When you stop gambling but keep on obsessing... How to get out of your mind and into your recovery
when overthinking takes the place of action
Quitting gambling might sound like something that should be straightforward and easy. It would be fair to say this is not the case. Do not let this fact deter you. Quitting is necessary and non-negotiable if you want a good life that you can enjoy and be proud of. In terms of getting started, however, it is not dissimilar to any other act of life that gets put off due to the hard work and effort required to take action.
Let’s look at a generic example: ‘Getting up on the treadmill’
It is not difficult to get up there. You just need to put one step ahead of the other …and there you are. Does this mean that people put one foot in front of the other and get up there as often as they suggest they want to? Nope. There is a reason why many housebound treadmills end up acting as expensive clothes-rails.
The same problem applies to healthy eating. It is not that most people don’t know what they should be eating or what types of food are healthy. Still, you will find that even those equipped with the knowledge and the willingess to be healthy, frequently fail to act on it.
In a nutshell; Knowing what to do -and doing it are sadly two different things.
One requires thought, and the other require both effort and action. It tends to be easier for people to fool themselves to go on crash diets, no matter how restrictive, than it is to commit to a long-term life change that is subtle. Even when most people know that the latter would be more sensible and bring better results. Short-term gratification is a major driver for our behaviours and one that has hardly been helped by the fact that our society nowadays provides plenty of reinforcement for a life full of instant rewards and outcomes. If you are hooked on gambling, you will find that your ability to delay gratification is at best quite rusty.
Thinking at the expense of action
So what happens when you ‘overthink’ something that you know logically really needs to happen? Let’s go back to the treadmill example:
You recognize that you would like to go for a run. You think about how many minutes you will try for, whether you should jog or just walk….should you perhaps add some incline? Wait a minute- let’s check if that fitness guru on Instagram had any good recommendations before you get up. Actually, you feel like you need the toilet. A few more minutes pass. By now, the emotional brain has most definitely caught wind of the hardship involved and quickly takes steps to convince you that it is better to delay action for another time. You start having rationalizations of why it is better to postpone your run for another time. At that moment, the excuses make a lot of sense. So you decide to leave the treadmill for another day or as you tell yourself ‘when you have a bit more motivation…’
Embarking on the recovery journey is not an easy hurdle to conquer. Far more complex (and a much bigger commitment) than the idea of getting up on a treadmill.
Therefore, you are highly likely to get caught up in worrying, ruminations as well as self-doubt. So much so, that you might even catch yourself creating reasons for why you could be one of those people for whom persisting with gambling might just work.
when you ‘spring recovery upon yourself’
Some people I have worked with have told me that they have been most successful when they ‘spring recovery upon themselves’. With this, they refer to the idea of not making a plan at all, since they know they are likely to bail on it anyway.
Instead, one day they just don’t gamble. And then they don’t gamble the next…or the next. It turns into recovery.
Even if many suggestions that I have made on the blog regarding the action steps pertaining to money restrictions, self-exclusion, etc require a bit of a plan, I can see why the idea of just ‘slipping’ into recovery might work on some occasions. If it means that people are prepared to start their recovery, only without the emotional anticipation and build-up that would come with a more planned approach then it is better than no recovery at all.
In summary: Plan if you are able to, but not at the expense of starting recovery!
The fellowships promote a similar notion of ‘just for today’. By reciting these words, the person in recovery is reminded of placing the focus on the present moment and the day ahead, as opposed to thinking about one’s ability to tackle future obstacles, which often forms an obstacle to getting started. These are wise words.
You will likely find that your ability to take action in recovery is negatively correlated with the amount of THINKING that you are doing about it - as long as such thinking is not resulting in some form of constructive action.
when you have stopped gambling but your mind is stuck obsessing
Overthinking is not isolated to the time frame where you are contemplating your recovery. Commonly people report that they have quit gambling, but continue to obsess about losses and keep thinking about the shame and pain they have caused. They may also worry about their ability to ever recover again. Much like cutting out an ex-partner that you keep obsessing and thinking about, gambling continues to take on a life of its own in your head!
If it felt useless to spend your time thinking of gambling when you were still gambling - it is likely to feel twice as bad now that you left the activity behind.
