Cognitive Consistency & Dissonance

Cognitive Consistency & Dissonance Applied to Addiction

If there is a disconnect between behavior and consequences then you need to adjust your thoughts and expectations or your behavior. McLeod, S. A. (2018, Feb 05), says it this way, “When you do something other than what you think or know to be true or healthy for you to do, a feeling of cognitive dissonance emerges and with it comes a natural feeling of internal anxiety”. Cognitive consistency is a phrase that describes personal congruency between thought and behavior. It is the ability to be at peace with your chosen behavior because your mind and body work together in unison so that what you think, you do, thereby reducing the imbalance in the mind that is produced when there are cognitive inconsistencies; i.e., what you think, you choose NOT to do. Thinking one way and doing another, or vice versa, is referred to as cognitive dissonance (Gawronski, B. (2012)). Cognitive dissonance generates an uncomfortable feeling of stress and anxiety. Frantz Fanon said,

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, a person will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief”.

Not all uncomfortable feelings are bad for you to experience. The temporary feeling of tension from the discomfort of change is one example of an uncomfortable feeling that can either impede the learning process or can motivate it. Normally, people experience tension when learning something new. The discomfort that accompanies learning can be both physical and emotional. If not managed properly, this tension can stunt your emotional growth and lead to the development of anxiety (fear and/or worry based on real or imagined events) which can halt further behavioral changes from occurring. It is important to differentiate between tension, stress and anxiety.

Take swimming as an example.

Even thinking about learning a new skill like swimming stirs up performance tension in your mind. You overrode that thought by moving ahead to schedule swimming lessons. You may have experienced stress when you jumped into the water, but the motivation to achieve your goal of swimming won out as you struggled with your thoughts (you controlled your thoughts from corroding your confidence so you could achieve the goal of swimming.)

Stress turns to anxiety when you focus on a real or imagined event to the point that it discourages you from acting. Staying with swimming as an example:

If you experienced a near drowning event while learning to swim, and then you replayed the scene in your mind over again, this would trigger stress when thinking about the subject of swimming. Anxiety emerges

as a result of repetitively thinking about this stressful experience, especially when the thinking is accompanied

by a picture that reinforces this negative thinking.

This negative experience results in a new goal, only this time you are not motivated but rather you doubt your ability to learn to swim to the point where fear stops you from achieving this reasonable goal, so your future ability to act gets restrained by a new, negative goal. You now anticipate another failure instead of rehearsing a positive outcome. Using your imagination in a pessimistic way leaves you unsettled and nervous halting productivity and crushing hope. Imagining the possibilities of future events in a fearful way causes anxiety to result in both body and soul and instead of a life-long learner, your growth is halted and with it so is your possibilities of future joy.

Performance tension is a prerequisite to growth and goal achievement. The above examples result in negative thinking because your type of tension is wrongly labeled and classified in your memory as negative stress that should be avoided. When the subject of swimming comes up, the memory that's recalled is a negative image of your learning experience. Thoughts and images stimulate the hormones in your brain that will produce the energy that prepares your body for action based on the direction of the goal. This is why you also feel less energy and excitement when given the opportunity to swim.

When you change the picture/experience as you think about what happened, it's important to reframe the learning experience in a more positive way so that your future reaction won't be inhibiting an opportunity. Being realistic yet positive about future opportunities puts a bounce to your step, so to speak. It acts like a bounce on the diving board before you spring into the water. It is meant to stimulate immediate reaction to get you started until the learned behavior becomes incorporated into your routine.

Anxiety is different in that it is a prolonged stress response that misuses your body's natural stress hormones. If you have made the same mistake over and over again; if you have had a traumatic event in your life or you use a negative imagination as a pattern of thinking, you are prone to overuse these specialty hormones and you become both biologically and psychological trapped in high alert mode. This negatively impacts your behavior, according to the assertiveness style of your personality (anger or depression). Stress from performance tension pushes you to engage in learning, while anxiety pushes you to stunt the learning process. Anxiety is an internal feeling that inhibits both your emotional and physical development. (Read the Introduction tab for more on growth and learning.)

There are many reasons why addiction develops in a person’s behavior. The materials in this program are built around one general assumption-that anxiety is a symptom of an imbalance of personal and social needs and that this imbalance generates an uncomfortable feeling that is numbed by the regular practice of addictive behavior. This numbing feeling distorts your psychological, biological and social functioning resulting in the formation of habits that are contrary to your life goals. Anxiety is a form of cognitive dissonance that has a psychosocial impact that can leave you stuck - afraid to make the necessary decisions that are needed to live a productive life. Performance tension and stress are natural in life and mastery of this leads to a functional lifestyle while anxiety has a psychological, biological and social impact that makes your functionality unpredictable. Your life becomes out of balance by irrational thinking that no longer fits into society's boundaries for productive behavior.

When you are out of balance, to regain peace or cognitive consistency you have to change either the way you think or the way you act and both are triggered by your attitude. Applying this to the example of swimming again; choosing to not swim again may relieve stress but it produces social anxiety when you are alone at a pool party when everyone is in the pool. To relieve that feeling, you decide that you won't be going to anymore swim parties.

