Psychological Detoxing
While a physiological detox obviously focuses on the body, a certain level of psychological detoxification also occurs at the same time. This is partially due to the two dimensions being interrelated; a change in one leads to a change in the other, but also because we are breaking some of our existing habits while on a detox program.
So while a proper body detox refreshes and rebalances our minds to some extent, many of us can greatly benefit from a more intensive psychological detox. At base, a psychological detox is about detoxing our current set of often overgrown and contrary motivations. With fewer motivations/wants driving us in multiple directions simultaneously, our lives simplify, stress goes away, our sense of well- being skyrockets and we stop battling against ourselves.
We all want to improve the level of happiness we're experiencing, but, put bluntly, it's almost impossible to do so when we're trying to satisfy and juggle too many motivations simultaneously, as the more wants we have, the more we have to satisfy. We only have a certain amount of time and energy, plus the more wants we have, the more some of them are invariably contradictory. We get to the point where, no matter what path we take, we're always dissatisfied to some degree, which makes a high level of happiness impossible.
By detoxing, we return to our core selves and inevitably experience a huge increase in our sense of well-being. We understand that less is more and now have a clear understanding of what our core motivations are. From there, we re-enter the world, but now we have a clearer orientation and can reattach the want/habits/motivations that we choose to have within us. We keep the positive, throw out the trash, and consciously select our future motivations.
We have to empty out the trash first. If we want to remodel our kitchen, we first need to tear out the old stuff put there by others, before we can install what we've chosen for ourselves. This is obvious. It's what Buddha pointed to long ago, what Vipassana meditation helps greatly with, and what modern pragmatic psychotherapy tries to achieve. It's not complicated; it's not a mystery or hard. But it can seem hard, as we humans have egos, and our egos resist change.
Our egos (explained more here) are aligned with whatever beliefs and values our particular culture and schools have programmed us with. Then, as we now have status according to those values, we're motivated to believe those values are the true values. If those values are not the true values, if we accept they're just subjective (as they obviously are), then our status is just subjective. Our ego then sulks, and so we tend to recoil from any significant remodeling. When we confuse what is obviously subjective with being objective, we lack flexibility and thus the ability to act in our own best interests.
Every day, all over the world, therapists go through the same 'dance' with clients that come to their clinics for help:
'Hey Doc, I'm not as happy as I want to be; what should I do?'
'Well, obviously, if you keep doing the same actions, you'll keep getting the same results. Keep using the same recipe and you'll get the same taste, so you need to change your recipe if you want to experience a better taste'
'Whoa, like, obviously I'm pretty perfect, right? Surely that's obvious, Doc, so it's not for me to change anything significant. The problem is with other people, or there's some kind of mistake or malfunction within me. Clearly, I deserve to be very happy, as I've ticked all the right boxes.'
The doctor sighs and hands over a prescription for anti-depressants....
The big advantage of a detox is that we sidestep most of this ego resistance because we're not trying to change piecemeal while still caught in our 'web' of tangled motivations. We just step away, relax for a few days, and let the cleaning and changes happen. It's a personal journey; there's no 'right' or 'wrong', 'better' or 'worse', and so our ego relaxes it's grip.
In practice, two things happen:
Firstly, the huge uplift in our sense of well-being after detoxing diminishes our dependence on ego 'happiness'. You might of noticed how happy and cheerful people tend to have small egos, while unhappy and angry people tend to have big egos. This is not a coincidence. The unhappy person's ego stops them from going directly to happiness. They lack flexibility, as they're already all that is 'right' and 'good' according to the particular set of values they've been taught. They're welded to their current beliefs and values. Their focus is on the recipe instead of the taste. They're consuming mere labels that only exist in their heads, and this causes their core emotions to be neglected and malnourished. This condition is common among those who have been intensively schooled for a prolonged period.
