You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 109.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.

Alright guys, so I want to start doing a new segment here where I'm going to answer your questions in an episode.

So I hope for all of you who have questions, you've been wanting to reach out, ask, find my opinion, hear from me about what I have to say that you will send me an email at podcast at RachelHeart.com.

You can of course do this completely anonymously, but I would love to just have a space and a forum where I'm able to answer your questions.

Alright, so let's talk about the learning trap today.

It's such an important thing and it's something that I watch so many of my clients fall into this trap.

Now when I first discovered the thing feel like cycle, it really did blow my mind.

It really was earth shattering for me because suddenly I had this framework to explain why it was that I was drinking this action, this decision that had felt sometimes not even like a decision.

It felt so mysterious. All of a sudden I had this framework to understand why it was happening.

There was always a thought and a feeling attached to it and the more I repeated that cycle, the more habitual it became.

And so I became a woman obsessed. I started studying how habits work in the brain.

I started learning about cognitive science and how you can actually rewire your brain.

You can actually overwrite old habits. Habits that aren't serving you with new ones.

And I started learning about how the brain evolved.

This piece of evolution is really important because how the brain evolved really colors really affects how we think today.

I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, but it's why we often have so many negative thought patterns and why we're so good at spotting problems and so good at spotting danger, which really helped us when humans were living in the brain.

Humans were living in a very dangerous world and there was danger all around us, but it's not so helpful for most of us today.

So, you know, I threw myself into this work and I love learning about it. I still love learning about it.

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