Cognitive regret

I did read the secret and much like the bible, it has been redone several times by good and some not so good people. I can't say I think the new version is more than American garbage but there are some things that should be looked at. The original secret version from the fifties can be found on youtube I have added it here as well 

https://youtu.be/UygnXqoKrC4

1. 95% of your mind is on subconscious autopilot and 5% is your conscious mind this means you slip in and out of autopilot every day of the week. 

2. If you want to mess with the subconscious there are 3 ways of doing that. Positive affirmations. hypnosis and Psych-K Muscle testing (Don't know much about the last one) 

3. Even if you did not get all the toys you wished for you still got some positive thinking out of it I hope, so in a sense, it is still a win.

It is easy to be miserable and depressed. We are naturally programmed to look for danger in our conscious brain so we can hide defend or attack. All this stress and worry is naturally also programmed in your subconscious. This mean that you need to make an effort if you want positive. You have to work on it. That is why the biggest egos on the planet also are some of the most successful. They don't do anything else. 

If it is not you that is ok. I don't judge.

But I still believe that we become what we think about.

Most likely the lockdown but it feels like more and more people need help with this atm. You have come to the right place and many experienced people will be happy to give you thoughts and ideas that you can use in your recovery.

For me lockdown has been the perfect storm to screw up, I relapsed and lost all of my savings on Monday.
My addiction wants me to be secretive, tells me that everything I do is shameful, or that I can just do this one objectively bad thing and then not do it any more and then it will be ok. I always allowed myself the get out clause of.. "well you always have no money and have to work your way back up, so what's different? you're used to it"
My commitment to recovery had been waining for a few months up to this point. I started to feel better after abstaining for a year, but didn't make other significant changes in my life, only restrictions on finances and my access to gamble. I would always find a way though as this recent relapse shows.
Anyway I keep leaving long rambling replies on other people's threads, and i'm not sure if it will be frowned upon. Either way it is helping me.

Thank you c43h for reaching out to people. Making connections with the recovery community is so much more important than have been viewing it previously.

Any casino on the planet will be just as silly with you as you will be with the casino (means you can play away for hours and you will lose for hours as they can see that they have you in a cognitive regret and that you will not budge till you are emptied out of money). For however long it takes (They can do this seven days a week all year round).

No money will buy you out of any algorithm which has been made to screw you out of your cash. ( That is what they are there for. To make money out of your inability to change)

There is no more plain truth than that. (However hard you think about this it will come back to an average truth that will not change for anyone).

Even if you win you lose. That is especially important for addiction. You can not win. Ever.

This could help you clear your mind when making decisions on your future 

A) What wouldn't happen if you did stop gambling?

B) What would happen if you did stop gambling?

C) What wouldn't happen if you didn't stop gambling?

D) What would happen if you didn't stop gambling?

What is it for? It is there to stretch your mind into giving yourself options that you can use when evaluating your personal situation. Hopefully, it will give you some good answers to use to your recovery.

I really needed to hear that. Thank you. It's been 4 days since I last gambled, I'm new to this site and finding all the stories I'm reading in some way have a link to my own.

We are in a trance-like state most of the time. 5% is conscious and 95% is subconscious if we are to believe the experts. That means that we are all habitual animals who learn things to remember them for a very long time. In fact, it gets very very hard to unlearn things like addiction as we are in a loop that keeps us coming back to it whatever we do. This loop or trance-like state can be broken. Your focus can be shifted into something else but you will need help to get that done. I will not be making any advertising on this site about other forms of therapy than what is given here but you may want to look up information about trancelike states. There is plenty of information to be had.

All the best in your recovery journeys!

C

I am more and more convinced that addiction is among other things a self trance of sorts. It has all the same signs a self trance and we do all the same things. Get zoned through the floor after a while. Our fight or flight brain can handle about 7 bites of information and that is not a lot compared to our subconscious that can handle way more. So let's say that is true for a second. Could we use a count up from this trance to get back to the surface? Could we create a 3 feeling awake and refreshed 2 noticing the room 1 wide awake now and presto. Trance is broken? There are people who ware diapers in Australia so they don't have to lose their slot spot. And in Vegas, you have the best chance in the USA to be revived from a heart attack as they have cameras and can get to you within minutes. They know that slot gamblers are zoned or tranced but how do we wake up from it. Could one pre-frame a magic word or does it have to be the wallet being emptied every time? I find this subject quite exciting as I believe that it could be remedied with the right tool or ritual but I have a hard time figuring out the wake-up word. Any ideas?

