Part 3 of 4 - Why Your Breaks from Drinking Never Stick - The 4 Big Reasons

Your subconscious mind is a deep well of stored information, beliefs, assumptions and emotions accumulated throughout your lifetime. It performs a critical function as your brain’s auto-pilot, taking over tasks that you have learned through consistent repetition over time. Your conscious mind is the initial entry point of new information, but it has very limited resources and consequently, if you repeat an experience or drill a new skill often enough, your subconscious mind will eventually take ownership of that task or belief rendering it “second-nature.”

Bearing this in mind, if your drinking habit has been around for a while, let’s say many years now…you have undoubtedly conditioned your subconscious mind with a myriad of beliefs, queues and triggers associated with alcohol. When you decided to take a break from drinking, that decision emerged in your conscious mind. The seeds of new beliefs about your drinking habit began to germinate (perhaps concerns about your health, or other negative ways your drinking harms you).

But rest assured…your subconscious mind was still operating on the old alcohol programming. Therefore, despite your earnest attempts to honor the initial goals of your break from drinking, your subconscious mind can very often sabotage your efforts by serving up suggestions and even strong cravings (assisted by your brain’s reward center discussed in the previous episode, which has also been chronically conditioned to your drinking norms).

Your subconscious mind is not trying to harm you. It is simply on auto-pilot mode based on what you taught it about drinking on hundreds (and possibly thousands) of occasions. It formed deep associations and sensory linkage with so many times, people, places, events, sounds and even smells, that when you encounter those triggers…it thinks you’re supposed to drink, and will prompt you to do so.

In order to win over your subconscious mind in your break from drinking, the keys are patience and persistence. You trained your brain to speak “alcohol is wonderful” as a language in your life over a long period of time. Now you are teaching your brain a new language of “sobriety is wonderful.” And just as with learning any new language, it will require time, and repeated exposure to the new information along with A LOT of practice speaking (or in this case LIVING) the new language.

Give yourself some grace, knowing that you cannot flip a switch and change your subconscious mind overnight. But what you CAN DO, is tap into it by steering in a new direction and slowly conditioning new healthier behaviors and belief patterns about alcohol that can eventually become your new “auto-pilot” mode with respect to drinking.

**** Links to the Infographics:

https://subconscious-and-mind.blogspo...

https://thesagonline.com/wp-content/u...

https://blog.myneurogym.com/neuroplas...

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If you're questioning your drinking, a good place to start can be to find out where you land on the Alcohol Drinker Spectrum. You can access it here: The Alcohol Drinker Spectrum