Fake it 'til you make it?
All is Change
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1,282
Fake it 'til you make it?
There is Psychological research and personal accounts that explain why this works.
I'm automatically adverse to it but partly, I think, that is because I'm caught in a self fulfilling loop of the negative kind. I can't do such and such because, well... I just can't..
To make that positive I recognise that I am inhibited for whatever reason but if I step into that unknown where I can I find, from direct experience, that I can and the discomforts that I feel in doing something I thought I cannot do become manageable and weaker.
It has also been called a placebo effect. It works. It doesn't really matter to me why. I leave that to theorisers about such things.
The way I look at it is that I choose to identify with the healed me and from that position learn about and learn to deal with all the feelings I have about being that positive me.
It doesn't mean I stop feeling negative. It means I stop letting that negativity control or inhibit me.
I'm automatically adverse to it but partly, I think, that is because I'm caught in a self fulfilling loop of the negative kind. I can't do such and such because, well... I just can't..
To make that positive I recognise that I am inhibited for whatever reason but if I step into that unknown where I can I find, from direct experience, that I can and the discomforts that I feel in doing something I thought I cannot do become manageable and weaker.
It has also been called a placebo effect. It works. It doesn't really matter to me why. I leave that to theorisers about such things.
The way I look at it is that I choose to identify with the healed me and from that position learn about and learn to deal with all the feelings I have about being that positive me.
It doesn't mean I stop feeling negative. It means I stop letting that negativity control or inhibit me.
Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,313
When I started, despite my nearly losing my life, I still wanted to drink - but I knew I couldn't if I wanted to see 50....
..so for a while I played the part of a sober person....until I changed, the obsession left me, and I was Sober Guy/Recovery Man for real
D
..so for a while I played the part of a sober person....until I changed, the obsession left me, and I was Sober Guy/Recovery Man for real
D
All is Change
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1,282
Another point I want to make that ties in with this.
I've been cocooning myself in a safe place. This has been giving me time to work out a lot of issues without getting more. That's good but in order to do more I have to take risks. The risks aren't what I do but what I feel when I do whatever I do.
It seems that in taking a risk I end up feeling worse. So, being protective of my sobriety I don't do it.
It feels that it gets worse but that's not what is happening.
Using the coping skills I've learned I find that in time that also passes and I've learnt that I can do it and survive what comes when doing it.
While doing the right thing that feels so wrong inside the wrongness starts to leave me. It passes away and if I do the right thing again there is less of a store of toxicity to inhibit me.
The habit changing feels painful for a time but that's not because it is intrinsically painful. It is because the changing lets go of buried pain. The pain rises and, when not pushed back inside or multiplied by acting out, is felt and passes away.
I've been cocooning myself in a safe place. This has been giving me time to work out a lot of issues without getting more. That's good but in order to do more I have to take risks. The risks aren't what I do but what I feel when I do whatever I do.
It seems that in taking a risk I end up feeling worse. So, being protective of my sobriety I don't do it.
It feels that it gets worse but that's not what is happening.
Using the coping skills I've learned I find that in time that also passes and I've learnt that I can do it and survive what comes when doing it.
While doing the right thing that feels so wrong inside the wrongness starts to leave me. It passes away and if I do the right thing again there is less of a store of toxicity to inhibit me.
The habit changing feels painful for a time but that's not because it is intrinsically painful. It is because the changing lets go of buried pain. The pain rises and, when not pushed back inside or multiplied by acting out, is felt and passes away.
All is Change
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1,282
And one more point...
Fake? no way, I'm gonna be me, honest, it's the only way.
It took a while for me to understand that it's not about that. Well it is but it isn't...
It's about identifying myself with the good that I can be. Honest, strong, wise, kind et.c. and then struggling with the habitual restraints I impose on myself that inevitably reveal themselves in the process.
Initially they can seem insurmountable but in time they weaken.
That me is more capable of being honest.
Fake? no way, I'm gonna be me, honest, it's the only way.
It took a while for me to understand that it's not about that. Well it is but it isn't...