Well yes I have often used the word trace or zombie behaviour but I think its more complicated because it would leave part of my brain lucid but not the dominant force.

It is a drug addiction..that much I do know. The drip drip feed of dopamine does something to my addicted brain very quickly. In a very short space of time Im making ever more stupid decisions based on a chemical imbalance.  

However I realised that even in my later sessions part of my brain was still active in reality (going this is stupid...I hate it in here. I dont like that staff member...this is embarrassing..this wont end well...I better get out of here) but it was a submissive role in a split mind control illness.

If it was a complete trance I wonder why a trip to the service till wouldnt bring me to my senses. I didnt walk back from the servicetill like a zombie in a trance. I sort of felt normal with a strange compulsion playing it down that a bit more cash would do the trick. Probably more drained than anything mixed with its all going to come right 

I genuinely think its more like a hypnotism where you see people on a stage act doing silly things against their better judgement. I think there is something to do with auto suggestion where the brain wants its fix so the power to resist has to be countered.

Whether you believe in stage hypnotism or not there is something about the complex nature of the brain to get into a strangely hypnotic state 

I have openly said this is crazy, Ive got to get out of here but have stood rooted to the spot unable to act on that thought. Thats why I dont think I could count myself out of any trance while playing. I dont think I was fully in a trance but something was controlling me to stay...partly drugged. partly hypnotised..partly money...I dont really know.

Part of my brain could roam lucidly round the room as if almost looking in on myself gambling to extinction again. It could make observations on other gamblers who I mostly hated...it didnt stop me though.

I saw a guy wailing loudly that he was losing everything and waving his money over his head....but he continued gambling on the slot machines.

The diapers story shows how incredibly sad it gets.

Ive seen some incredibly sad looking alcoholics or class A users but we tend to forget that a gambling addict can look equally broken if not worse.

Its is substance abuse! The substance is the act of gambling and the mind controlling chemicals that creates in the brain.

Best wishes to everyone on the forum

In hypnosis, you have something called the critical faculty which is you the ability to chose right from wrong. That is bypassed in the induction and you as a subject will feel like you are looking at yourself from the side not able to do anything else but to look on at what is happening. As long as you are in the trance loop you play along with the session as it happens. I think the dopamine spikes we get enables us to be in the state we are in longer. Remember dopamine is just a reward chemical it is not the actual C*****e itself. It just leaves us wanting more.

The strange thing is the want. We are out of cash and we want to stop gambling. When we have cash we want to gamble. There are 3 negatives to 1 positive in the brain that means we are 3 times as likely to be negative about 1 experience compared to the 1 positive yet again we jump back into behavioural mayhem as soon as we get the fuel to go. Does WANT have anything to do with stopping or is that we are so blinded by the conditioning that we can not see it? I think to empower our beliefs are key. Wanting to stop is a must and we manage to bypass all our written data just to gamble is the craving for the dopamine levels to go back up. But here is a new thing. If you have been addicted your landing strip grows longer and longer. Ie we need more of the same to get on with the high so we need to keep on gambling for longer to get to our high levels of dopamine. Turn that around it means that we go on for longer but we don't get high. Yet with the conditioning, you can go a whole day on a slot where it launches cognitive regret on you and stops paying out anything for hours at the time. With this in mind. DO they know you are tranced/ zoned/ hypnotised? Hell yes. Why would an operant conditioning turn to be a cognitive regret at all unless they know?.

The upside is that you can change one hypnotic loop for another so it is possible to change your state with the right tool. It is just about knowing what to change.

From my own experience I think you absolutely go into a trance or zombie like state! I’ve had times where I’ve gambled 3/400 pound in the matter of hours and I’ve sat pressing spin, spin, spin until I’ve used every penny I’ve got! My rent money would be used (even though I was being threatened with eviction) my food shopping money would be gone and I’d have to ring my mum and try and make up an excuse so I could borrow money! The only time I would ever stop was if a message popped up saying “insufficient funds, please deposit” or I literally had nothing left after borrowing money from people too! I don’t think once you’re in that state of trance that a safe word or anything can work! Even if I had won back money I used and a bit extra it was always hard to stop, the only thing that would snap me out of a trance would be my partner coming in from work or like I said a message coming up.

