Self-control and Suppression: A new chapter
Example 1
You have done so well. You have been to the gym five times this week. You have avoided eating any of those ‘no-no’s’ and you are feeling pretty damn good. Now, it’s Sunday evening and you are about to watch the game. You know it’s a bad move – after all the hard work you have done this week, and yet you are overcome. A couple of cans of coke, crisps and some chocolate later – you feel bad and wonder how on earth you have ended up back at square one
Example 2
You are trying hard. Really hard. The nicotine patches are close to hand. You have been extra careful to avoid those places and people that instinctively make you reach for a cigarette and you feel that the hard work will soon pay off. And then a momentary lapse – ‘just one’ you think, and before you know it you are smoking more than you ever did before.
Do either of these situations sound familiar. Whilst the specifics may differ, the two examples above describe familiar challenges in our lives – those of self-control and trying to avoid thoughts of things that are bad for us, in the hope that repression will help us overcome temptation.
Both of these challenges are about to befall the intrepid hero in my book and to try to understand the dynamics a little better, I have been doing some research. Here’s what I found:
Firstly, on self-control the research may surprise you. In his book, ‘Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard’, Dan Heath describes an experiment where a group of students were asked to sit in front of a table in a lab. In front of the group were two bowls – one with freshly baked cookies and another with raw radishes. Some of the group were told to eat cookies and no radishes, the other to eat radishes and no cookies.
In the study, the radish-eaters showed great self-control: they did not touch the cookies! Great – go radish!
After the exercise was complete, the two groups were asked to do a second task – a logic puzzle. Unknown to the group, the puzzle was unsolvable. So who do you think tried longer? Well, the study reported that the cookie-eaters tried for an average of 19 minutes to solve the puzzle, but the group who were told to eat no cookies (but munch down on some radish!) only lasted 8 minutes on average! Wow – the group who were ‘better’ in the first experiment, were worse in the second! What’s going on here…?
According to Heath, the reason the radish-eaters gave up easier was because they simply ran out of self-control. According to social psychologists – self-control is like a muscle and after we use it, it gets tired. Consider trying to run for a bus after spending an hour on the treadmill in the gym – the legs feel a little jelly-like and we just don’t move as quickly as we normally would.
So, sometimes when we succumb – it’s not that we are being bad, it’s just that we have quite literally run out of self-control!
But, here’s the good news – like any other muscle, we can train ourselves to develop stronger self-control. Here, the spiritual teachings of the Bhagavad Gita are poignant. In one verse, Krishna addresses Arjuna’s lamentation that it is hard to control the mind and says:
“The Blessed Lord said: O mighty-armed son of Kunti, it is undoubtedly very difficult to curb the restless mind, but it is possible by constant practice and by detachment.”
So, on self-control the research seems clear: it’s not easy, but if you persevere, you will improve. Good Luck!
Now, on to a familiar technique used to avoid temptation – that of avoiding our vices and repressing thoughts of them. So does this approach bear fruit?
Again, a recent study provides some surprising insights. In the experiment, 85 smokers (average age 31), none of whom were trying to quit, were divided into three groups for three weeks. One group was instructed to spend the middle week avoiding and suppressing all smoking-related thoughts. The second group were to think about smoking as much as they could during that second week; the third group acted as a control and didn’t suppress or encourage smoking-related thoughts.
The main finding of the study was that the group who were asked to suppress thoughts of smoking in the second week, also smoked less in the second week. Great! I hear you say.
But here’s the rub – whilst the ‘suppression’ group smoked less in the second week, they actually ended up smoking significantly more than the other two groups in the last week.
Furthermore, the researchers found smoker’s who spent more time trying to give up smoking through suppression techniques actually had a history of more failed attempts to quit.
Interestingly, the Bhagavad Gita also argues against suppression:
“Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for everyone follows his nature. What can repression accomplish?”
So, the research again seems pretty unambiguous – repression is a false economy and whilst there may be a short-term benefit, in the long-term it leads to a greater risk of failing and increased addiction.
So, what options do we have to overcome our vices. The Bhagavad Gita suggests one answer. In one verse, Krishna explains how we can become ‘fixed’ in our efforts:
“The embodied soul may be restricted from sense enjoyment, though the taste for sense objects remains. But, ceasing such engagements by experiencing a higher taste, he is fixed in consciousness.”
So, repression is not the answer – we need to replace our vice e.g. smoking, with something positive – What that may be? That, I leave to you…and the hero of my story to decide.
If you are interested in learning more about the topics in this entry, please see the links below:
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