside. Because if you did focus on the down side you probably wouldn't do drugs and alcohol. So to kick it one of the exercises you need to follow is focusing on the upside of not drinking or taking drugs and focus on the down side of taking drugs and drinking. It will change you.

Exercise

Write a list of all the benefits of drugs and alcohol. Then write a list of all the problems caused by your use of drugs and alcohol. Then sit back and take it all in. Take in the reality. Focus on both the upside and the down side. I suspect you will likely be a bit shocked by this exercise.

Until next time.

Cheers

Author: jnoc63