Thats my opinion anyway ?

Its an interesting subject and the only things that have snapped me out of it are the more serious shocks like somebody being aggressive on the machine next to me, someone annoyingly crowding my space or seeing a close friend outside the bookies window. So I could be taken out of the zone but not often. I feel most problem gamblers were escorted out because they were disturbing other gamblers

Most times I just moved to another machine of found another gambling den later in the day so it was a temporary break

So was zoned in on the machine but part of me is aware of my surroundings, very aware that its a secretive and embarrassing activity . I therefore feel its a split mind disorder and the dominant part of my mind liked gambling. It is the simplistic image of the devil and angel on each shoulder to represent what philosophers have been discussing for Millennia

I have never been proud of being a gambler or even comfortable with it. It was always a secretive activity right from the start. When addicted I would never tell my family or friends so I must always have been aware that its a bad thing to do. Part of the hook was the naughtiness that I thought was spicing up my boring and lonely life The addiction loves secrets as that is what it thrives on

Ive spent nine hours straight just pushing a button which is a very long time. I like my own space and I don't like other gamblers around me. Didnt even like people asking if I wanted a cup of tea (luke warm dishwater)

Therefore you may have thought online gambling would have attracted me but I had a strong set of anti triggers related to that...never trusted the distance the programming down a a phone line or that they would ever pay me. Im glad about that but it didnt save my bank balance.

The slots are cleverly but deviously designed to part us from our money. They do pay for the support of psychologists. Every sound and every feature is designed to keep us in the zone...even the feeling of being cheated kept us in the zone...everything designed to hide and fool us about the real odds

Deregulation of the gambling dens is a monumental scandal

Best wishes to everyone on the forum

Thank you for all the interesting feedback.  A lot of what I am hearing is in tune with the trance state. The famous Tony Robbins once told an Australian lady who suffered from a severe gambling addiction that she needed to change her state. They also followed up on her and she seemed to have made a full recovery after change work with Tony. We must un-label ourselves. Do not be a gambling addict, be something else. Do not take that label. Do not ask why, ask how. How can I change today not why did this happen? Words have power and meaning and can change your lives profoundly if used correctly. Marcus Aurelius said what a man thinks he becomes and it could start by changing your personal label to something else.

All the best 

c

Interesting thoughts. I echo much of what has been said.

For me the process goes something like this. I get excited at the idea of gambling, the anticipation of gambling, the escapism, the naughtiness, the potential of winning some money just by repeatedly pressing some buttons and getting some features. I imagine the wins. I make plans in my head about when I will withdraw and what i might do with the winnings.. pay some bills, some debts... buy some new trainers, do some food shopping etc etc.

At the same time I feel some shame and guilt and self-loathing about thinking this way after so many years of doing this self-destructive behaviour. If am going into a bookmakers am sure to check that nobody I know has spotted me, often I travel to make this much less likely. Once am in am straight to the machines. As others have said I don't like it if the place is busy or there is loud or slightly aggressive characters and i hate being watched.. it makes me feel angry.

Once am at the machine and playing my usual slots I go into my gambling bubble very quickly. Firstly I feel a big surge of excitement waiting for the first win and if it happens am on cloud nine, but as always I usually just want a little bit more and if am losing i obviously want my money back. Either way I carry on gambling and then the trance like state takes over and then i know am doomed....

I think what is actually happening is more akin to a collapse of self-esteem and entering a depressed state of hopelessness and despair. I become deeply despondent. I hope for a miracle but even if a jackpot comes along, its just prolonging the agony really. I know whats coming. The walk of shame, the misery and the panick as i start to remember all the positive things that i could have done with the money i have just fed into a machine. A part of me just wants to delay that feeling for as long as possible so I keep myself in the gambling bubble... my trance like state... 

All the best

I don't gamble but I've seen Mr L doing it prior to the financial meltdown he inflicted when it got out of control.

Definitely a trance like state. I lost interest in shoving cash into a gaping m aw pretty quickly but he'd have continued (and did eventually behind my back) all night if I hadn't dragged him away.