This phenomenon ensures that your mental resources get cluttered, and at times can even contribute to a return to gambling.
the thinking spirals that will tempt you back to gambling:
# Thoughts about the impact of the gambling addiction
You’d hope that after quitting, the mind should immediately quiet down and that the mental chaos and harsh self-criticism would stop with the cessation of the activity. This is far from the truth. In fact, for many people, the experience is usually one of feeling worse in the immediate aftermath of quitting. Having stopped is absolutely the right thing to do – never doubt that! When gambling has filled the part of thought/emotional avoidance and slight dissociation, you can however bank on a swift surfacing of all of the material that you were so invested in escaping from via gambling.
#obsessing about losses
Obsessing about losses, revenging the bookies, and/or fantasizing about covering up losses with a potential win are all common in the aftermath of stopping gambling. Your thoughts tell you that you could still win if only you use better control mechanisms or ‘stay more focused’. These are all part of an illusion of having more control than you really have.
Like one of those children’s lego-trains that go around and around the same small track- your mind is lacking in new pathways. It goes around the same circle time and again, telling you that another bet might just be the lucky one that will help you exit the stuck loop. In the process of believing your mind, you forget that the inaccuracy of your thoughts is part of the problem that made you persist with gambling for so long. If your thoughts ‘did not mind’ taking you down this hole, please accept that coming out of the hole means you will need to apply some filters on your mind chatter.
People are often keen to justify their obsessions about losses by statements such as : ‘well if I didn’t think about it, it means I don’t care about what I did’ or ‘I have to figure out where I did wrong, therefore I need to go over it again’
You are clearly a person who cares about your losses. I also understand that you would like to understand better. The pathway to showing up as someone who cares and wants to understand will however NOT be found via the continued obsessing on the same old stuff!! Action is the only route that will enable new pathways to form. Thinking back to your lego train track, you will need to start building an alternative exit so that your little brain-train can try out a new route.
# thoughts about one’s likelihood to be successful in recovery & thoughts about chasing back the money
Obsessively ruminating about whether or not one has what it takes to conquer recovery is very common. This type of thinking frequently gets muddled with some sprinkles of denial, during which the mind likes to think up reasons for why you could just have a few more rolls of the dice. DO NOT BELIEVE any of these rationalizations. Instead, take swift action to recognize that the mind is keen to return to its old habit mode. For your mind, this may well equate to the idea of suggesting gambling as a solution for just about any problem; be it emotional or practical. When you take a large enough step back from your situation, it should be no challenge to recognise that gambling has not delivered. It has caused harm and will continue to cause harm unless you start applying real solutions to the problems in your life.
Thinking about how you have become victimized by gambling. You are allowed to feel sad about what has happened but try to avoid the trap of powerless victimhood!
This type of rumination will frequently be initiated in a subconscious attempt to understand and analyze where the wheels came off the bus and how to avoid a repeat of the same events. If you tune in to your thoughts you might however notice that the thinking spirals are not conducive to finding solutions. The process of thinking is in no way at all even looking for a solution. Instead, it is regurgitating old failures and misfortunes and serving up all the feelings associated with such. If anything, the rumination might re-ignite other non-gambling-related problems from the past. You might find yourself engaging in angry thoughts about how cheated you’ve been. You might also feel quite concerned about the amount of guilt, shame, and negativity you now struggle with and feel sorry for yourself. For each uncovered layer of shame, you find yourself becoming increasingly demoralised and further from taking action.
Please note, that I am not saying that there is no room for you to feel sad about things. You MUST AND SHOULD acknowledge that you have strong feelings that are trying to make themselves heard. But even so, there is nothing further that will be gained from obsessing over such feelings or allowing them to create doubt in you. The feelings will be released and resolved via processing and healthy expression. Processing will frequently feature some form of action as well. The feelings will not be resolved via endless thinking spirals and ruminations. You take your power back when you realize that your mind is yours to care for. You have to get into the driver's seat and decide the direction irrespective of how much unfairness you have suffered along the way. This is one of the hardest steps to take, but also one of the most important ones, as it immediately puts you back in control of your condition.
# thinking that there is a ‘right’ way to embark on your recovery journey and conclude that you have not found it yet or that you are not ready for it. You tell yourself you will be ready ‘soon’.