When we detox, the sudden and surprising uplift in happiness reduces the need to defend and feed our ego, and because our experience of reality is so different than it used to be, this automatically starts to loosen beliefs and values that were previously set in concrete. Our ego has no choice but to accept that it was wrong about some things, and so our ego becomes more fluid. The ego then shifts to align much better with the new version of them, and so the person is not in constant battle with themselves. As it's obvious that this life thing is subjective, we can start to emotionally accept this, and so take ourselves, and our programming, less seriously. We stop squeezing the joy out of life as we start to focus on the taste and not the recipe. We can now adjust our recipe until we experience the level of happiness we want. Easy peasy.
Loosening up a few 'rocks' in our brain can result in an avalanche of significant and positive changes as the newly gained flexibility allows the person to 'equalise' at a very different level. For example, the lack of stress can allow our brains to shift from operating in the hyper Beta frequency to the much more mellow, and more pleasant, Alpha frequency. We're no longer stuck in overdrive. Our nervous system may switch from 'fight or flight' sympathetic mode over to the relaxed parasymphatic mode. It's also likely we, suddenly or gradually, move away from being motivated by dopamine fun as we regain the capacity to experience joy.
Big shifts can flow from small shifts, but we cannot make the relatively small shifts if we're tangled up in our own overgrown web. We have to step out for a few days, return to our core, experience the massive lift in our sense of wellbeing, and ponder the fresh perspective. Then we can consciously and rationally rebuild our web - we can select and integrate habits and beliefs that serve our actual interests.
In short, if our level of happiness isn't as we want, the problem is that the recipe we're 'cooking' by - our beliefs, values, and habits. As most of them we didn't actually choose - someone else chose on our behalf - we should be fine with stepping away from them for a few days to experience life without them on our shoulders. After a detox, we can still reattach whichever ones we so desire, but now we've got rid of the trash and have flexibility. Our ego won't like it, but our ego is the enemy.
To navigate reality effectively, so we can take ourselves out of the desert and into an oasis of our choosing, we must be willing to accept reality. Unless we are actually God, our ego telling us we're special and have some unique abilities that allow us to know the truth is just delusion, and it leads us away from actual happiness. We homo sapiens just have a limited range of mediocre senses - most of what exists we're not even aware of - and our grapefruit sized primate brain is neither objective nor does it have the processing power to understand accurately that tiny slice of reality we're able to perceive. We can't know the truth, as we do not possess the ability to know the truth. Even if all humans proclaim something to be the truth, this doesn't make it the truth. It just seems true to our particular species, given the senses and the brain we're equipped with. This is obvious to our brains, but on an emotional level, our egos struggle to accept it.
When we take ourselves too seriously, we lose flexibility and squeeze the joy out of life. When we confuse what is subjective with being objective, we take that belief or value seriously and therefore ourselves seriously. Beyond our hard-wired instincts, what matters is what we believe matters. As egotistical people tend to think the universe is waiting with bated breath to see what they do or don't do, they take their actions and themselves super seriously. Yet, in reality, we're just another life form. We're born, experience for a time, and then die. Cool. It is what it is, and so we focus on the experience. We know the universe will keep doing its universe thing long after we're gone, regardless of what we do or don't do. We become grateful and orientated towards what is, instead of orientated towards and lamenting what isn't.
Accept that it's all subjective, and the rest is very easy, as we can now take the direct path to happiness.
If someone told Buddha he was fantastic and good, Buddha would shrug and keep smiling.If someone told Buddha he was a loser and bad, Buddha would shrug and keep smiling. What relevance do the values floating in someone's head have for him? He's beyond labels; reality is as he experiences it to be, not what his brain, or other people's brains, translate it into. As he's not performing to earn anyone's approval, or for pats on the head, there's no boxes he has to tick, no hurdles he has to jump before he's 'allowed' to be happy, and so he steps directly towards it, instead of walking away from it.
When we're focusing on what we actually feel and not what others have told us we should do and feel, we regain our autonomy and become hunters of the invisible game - our emotional well-being - instead of hunting status symbols and the 'truth' that isn't.
'Ego is fantasy, truth is illusion
I feel you breathing, the rest is confusion
Your skin touches mine, what else to explain?
I am the hunter of the invisible game.
There's a kingdom of love waiting to be reclaimed
I am the Hunter of Invisible Game'
Springsteen. 'Hunter of Invisible Game.'