It's about identifying myself with the good that I can be. Honest, strong, wise, kind et.c. and then struggling with the habitual restraints I impose on myself that inevitably reveal themselves in the process.
Initially they can seem insurmountable but in time they weaken.
That me is more capable of being honest.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: New Orleans, LA
Posts: 985
The power of human intention & creativity has created magnificent & unimaginable things.
Brilliant books, music, the frigging iPhone (I mean, c'mon! I grew up pre-computer - the first computer I saw as a child took up many rooms and read those little cards with punches in them. Now I communicate with friends across the Earth in an instant, on my personal phone-computer.)
If human creativity can create saxophones & pyramids & surfboards & an understanding of genetic codes, then I have to assume that anything imagined can be actualized.
And that means me, also.
It means I imagine & actualize my limitations & boundaries.
And that I am also capable of imagining & actualizing my extraordinary potentials.
In my past, bound with my alcohol use, I had some rage incidents that were not at all who I wanted to be. I want to be a non-violent human who inspires & soothes. I made it my commitment to relearn how to move inside emotion. I didn't immediately find my way to easy answers. During my (likely lifelong) quest, I still feel anger. But I can "act as if" it does not take over my being, & practice new ways of running that energy. I know that sometimes, when I am "being patient" my patient-voice sounds fake & pretend to myself.
Still, after some years of this exercise, I've found myself in some situations lately where "patient me" emerges - experienced & natural - & even my voice sounds real.
We have to practice stuff. We all missed some practices in our lives. I had to learn to be sober-me, & that required some awkward "practicing" (& in some situations, still does).
So I just think the "fake it till you make it" means "practice until it becomes an easy and natural part of you."
(& that we get to choose what we want to become & hold that vision!)
I think it is part of all creative process!
Brilliant books, music, the frigging iPhone (I mean, c'mon! I grew up pre-computer - the first computer I saw as a child took up many rooms and read those little cards with punches in them. Now I communicate with friends across the Earth in an instant, on my personal phone-computer.)
If human creativity can create saxophones & pyramids & surfboards & an understanding of genetic codes, then I have to assume that anything imagined can be actualized.
And that means me, also.
It means I imagine & actualize my limitations & boundaries.
And that I am also capable of imagining & actualizing my extraordinary potentials.
In my past, bound with my alcohol use, I had some rage incidents that were not at all who I wanted to be. I want to be a non-violent human who inspires & soothes. I made it my commitment to relearn how to move inside emotion. I didn't immediately find my way to easy answers. During my (likely lifelong) quest, I still feel anger. But I can "act as if" it does not take over my being, & practice new ways of running that energy. I know that sometimes, when I am "being patient" my patient-voice sounds fake & pretend to myself.
Still, after some years of this exercise, I've found myself in some situations lately where "patient me" emerges - experienced & natural - & even my voice sounds real.
We have to practice stuff. We all missed some practices in our lives. I had to learn to be sober-me, & that required some awkward "practicing" (& in some situations, still does).
So I just think the "fake it till you make it" means "practice until it becomes an easy and natural part of you."
(& that we get to choose what we want to become & hold that vision!)
I think it is part of all creative process!
sober style
Join Date: May 2016
Location: San Antonio
Posts: 2,381
I like your posts in this thread, Grymt. We are all capable of so much more than we realize. I was a traveling salesman as a young man and was greatly influenced by the power of a positive attitude, Zig Ziglar's ideas for instance. I need to put more of these ideas into practice myself, because beyond staying sober there's still a lot left I'd like to accomplish in this life.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2017
Posts: 66
I have a close friend who is a counsellor and she said something that stayed with me - 'your brain is like a soft record, you sometimes have to just do things repeatedly to get the needle to move into the right groove'
I take totally as 'fake it till you make it'.. If it should work, even if you don't believe it, try it and try it again. Eventually instead of always taking path A, you start taking path B occasionally and then voila, you start taking B more and more until you don't take A any more.
