Originally Posted by
samseb5351 
Can you see what you just did there, you didn't "recognize and move on" you recognized and ridiculed. Your whole energy "for want of a better word" towards a AV is never to simply recognize. This can be evidenced by peoples verbal attacks, disgust or put downs BUT in my opinion the more subtle error "linguistically" is to give shape and form to an imaginary being and calling it a Beast in the first place. As much as many people demand that these descriptions are purely metaphoric, most attitudinal expressions of the AVRT are decidedly unmetaphoric. What tends to happen to many is a kind of Anthropomorphism and strange idea Addiction and an AV resides in a certain part of the brain, that this AV has a kind of "ghost in the machine" quality with its own motivations, desires and evil intent.
My dictionary says anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object. Well, as I see it, AVRT actually does the opposite of anthropomorphisation. It de-anthropomorphizes a particular appetite, wanting to get drunk;
an appetite that I permanently resist and didn't want any more;
an appetite based upon healthy survival based pleasure seeking, but unfortunately set upon drinking more alcohol. Fortunately, though, alcohol is not necessary for survival. My human competence easily understood that permanent abstinence would eliminate problems of drunkenness.
So why did I have so much ambivalence about just quitting for good? Well, because that animal-based pleasure seeking couldn't flip 180 degrees from "Yes, figure out how to drink some more and not get in trouble" to "Nope, drinking is absolutely wrong for me, ever again!" as fast as my humanness had flipped. That biological slowness to change is part of pleasure based habits, but that slowness can be beaten with AVRT.
I did go through a lot of agony before making the flip, but when I flipped 180 degrees, I also realized it had been that animal-based pleasure seeking that had held me back from making that flip for so long.
Rational Recovery teaches how to easily strip away from my humanness the animal-based desire to drink some more.
Without AVRT, my first cognizance of a rising desire to drink some more is that it is ME.
With AVRT, my REcognizance of the desire to drink some more is that it is IT - The Beast;
and IT is ONLY the desire to drink some more and NOT any other appetite. The Beast is singlemindedly stupid by definition. The Beast is just, and only, as exacting as the problem - alcohol going into my mouth.
This dissociative technique works wonderfully in partnership with The Big Plan. AVRT makes clear that the Big Plan is a requirement for the easiest and least intrusive recovery. And the Big Plan makes the ongoing use of AVRT so much more obvious.
Something I decided to do that RR doesn't specifically teach is to swear at my Beast. I did it early on because I think swearwords have a significantly stronger effect in my midbrain than other words. I didn't consider it "recognize and ridicule". It was closer to a variation of "Shifting." For me today, swearing at my Beast would be like beating a dead horse.