We all have unhelpful habits, and whether you overeat, use substances, or worry, you may have noticed these habits have gotten worse lately. In this episode, Diana joins Dr. Judson Brewer (Dr. Jud), neuroscientist and author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits, for a fascinating conversation about why stress makes our habits and addictions worse. Additionally, they talk about what’s happening in your brain when you’re caught in these habits, and how to unhook from even the trickiest ones using mindfulness and curiosity.

Listen and Learn:

• Diana’s and Debbie’s pandemic habits
• How Diana’s shifting unhelpful habits to values-based ones (get her free download here!)
• The three core elements of a habit
• What’s happening in your brain when you are craving
• Why uncertainty and stress makes it harder to break unhealthy habits
• How anxiety and rumination are similar to smoking and eating 
• Dr. Jud’s groundbreaking brain research on mindfulness and the Default Mode Network
• How curiosity changes your brain and why it is key to unhooking from habit loops
• Why it doesn’t work to “think your way out of a craving” or “think your way out of anxiety”
• Mindfulness tools you can use right now with yourself and your kids to get grounded
• Why swapping choosing kindness and generosity over self-righteous rumination is “so much sweeter”
• The personal values that underlie Dr. Jud’s work

Resources

• Five Finger Breathing with Dr. Jud Brewer
• Watch Dr. Jud study Anderson Cooper’s brain in an fMRI
• The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How we can Break Bad Habits, by Dr. Judson Brewer
• Dr. Jud’s Ted Talk: A Simple Way To Break a Bad Habit
• Dr. Jud’s App-based behavior change programs: Unwinding Anxiety®, Eat Right Now®, and To Quit®.  Get 20% off with coupon code OFFTHECLOCK
• Change unhealthy habits into values-rich ones with this handout
• Dr. Yotam Heinberg on “growing roots” practice

Listen to Diana’s interviews with Paul Gilbert here and here to learn more about threat, drive, and compassion systems in the brain

<figure class="alignright size-medium"><figcaption>Dr. Jud Brewer</figcaption></figure>

About Dr. Judson Brewer

Dr. Judson Brewer is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and associate professor in psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. Before that, he held research and teaching positions at Yale University and the University of Massachusetts’ Center for Mindfulness. Read more about his research here.

As an addiction psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for treating addictions, Dr. Jud has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety (Eat Right Now, Unwinding Anxiety and Craving to Quit).

Based on the success of these programs in the lab, he co-founded MindSciences, Inc. to create app-based digital therapeutic versions of these programs for a wider audience, working with individuals, corporations, and hospital systems to put effective, evidence-based behavior change guidance in the hands of people struggling with unwanted behaviors and “everyday addictions.”

• 72. Committed Action with Dr. DJ Moran
• 103. Healthy Habits with Dr. Dayna Lee-Baggley
• 4. Habits: The Science of Behavior Change
• 90. Dr. Paul Gilbert on Tricky Brains, Caring, and Living Like Crazy
• 145. Caring, Compassion, and Cooperation with Dr. Paul Gilbert
• 46. Altruism And The Flow Of Compassion With Dr. Yotam Heineberg