American studies showed that even though 99% of Americans believe that smoking is harmful 20% of them still smoke regularly. Clearly that 20% must drug addiction treatment be finding a way to reconcile the contradiction between their beliefs and their behaviour. Professionals can provide the safe space for this emotional healing that is vital to your recovery.
- Other models of relapse prevention also draw upon the construct of self-efficacy34.
- In utero exposure to tobacco byproducts has been linked to cognitive deficits in laboratory animals and human adolescents (Dwyer, Broide, and Leslie, 2008).
- When friends and family try to make a person with a substance use disorder (SUD) see that they need help, it is common for someone with an addiction to not be deliberately willful.
- While research in this area has made significant contributions to our understanding of addiction and have provided novel intervention strategies, many questions remain unanswered.
Relapse prevention
The long-term consequences of unresolved cognitive dissonance in addiction are far-reaching and profound. Beyond the physical toll of substance abuse, individuals may experience a erosion of self-esteem, damaged relationships, and a distorted sense of reality. The constant mental gymnastics required to maintain the addiction can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and depression, further complicating the recovery process. This dissonance-based intervention aims to shift readiness for change and drug/alcohol abuse behaviors in high school aged youth, in order to prevent drug dependence and serious negative consequences related to heavy use.
Non-12 Step Rehab & Recovery
One promising therapeutic approach involves working memory training –i.e., neurocognitive rehabilitation aimed at increasing storage capacity for, and ability to, hold, process, and manipulate information in the present. Working memory training has been shown to decrease delay discounting among stimulant addicts 70, and is posited to build self-control capacity 71 and improve efficacy of existing treatments when delivered adjunctive to standard care 72. Dan is passionate about disrupting the current addiction treatment model in the USA and wants to see people overcome their addiction issues and not just remain sober, cognitive dissonance and addiction but thrive in life while living their passion.
- There were no significant differences between the two groups of children in intelligence, visual/manual dexterity, or sustained attention; however, both groups placed below the normative means on these measures (Pulsifer et al., 2008).
- Next, the project discussed in this article was funded by the United State’s National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in 2003.
- By the time you leave rehab, your brain will be packed-full of reasons not to return to alcohol or drug use.
- For example, long-term cannabis users have impaired learning, retention, and retrieval of dictated words, and both long-term and short-term users show deficits in – time estimation (Solowij et al., 2002), although how long these deficits persist is not yet known.
Understanding the Role of Cognitive Dissonance in Addiction
- The effects may relate to the discomfort of the dissonance itself or the defense mechanisms a person adopts to deal with it.
- For example, a type of cognitive- behavioral therapy called dissonance- based therapy has been evaluated by researchers to be effective, even long term, for young women with eating disorders (Stice, Rhodes, Shaw, & Gau, 2011).
- In fact, according to Cooper (2007), “Festinger’s insistence that cognitive dissonance was like a drive that needed to be reduced implied that people were going to have to find some way of resolving their inconsistencies.
- Members of the therapeutic group are able to expose logical fallacy, draw attention to blind spots and confront denial head on.
- These findings expand upon previous research on discontinuous usage intentions among social media users and offer insights into the underlying psychological mechanisms among users of pan-entertainment mobile live broadcast platforms.
- The Trans theoretical model (TTM), describes stages of behavioral change, processes of change and the decisional balance and self-efficacy which are believed to be intertwined to determine an individual’s behaviour11.
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling we get when we notice that our actions are not consistent with our beliefs. This negative feeling is much stronger if we don’t have any strong reason to behave in such a way. Most people struggle when faced with an unexpected change, creating feelings of anxiety and depression.
Dissonance-Based Interventions for Substance Using Alternative High-School Youth
Relapse prevention (RP) is a cognitive behavioural treatment program, based on the relapse prevention model27,28. A psycho-educational self-management approach is adopted in this program and the client is trained in a variety of coping skills and responses. The client is also encouraged to change maladaptive habits and life style patterns.
The rational mind relies on heuristics and other mental short cuts (e.g., attributions, appraisals, schemata) representing implicitly activated information processing to avoid the need to relearn previously acquired knowledge. However, these automatic processes foster an irrational persistence of belief – e.g., positive expectancies regarding continued substance use – that contributes to the maintenance of addiction. A recent paper provides a detailed review and commentary regarding automatically triggered thoughts in addiction, and how they may, furthermore, interact with explicit cognitive processes to https://ecosoberhouse.com/ intensify cue-reactive responding based on Elaborated Intrusion Theory 36. Despite various treatment programmes for substance use disorders, helping individuals remain abstinent remains a clinical challenge.
Strategies for Tackling Cognitive Dissonance in Recovery
Unfortunately, these negative thinking patterns can often be so subtle we don’t notice them until someone else points them out. For example, someone might experience the impression that they are incapable of sobriety. Thus, by challenging the negative thought, the individual can reduce the risk of relapse.