I collected some random rope to illustrate what's meant by overgrown and contrary motivations.
Alongside our core emotions, beliefs, values, and habits generate motivation; they pull us in their direction. This is what the arrows show. Given the language they all 'speak' is pleasure and pain, we have no easy way of separating out the 'wheat from the chaff'; we just feel what we feel and respond accordingly. We act according to the current equilibrium of the motivational forces within us.
When overgrown like this, we lack control, and this leads people into a reality that is not to their taste. But what can a psychologist or therapist do with such a tangled mess? What's organic and what's not? The client can't even know.
We can see how, for such a person, a high level of happiness is actually impossible, as some of their motivations contradict other motivations.
Via a detox, most of the motivations, that are essentially just infections, have now gone, as they've starved and withered away. The hard is now much easier because we're no longer craving much of what we previously were, and we're no longer fighting against ourselves.
Our stress levels drop, we feel much better, and we understand, because we've experienced it, that less is much more.
While all our remaining motivations may not be perfectly aligned, we've now got a much more manageable situation than previously. Anyway, it's not about being 'perfect', it's about gaining the power to achieve our objectives, and the ultimate objective is a high level of happiness.
Of course, few of us live on a deserted island, we've all got to make $$, we've got momentum in our lives and responsibilities, etc. Therefore, we'll acquire more habits and motivations after a detox. But now we have the ability to choose them. BIG difference...
Taking this detoxing process to an almost impossible extreme, there's just basic survival instincts remaining. Obviously, we can't, nor would we want to, eradicate them. Even Buddha was motivated to have food, water, and shelter from the hot sun.
He said, ' By doing nothing, I do everything'. Indeed, as he was already 10/10 happy, he already had everything he wanted. What was he motivated to do? He was filled with joy, and so he just sat under the tree smiling.
Less is more, and it's this that Buddha symbolises. Generally, it's not the lack of something that makes us discontented, it's the want/motivation for that thing that generates frustration and craving.
The idea is to try to find a fruitful balance for ourselves. It's not a competition; there's no 'right' happiness or 'wrong' happiness; there's just happiness and unhappiness. The tragedy is that many make the easy hard instead of making the hard easy.
If our 'garden' is filled with weeds, nothing of value can grow as the weeds are taking all the space and energy. We need to weed our garden first, and then we can plant whatever we choose.
The Cuckoo bird lays her eggs in a different species nest. Then the cuckoo chick hatches early and pushes out the original eggs. The cuckoo chick is protected and fed by the nest owner as if it were her own chick, but it isn't.
It's a similar situation with many of our beliefs, values, and habits. Other people put them in our 'nest'. We didn't choose them, but those motivations now control us.
Which is which? What motivations are innate to us, and what are just infections? We can't know unless we detox and find out.
Just as we have to create the conditions that prompt our bodies to switch to cleaning and repair mode, we also need to do the same for our brains if we want to refresh and rebalance psychologically.
Again, if someone is already experiencing the level of happiness they're content with, and that reality seems sustainable, then obviously they have no need for a deep psychological detox. Their recipe is generating the taste desired, so it's pointless, and possibly counterproductive, to 'fix' what isn't broken.
For them, the relatively mild psychological freshening-up effect that is always obtained via a normal physiological detox is enough. This 'cleans our palette', and we enjoy and appreciate our little oasis even more.
Everyone is different, and everyone's situation is different. While it's generally the case that we should combine a physiological detox with a psychological one - our hybrid detox - to empty out and regain flexibility, this is not always necessary. Some people already have flexibility, but lack a coherent, unified identity, which translates to no clear objective. They have the flexibility to get out of the rutted path they've been deposited on, and they may already be out, but it's not clear which new path to choose. This comes back to a lack of self -knowledge, and so it's this they need to build up. The extent to which our understanding of ourselves is accurate, is the extent to which the path we choose will be fruitful.
At Lucid Detox, we can tailor a program that works best for you.
Some of our blog posts explain all this in greater detail, along with links to external resources.
