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Chapter 19 : OUT-OF-DATE COMFORT
If we wish to categorize responses, they can be differentiated in a number of ways. Since a response is a collection of feelings triggered by a cue, these feelings that are triggered can be uncomfortable but they can also be comfortable. Just as we can have out-of-date discomfort, we can also have out-of-date comfort, which can also be a problem. Let us use a different example to address the issue of out-of-date comfort.
Let us say that when you were in school there was an 'In Group' that everyone wanted to belong to. Let us say that you were a member of this 'In Group' and that you felt very special belonging to this group. Let us say that everybody in this group smoked cigarettes, in fact to be part of the group you had to smoke cigarettes, otherwise you just did not fit into the group. So you were in the group and you smoked cigarettes too. You felt very special being part of this group and you also felt very special smoking cigarettes.
Let us say that time has passed since then. You no longer see these people anymore that belonged to this group. You have moved away from where you used to live and let us say that now you live in the big city somewhere in your own little apartment. It is Saturday night and you have just moved into your own little apartment and you do not know anybody where you live. You are feeling very lonely and depressed and are watching some boring television program.
Interestingly, however, if you just have a cigarette, things somehow start to improve. Suddenly, being alone is not such a big problem. You start thinking, " I have my own space. Nobody is telling me what to do." In fact, even the television program is starting to look better since you had the cigarette. If you examined how you are feeling, you would discover that since you had the cigarette you are feeling special.
The reason that you are feeling special is not due to the cigarette itself. It is not due to the drug, the nicotine. No, the cigarette is a cue. It has enabled you to connect with that time in your life when you were in school as part of that special group and has helped you bring all of those comfortable feelings from the past into the present. As a result of this comfort response triggered by the cigarette, you are able to get through this Saturday night a little more comfortably.
But now you are smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. All you do is stay at home, watch television and smoke cigarettes. Interestingly, so long as you have your forty or fifty cigarettes a day you really do not feel too badly. In fact, you actually feel like you are a special person all day. But now, of course, you have a smoking problem. You are coughing, you are short of breath, and you just do not seem to be able to get through your day without having one cigarette after another. You might want to address your cigarette problem. Realistically, your cigarettes are pain pills. They give you comfort to help you neutralize your discomfort.
As a family doctor that has been in practice for many years now, as you might imagine, I have had the opportunity to prescribe quite a few pain pills. As a result, over this time period I was able to learn a couple of things. First of all, the people who asked for pain pills generally had pain. Secondly, as their pain diminished, they generally became less and less interested in the pain pills. From these simple observations I concluded that if one wanted people to stop taking pain pills, the best way to accomplish this is to have them get rid of the pain that they were trying to control with the pain pills. As that pain diminishes and ultimately disappears they lose their desire for the pain pills. Therefore, in my example, if your cigarettes are pain pills and if you want to stop smoking, the best way to do this is to address the underlying discomfort that you are controlling by smoking. You must identify and update the out-of-date responses that are directly or indirectly causing the discomfort that you are dulling presently with your cigarettes. As you do so, you will gradually notice that your interest in cigarettes will diminish.
At some point you will likely begin to notice that you have a very unusual response to cigarettes. You will notice that every time that you have one you will get a 'special' feeling which does not really make any sense but comes nonetheless. You will recognize that if having a cigarette gives you this special feeling, then you will be unreasonably interested in having more of them. In order to help you stop smoking, you will realize that it would be to your advantage to change this comfort response to cigarettes. By so doing, a cigarette eventually becomes a cigarette - a piece of paper with tobacco and a filter. The nicotine will still do what nicotine does, but that bonus comfort that you used to get before, that 'special' feeling is no longer there.
The point is that you can change comfort responses as well using Unconscious Updating. When you update out-of-date comfort responses, the coping mechanism, in this case the cigarette, becomes less and less attractive. Therefore, the likelihood of discontinuing smoking increases significantly because you just do not get as much pleasure from it as you did before.
Out-of-date comfort is most relevant when dealing with coping mechanisms. Virtually every coping mechanism has some bonus comfort associated with it. The chocolate chip cookies that you might love to eat are perhaps the same ones that your grandmother gave you when you were a child. When she gave them to you she used to pat you on your head and tell you how wonderful you were. Now every time that you have one of these cookies you get a warm feeling inside. It is not the chocolate, it is not the cookie, it is the fact that it takes you back to that time in your life when you were getting that positive message from your grandmother. But now you are eating bags and bags of chocolate chip cookies and you have a chocolate chip cookie problem.
Bonus comfort is very much part of most, if not all coping mechanisms. If you want to stop using a coping mechanism it is very important to remove this bonus comfort. Coping mechanisms should be understood to be pain pills. In order to stop using the pain pill, the first step is to get rid of the pain. Therefore, start by addressing the discomfort. As you do so you will lose your interest in the coping mechanism and will eventually realize that you have some bonus comfort associated with it. You will not realistically even consider getting rid of the bonus comfort until your discomfort level has come down sufficiently because you are going to be using that bonus comfort to support your system until you have reached that point. People who do not know how to swim do not take off their life jackets when they are in the middle of the lake. They wait until they are safely on shore first.
Once you have brought your discomfort level down far enough you will be ready to update your out-of-date comfort responses associated with the coping mechanism. Therefore, you will become more and more likely to discontinue the use of the coping mechanism. When you address a coping mechanism problem with this approach, I advise you to work on the coping mechanism until it is done, until it is finished, until it is out of your system. For example, if you are smoking and you use this technique to help you stop smoking, just because you are not smoking any cigarettes today does not mean that you have stopped smoking. It simply means that today you did not have any cigarettes. If the right combination of buttons were pushed, you might find yourself back at it all over again. Instead, I am advising that you work on a coping mechanism until it does not make any sense to you, until you could not imagine having another cigarette, until it is totally foreign to whom you have become.
Until you have reached that point, you are still a smoker and you could go back to it again. If you are not sure if you are at that point yet, you are not at that point. You will know when you have reached it. At that point you will recognize that you will never again have another cigarette. You would have to become a smoker once more from the beginning, which would be very unlikely in most cases, having reached that point.
The advantage of working on the coping mechanism until it is out of your system is that once you have reached that point you can forget about it. It is no longer an issue for you. It is done and you can redirect your attention and energy elsewhere.
Working on coping mechanisms is a very worthwhile means of finding and addressing one's limitations and negativity. By identifying the pain that drives them and finding and updating the out-of-date discomfort that relates to this pain one can achieve profound internal growth. Along the way, the out-of-date comfort associated with the coping mechanisms, although typically a secondary issue, can be very worthwhile to address as well. An important product of this updating is that one gains a greater and greater reality orientation in that one perceives and responds to things as they really are.
If one wants to successfully function in reality, one has to be in reality both rationally and emotionally. Any thoughts or feelings, be they comfortable or uncomfortable, which are not grounded in reality will have inevitable destructive consequences.
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