There is no one right way to do recovery. Quitting is the commonality of all successful recovery. So is self-awareness. If you don’t know what the next steps are, just know that you are doing good enough. It will at least buy you time to check in with yourself and assess what your best next action steps would be.
(there are many more)
Obsessional thinking that acts as fuel for cravings
The trouble with the extended dwelling on the possibility of using gambling as a way of winning money, achieving a better mood state, or solving some other problem is that it makes you more likely to act on such thoughts. There is interesting research on a form of thinking referred to as ‘desire thinking’ that can help shed light on why this happens. REF (Caselli & Spada).
Having been led astray by your thoughts for the duration of your addiction- how can you now trust them? The short answer is - you can’t! Many of the thoughts you have in a day will be nothing but attempts of the mind to drag you back to the familiar, yet destructive, pattern of gambling.
Although a part of you knows that gambling is not useful, your emotional brain knows only what you have ‘taught it’ so far. Harsh as it may sound: your actions and habits to date have helped create a strong habit to obsess and gamble. Note that I am not suggesting it is your fault. The emotional brain learns through experience and having once got a taste for the buzz or emotional escapism that gambling provided, it now computes ‘gambling brings that good feeling- let’s suggest some more of that when things get rough or whenever things are dull and boring’.
Real-life example….
A thought enters the mind that reminds you of your mounting losses. Rather than recognizing that this thought is repetitive, annoying, ‘faulty programming’ and completely unhelpful- you embark on an extended rumination about how bad you are for having done what you did. ‘What would have happened if you had stopped sooner? The amount of money you could have spared…’ and on it goes. Your subconscious mind thinks it is helping you out by prompting you to think ‘hard’ about what went wrong the last time, how to break the habit etc. In your attempt to find the answers, you keep ruminating. Keep worrying. Sometimes you might even ruminate on how much you are obsessing and ruminating. In the end, you feel tired, depleted, and burnout. You have energy for just about nothing useful and end up feeling defeated, helpless, and stuck in self-pity.
Another thought comes along. It suggests that gambling could be a way to break away from the current state of mind. It feels likely that it could also act as the solution for the many problems you have accumulated. So off you go to have a bet.
Overthinking preoccupies your bandwidth and takes you away from construcive action. It temporarily blocks your ability to solve problems & apply good solutions. Much like a working memory of a computer gets clogged from heavily draining software, your working memory is not going to be able to cope with much else when you are preoccupied with rumination and worrying!
how to rein my thinking mind in?
The importance of taking action and reinforcing a stance where thoughts do not dictate your reality. You choose which thoughts to action and which ones to leave alone!
When you feel stuck, low, or craving. Try and check in with your mind.
Are you ruminating, worrying, obsessing? Are you dwelling on gambling losses? Try and label the different forms of thinking that you can identify.
By doing so, you are already starting to take a little step back from your thoughts in order to create the necessary separation. The detachment from your thoughts is what will enable you to have CHOICE when it comes to determining the thoughts that require attention vs those that are useless or destructive.
Uncovering your hidden unhelpful beliefs about thinking:
Ask yourself ‘what might I be trying to accomplish by doing all this dwelling? ’
Depending on the reasons you pick out, try and see if there are better ways of accomplishing such aims. If, for instance, you notice that you are worrying in order to find a solution to the problem, you will be better off using some problem-solving skills. Examples of such might be pros/cons analysis, structuring up an action plan, or more efficient goal setting.
If you find yourself stuck thinking about the past or future, ask yourself ‘is there anything constructive I could DO about this instead?’ If there is- DO IT! If there is not, try to disengage from thinking and prompt yourself to take some sort of helpful action. The idea is that you divert your thinking to a more solution-focused, usually action-based approach. If the answer to your question is ‘no, I cannot do anything’ you might find that it is even harder to disengage your mind from overthinking. At this point, it is, however, critical to recognize that you are wasting your time, resources, and efforts on dwelling in areas where nothing productive or constructive can even be done.
Wishing you all the best and thanks for reading XX
For those of you interested in deepening your understanding of metacognitions and beliefs about our thinking I recommend reading the following:
Caselli & Spada (2012) The Effect of Desire Thinking on Craving: An Experimental Investigation
Lindberg, A, Fernie, B and Spada, M. (2011) Metacognitions in Problem Gambling