WHERE DESIRE WAS, EFFORT AND EXPECTATIONS WILL BE

Why is it that some people seem to be able to change a habit quickly or bounce back from difficulties,
whereas others remain depressed, anxious, or addicted? Part of the answer clearly lies in how deeply
entrenched deceptive brain messages are and how strongly the patterns are wired into the brain. Once you know that your brain wiring is a large part of the problem and that you can do something about it, what causes some people to put forth the effort to make changes while others do not?

While no one knows all the answers, David D. Burns, M.D., a psychiatrist and author of the bestseller Feeling Good, has an idea about what separates out those who succeed. He has been studying who will improve from a depressed state by analyzing variables that scientists and therapists have assumed were key, such as motivation, character traits, and length of depressive episode. From his work, he found that putting forth the effort to learn specific ways to soothe oneself (known as emotion regulation skills) and examining thought patterns (i.e., identifying and Reframing deceptive brain messages) are among the best predictors of who will improve when they are feeling depressed. In essence, the people who are willing to put forth the effort required of them to heal tend to do better.


This is not that surprising a finding, but here’s where it gets interesting. While effort was positively correlated with good responses (i.e., the more effort, the more improvement), desire to feel better was actually negatively correlated with positive outcomes. In other words, strong desire to feel better without the corresponding effort actually made things worse.

DESIRE
The experience of wanting to avoid something unpleasant or wanting to achieve a pleasant result.
At first, this finding may not make much sense. Most people assume that desire is a strong motivating factor in getting you closer to your goals. While that intuitively makes sense at some level, Donald D. Price, Ph.D., a distinguished placebo researcher at the University of Florida, knows this is not the case. He has been studying the placebo response for more than twenty years and has seen firsthand how desire can actually make a person feel worse.

Through his research, Price discovered that expectation of a positive result—for example, expecting pain relief when an inert cream is applied—is more important than desire in determining how much pain relief you experience. In his studies, if a person expected a placebo cream to work, his pain was much less than when he did not expect the cream to work. Even more intriguing, when people were told they were going to receive a drug known to cause pain relief in most people (it was really saline) before undergoing a painful experimental procedure, they reported that their pain relief was of a similar magnitude to what one would have with a therapeutic dose of novocaine. In related non-placebo studies, Price found the same thing: If a person had low expectations, coupled with a high desire to avoid an unpleasant outcome, he actually felt worse. The key finding from Price’s work is that desire—in many cases—works against you.

From the findings of Dr. Burns and Dr. Price, it seems clear that what you think motivates and sustains your effort may not be what actually gets you closer to your goals. Expectations, it appears, are far more important than desire in achieving results. If you, like most of the world, made the assumption that desire was key, these beliefs may be part of the reason you have not made more progress in countering deceptive brain messages in the past.

Remember what Connie described when she got so frustrated and angry—feeling overwhelmed and having a strong desire to rid herself of the uncomfortable sensations that were caused by her deceptive brain messages? When she could not achieve what she wanted (e.g., completing a specific therapy exercise), Connie’s deceptive brain message swooped in and told her she should be able to do it—thereby implying that something was wrong with her. This caused the uncomfortable sensations of anger and frustration to rise in Connie—negative sensations she wanted to be free from immediately. Her desire for relief was high and her expectation of achieving her goal, which had switched from completing the therapy exercise to feeling better immediately, was low. As long as she maintained the unrealistic expectation to get rid of those uncomfortable sensations and feel better, she was stuck and would feel worse—exactly what Price found in his research studies.

Instead, when she called the sensations what they were—anger and frustration—she was able to switch gears and focus her attention on a realistic expectation, such as completing the therapy exercise one more time for the day or switching to another exercise that was similar but easier for her to complete. It was only when she applied considerable effort to focus her attention on things that mattered to her (by creating a reasonable and achievable expectation based on her meaningful goals) that she was able to move forward and change her brain.

From our perspective, deceptive brain messages are harmful because they create unrealistic expectations coupled with strong desires that cause you to act in unhealthy ways to achieve momentary relief. By trying to achieve momentary pleasure or rid yourself of an uncomfortable sensation, you engage in actions that are not consistent with your long-term goals and values. This causes you to feel worse about yourself and the situation in the end.

What is desire and why is it not the best motivator when you are dealing with deceptive brain messages? Desire truly is a form of craving for an outcome, an event, or a specific feeling. As you will learn in chapter 4, craving originates in the brain’s Drive and Reward centers—two regions that are focused on self-preservation and instant gratification. Why is this problematic? Remember that the brain is constantly receiving inputs and is heavily influenced by the environment, which means desire and craving are based on the momentary, fluctuating signals generated by your brain. In this way, desire emanates from basic brain drives that are designed to satisfy short-term goals, not the longterm goals related to your true self.

Responding to desire indiscriminately (i.e., without awareness) is like building a house of cards.
Eventually, the whole thing is going to come crashing down because desire is not based on anything constant or stable. Rather, desire and craving ebb and flow based on what is happening in the world and in your brain. Desire can easily be derailed by competing priorities, lack of rapid results, or boredom. More to the point, any specific desire that is present right now can be overshadowed by another desire that is stronger or that pops up a few moments later.6 That is why we want you to learn how to become aware of strong desire and craving as it arises and Relabel it with Step 1. As Connie’s story shows, putting forth the effort and setting realistic expectations based on meaningful goals are critical to succeeding. How do you strengthen your resolve to put forth the effort? The first step is seeing that there is a problem and that basing your level of effort on desire or craving is a losing proposition.

With these research findings in mind, think about the ways in which desire can fail you. Desire affects all aspects of our lives, from our eating habits to relationships to work. Some ways desire can wreak havoc in your life include the following:

• Causes you to want things you cannot have (leaving you feeling sad or depressed)
• Causes you to do things that are ultimately harmful to you
• Creates unrealistic expectations that do not come true
• Prioritizes based on brain-based craving, not on what is best for you in the long run (which can cause you to lose time or not complete important tasks)
• Fails to maintain the same level of effort when times get tough or the situation seems impossible (e.g., whatever you wanted to happen isn’t occurring fast enough, so you give up—a good example of this is weight loss, changing your eating habits, or exercising more)
• Competes with and overtakes other cravings (such that new cravings arise that overshadow/replace the former desire)


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