My secret habit
This post is one of a series of posts related to my own experience with tackling Task Specific Focal Dystonia (TSFD) which affects my right hand. These posts are a reflection of my own thoughts, feelings and progress in overcoming this disorder. The range of issues that are coming under scrutiny due to TSFD is becoming more and more broader. Addictions, conditioning and memory are all issues that are related to my own experience in tackling the condition.
People who know me know that I have been trying to stop smoking for years and with little success. Fortunately, I now only really smoke during the evenings or when I am having a few drinks. Much better compared to years previously when I could smoke from the first hours of the morning until late at night.
My often repeated mantra, every morning, as I get up is something like:
“Urgghhhh what a horrible taste. Disgusting. I will never smoke again!”
Sure enough, some time in the evening the little demonic voices in my head will start (successfully) persuading me to “just have one”.
Similarly, when practising and looking in the mirror, I see my fingers become dystonic, I say something like:
“Urgghhhh what a horrible hand posture. Disgusting. I will never do that again!”
But saying that I “will never do that again” is in fact counter productive and increases the likelihood of me repeating the offending behaviour.
How so?
“If you say what you are not going to do, you are not saying what you are gong to do”. (J. Fabra on Dave Scragg Youtube video channel)
Waiting for Godot used with permission from http://www.3gatti.com/
Imagine you are talking with your friend on the telephone. Your want to meet up. However, if you restrict yourself to saying where you are not going, you are not saying where you are going.
“Great” you say, “but where shall we meet, and at what time?”
“Good question. Well, I don’t want to meet at two o’clock and I don’t want to meet near the market.”
“Cool. So …”
“And I don’t want to meet at five o’clock. And not at the bus station …”
“Okay …”
“and not …”
I don’t know how long you could continue like that for, but without a radical change in the conversation it seems that a meeting will be unlikely.
I have a cigarette addiction. If it were a bio-chemical nicotine addiction to I would be smoking in the daytime. The addiction is an addiction of association rather than – rather like Pavlov and the dogs. In other words, it is a conditioned response to environmental triggers.
Just exactly how powerful conditioning actually is is certainly a mystery to me. I certainly am starting to believe that it is a great deal more powerful than I have previously thought. And I mean a geat deal more. Why do I only smoke at home (and when certain triggers [a trigger is what sets off the conditioned response], such as alcohol, are present)? The idea of smoking at work makes me feel ill.
How conditioned are you?
Similarly, I ask myself: “could TSFD be partly a conditioned response”?
- Why task specific?
- What triggers are there?
- Is the trigger just a single trigger – the guitar or are there more?
- Why does TSFD cause my fingers to curl in even as picked he guitar up?
- Why is this condition specific only to the guitar?
- Is smoking a TSFD trigger?
- Am I addicted to bodily tension?
But these questions while interesting in themselves, lead nowhere in a practical sense. The important thing here is to notice and then change the triggers.
Interesting Reading
http://www.brainbasedbusiness.com/2008/05/memorys_often_a_choice.html