An unhealthy addiction can remain doormat after treatment because of your choice to change thinking (psycho) but decide NOT to carry out this change in your public habits (social). In other words, you are trying not to drink in familiar social settings where drinking is common place. Researchers Rogerson, Gottlieb, Handelsman, Knapp, & Younggren (2011) say that logical action is not always taken in the face of pressure because unseen factors such as perception and emotions play into the decision-making process so that when actions are taken, they are judged by others as (un)healthy, (un)productive, or (anti)social, resulting in being labeled as (cool/)foolish or (ir)rational. Thus, the problem with an unhealthy addiction is that it throws the psycho-social equation out of balance. The creation of anxiety intensifies your desire to find a quick remedy for the feeling (like numbing it) - instead of patiently working to identify and fix the root cause of the imbalance that caused the anxiety in the first place. In this example of a social drinking environment, to regain cognitive consistency, you'd choose a new social setting.

When anxiety heightens in a person, seeking relief is reasonable, but the method chosen to treat the anxiety determines its effectiveness. If the root cause is ignored, you will select a solution that defuses the anxious feeling instead of treating the root cause that stirred up the anxiety. When your choice of coping mechanism for one problem only masks the real issue, a second problem develops and you find yourself further down a path of dysfunction. Even when you identify the addiction as adding to your trouble and you want to stop, you find that sheer will power does not loosen the grip of addiction.

Sometimes you try to treat a spiritual problem with a physical solution in the pursuit of problem resolution. Any unhealthy addiction is a sign signaling this faulty strategy. Dr. Raju Hajela, Chairman of American Society for Addiction Medicine, says, “Addiction creates distortions in thinking, feelings and perceptions …” which further complicates addiction recovery. The guard against anxiety is knowing how to control your thoughts so you shape them with faith, not fear.

The word, "faith" used throughout this website refers to the confidence you put into spirituality; a sense of connection to something bigger than yourself. The CYNN program will reveal that the best way to treat anxiety is with a healthy self-identity that is grounded in Jesus Christ; “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:16). The more you know about God and choose to reflect that knowledge in your behavior and attitude (single-mindedness), the more love, joy and peace will grow in your life (Galatians 5:5). Trust is the active ingredient in an ever-increasing faith. For a Christian, adversity builds mature faith because it tests and proves your commitment to God. As you go through challenging situations grounded in the principles of Christ, you learn that performance tension is working to stretch your faith (James 1:2-8). You learn that faith even "the size of a mustard seed” is what you need to diminish doubtful thoughts and persevere (Matthew 17:20, 2 Corinthians 10:5). See Appendix 1A to learn about how trusting in God can curb anxiety.

When your mind, heart and expectations are in agreement with the Word of God, you will pray single-mindedly for what your faith in Christ believes and so you can be sure of things hoped for (James 4:1-3, 1 John 5:14-15, Hebrews 11:1). Confident faith is what trust looks like when you take action on the Word of God, rather than your feelings (Habakkuk 2:4). Trust Is a two-step process. The first step is a decision you make privately as you process your thoughts. The second step is when you act on your decision publicly to demonstrate your commitment to the selected thought. When a person’s attitude and behavior do not agree, anxiety results from value misalignment; Consider the following examples;

a. A chronic liar may have started out truthful, but because there were times when telling the truth hurt, to avoid this feeling, the truth was replaced for a lie. (A chronic liar is someone who has a habit of substituting a lie for the truth because time and time again they made a value choice to escape the discomfort of telling a hard truth.)

b. If you know drinking excessive alcohol is bad for you, but you still drink because you enjoy the TEMPORARY escape of anxiety it may bring, you will experience cognitive dissonance (unrest from a lack of prolonged peace).

The lying or numbing activity hides the real problem that caused an anxious feeling in the first place. Instead, of exploring your body’s signal alerting you that something isn’t right (the initial cognitive dissonance), you try to cover up the uncomfortable feeling resulting in a temporary solution that needs to be repeated over and over again. This behavior becomes habitual and brings with it unintended consequences and more anxiety, and the cycle continues. At this point, your standard anxious behavior aligns with your superficial thinking so the addictive activity becomes your new normal behavioral standard in life. An addiction is commonly defined as a continued involvement with a substance or activity despite its ongoing negative physical, emotional and social consequences. After continued use not only have you become psychologically conditioned to carry out this addictive behavior (despite negative consequences) but your body becomes conditioned to expect it and reacts with cravings so you feed the addiction building up your tolerance so that more of the activity is needed to satisfy. When you decide that you want to stop the activity, your body and mind routines rebels by presenting withdrawal symptoms that test your commitment to change. It takes time and persistence to untangle the web that addiction has left on your soul, something only "Christ in you" can accomplish (Colossians 1:27).

There are many underlying components to an addiction. It might be as simple as mimicking what you saw growing up in a dysfunctional home. According to researcher Katie Walker (2018, p 9), the factors that complicate unhealthy addictions are compounded by the family; however, she offers this encouragement to people suffering from addiction: “if they have a spiritual relation to God, or a similar deity, and have faith that they can beat the odds of enacting the same alcoholic tendencies and behaviors that their parent(s) obtains, they will most likely be more equipped to cope with stressful situations and revert from turning to alcohol to aid them. … spiritual and faith‑based approaches on how to manage and cope with stress in a healthy way (by having a connection with and belief in a higher power), ... hold the possibility to help college student COAs (Child of Alcoholics) break the generational cycle of alcoholism.”

Self-discipline is an important skill for healthy psycho-social development. It's choosing to wait for a reward.