It doesn't work like that with addiction for me, but for the TREATMENTS for addiction that work for me (getting out of my head, spirituality etc.) it's a total winning move.
If you'd have told me that when I'm wound up and spinning in my head just to look at something, a flower, a tree, anything, and just look and pay attention to it, that you break out of the head spinning, I would have thought you were an idiot and gone back to my drinking Now after wearing that groove a little bit, its more of a trick in my back pocket rather than something I have to take on blind faith.
I found this to be true with many things in my sobriety program that just over a year ago I would have dismissed as utter nonsense. How this sobriety gig opens your eyes (or gives you a fresh pair of glasses as the saying goes)
I take totally as 'fake it till you make it'.. If it should work, even if you don't believe it, try it and try it again. Eventually instead of always taking path A, you start taking path B occasionally and then voila, you start taking B more and more until you don't take A any more.
It doesn't work like that with addiction for me, but for the TREATMENTS for addiction that work for me (getting out of my head, spirituality etc.) it's a total winning move.
If you'd have told me that when I'm wound up and spinning in my head just to look at something, a flower, a tree, anything, and just look and pay attention to it, that you break out of the head spinning, I would have thought you were an idiot and gone back to my drinking
Now after wearing that groove a little bit, its more of a trick in my back pocket rather than something I have to take on blind faith.I found this to be true with many things in my sobriety program that just over a year ago I would have dismissed as utter nonsense. How this sobriety gig opens your eyes (or gives you a fresh pair of glasses as the saying goes)
Member
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Baton Rouge, La.
Posts: 15,229
Even tho I didn't understand the lingo and
information quite clearly in early recovery,
I did do what was suggested to me as my
life depended on it. So yes, I 'faked it', went
thru the motions, drove myself to meetings
when I knew I wanted sobriety more than
I wanted to drink, sat for one hour each day,
one hour of my time, out of my day, to open
my ears and listen, learn, absorb and apply
important messages of hope, that if many
could and would remain sober one day at a
time, incorporating these tools and knowledge
of recovery in all areas of their life, then I would
and could remain sober too.
I faked it till I made it, till I understood and
stayed till I felt the miracle of recovery impacted
my life entirely.
I continue to remain teachable today some
26yrs of many one days sober added together
to get me where I am today. BLESSED.
information quite clearly in early recovery,
I did do what was suggested to me as my
life depended on it. So yes, I 'faked it', went
thru the motions, drove myself to meetings
when I knew I wanted sobriety more than
I wanted to drink, sat for one hour each day,
one hour of my time, out of my day, to open
my ears and listen, learn, absorb and apply
important messages of hope, that if many
could and would remain sober one day at a
time, incorporating these tools and knowledge
of recovery in all areas of their life, then I would
and could remain sober too.
I faked it till I made it, till I understood and
stayed till I felt the miracle of recovery impacted
my life entirely.
I continue to remain teachable today some
26yrs of many one days sober added together
to get me where I am today. BLESSED.
Member
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: W Washington
Posts: 11,589
it's also referred to as Act As If.....
long ago, on another recovery website, one of the members said to just keep your feet moving in a sober direction and all of you will get there eventually!
long ago, on another recovery website, one of the members said to just keep your feet moving in a sober direction and all of you will get there eventually!
Member
Join Date: Feb 2017
Posts: 252
If human creativity can create saxophones & pyramids & surfboards & an understanding of genetic codes, then I have to assume that anything imagined can be actualized.
And that means me, also.
It means I imagine & actualize my limitations & boundaries.
And that I am also capable of imagining & actualizing my extraordinary potentials.
And that means me, also.
It means I imagine & actualize my limitations & boundaries.
And that I am also capable of imagining & actualizing my extraordinary potentials.
This is how I see myself now: "I don't drink. I am not a drinker."
And I look ahead to a wise old sober me, years from now.
If I can imagine it, it can be true.
All is Change
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1,282
I appreciate all the comments. It's taken me a while to begin to understand this process. I was writing to the me that couldn't understand in the hope also that others would too. 
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