Psychiatrist Explains Why You Fail Quitting Bad Habits (and How to Finally Break Free) - Dr. Jud Brewer

Wellness + Wisdom Podcast

Josh Trent

Emotionalintelligence, Behaviorchange, Mindfulness, Religion & Spirituality, Mindset, Neuroscience, Self-improvement, Habits, Wellness, Consciousness, Anxiety, Fitness, Behavioralpsychology, Education, Health, Breathwork, Nutrition, Meditation, Organic, Strength, Mentalhealth, Depression, Spirituality, Psychedelics, Personalgrowth, Selfhelp, Supplements, Selfdevelopment, Physical

4.6 • 895 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why can’t you quit your bad habits, no matter how hard you try? And are you ready to uncover the crucial missing link?

Josh Trent welcomes Dr. Jud Brewer, Neuroscientist and Psychiatrist, to the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, episode 758, to reveal how your survival mechanisms hijack your mind, why willpower is NOT the key to quitting bad habits, and how understanding habit formation rewires your brain for lasting change.

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In This Episode, Dr. Jud Brewer Uncovers:

[00:55] Understanding The Mind

Why doom scrolling numbs us out and allows us to avoid feeling shame.
How our survival mechanisms trick our brain.
How meditation helped Dr. Jud understand and take control of his mind.

Resources:

[06:05] How to Heal Anxiety

How curiosity helped Dr. Jud start question about his mind and explore what to do about it.
Why only 1 in 5 people see improvement when taking anxiety medication.
The mindfulness app Dr. Jud and his team developed has an over 60% success rate in treating anxiety.

[10:40] Can It Be Easy to Change Bad Habits?

When we don't know how our brain works, we can't make it work for us.
The importance of understanding how habits are formed.
How we can unlearn habits that get in the way of our growth.
Why awareness is essential in changing our habits.

[14:00] You Generate Your World Based on Your Past

Why we can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it.
How we can't think our way out of a habit.
Which brain regions help us strengthen our neuro-pathways.
How we can't process all the sensory information that happen in one moment.
Why we're all hallucinating our world based on our past experience.
How our expectations limit our sensory information according to the story we tell ourselves.

Resources:

Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins

[21:35] What Is The Source of Your Curiosity?

A Painful Case by James Joyce
Why most people are disembodied.
How psychedelics open us up to seeing the world clearly without the stories we're telling ourselves.
The difference between deprivation curiosity and interest curiosity.
Why information is essential for survival.

Resources:

A Painful Case by James Joyce

[28:05] Curiosity Heals Anxiety

How children have curiosity that's driven by joy.
Why we lose interest curiosity as we grow older.
How interest curiosity can help us with anxiety.
Why curiosity opens us to learning.
How interest curiosity improves the way we approach conflict.
Why we can't fake curiosity.

[37:25] Psychedelics + Parts Work

How IFS therapy with MDMA changed how Josh sees his partner.
Why we don't realize that our stories get in the way.
The similarities between meditation and mind-expanding drugs.

Resources:

Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D.

[47:10] Willpower Doesn't Heal Addiction

How the definition of addiction has evolved.
Why social media and advertising are engineered to be addictive.
How some everyday actions can turn into an addiction.
Why people believe they need more willpower to heal from addiction.
We don't have willpower, but we have awareness.
How addiction is a result of behavior.

Resources:

Gabor Mate

[54:00] How to Let Go of Porn Addiction

Mindshift Recovery
How Dr. Jud has been helping people understand how their brains work and how to heal their addictions.
Why pornography can't replace an authentic connection.
How porn addiction is healed the same way as any other addiction.
Why our brains are always comparing.
Why Dr. Jud can't convince anyone to heal, but can offer his curiosity and care.

Resources:

Mindshift Recovery

[01:01:35] The Relation Between Addiction + Trauma

How we can't separate the brain and the body.
Why people who struggle with addiction are interested in understanding how their brain works.
How people develop wisdom through their own experience.
Why the cause of addiction doesn't matter.
How our reward value creates a positive prediction.

Resources:

The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk

[01:09:15] The Only Way Out Is Through

How avoiding unpleasant sensations makes us not process negative emotions.
The importance of being open to feeling difficult emotions.
How we can become curious about our emotions and where we feel them in our body.
Why the cure for the pain is the pain.
How self-judgment can be

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All Resources From This Episode

Power Quotes from Dr. Jud Brewer

"Changing a habit is not about willpower. We don't really have willpower. What we do have is awareness. We can't think our way out of a habit because that's not how they form. We have to feel our way out." — Dr. Jud Brewer

"Addiction is habits. And the behavior that we have is driven by feeling unpleasant and we want it to go away. Often we get this brief relief but it's actually perpetuating the cycle. And it's just feeding the want of wanting to feel better instead of meeting the need for connection. We're just putting band aids upon band aids because we don't know how our brains work." — Dr. Jud Brewer

"We're all hallucinating our world. We're generating our world. We're creating a story of the world every moment that is based on our past experience." — Dr. Jud Brewer

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About Dr. Jud Brewer

Dr. Jud Brewer | Why You Fail Quitting Bad Habits (and How to Finally Break Free)

Dr. Jud Brewer, MD, PhD, is a pioneering psychiatrist and neuroscientist whose breakthrough fMRI studies first revealed how mindfulness training quiets the brain’s default-mode network, linking reduced self-referential thinking to improved attention and emotional regulation.

His lab has mapped the neural circuitry of craving and habit, demonstrating that mindfulness-based interventions can halve relapse rates in smoking cessation compared to gold-standard behavioral programs.

With over 15,000 citations to his name, Dr. Jud continues to translate cutting-edge neurobiological insights into transformative strategies for mental health and habit change.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If you want to change a habit, it's not about willpower. We don't really have willpower.
0:04.9	What we do have is awareness. We can't think our way out of a habit because that's not how they form.
0:11.0	We have to feel our way out.
0:13.4	Dr. Judd Brewer is a New York Times best-selling author and thought leader in the field of habit change.
0:19.5	How does this relate to addiction? It's really about just seeing, oh, these are habits.
0:22.6	And the behavior that I have is driven because I feel unpleasant.
0:26.6	I want to make that go away.
0:28.6	Because often we get this brief relief, but we have to see that that's actually perpetuating the cycle.
0:32.6	And it's just feeding a want, which is I want to feel better,
0:36.6	instead of meeting a need, which is I need to feel better, instead of meeting a need,
0:38.2	which is I need connection.
0:40.3	And then we get addicted to that because we're just putting band-aids upon band-aids upon band-aids
0:45.5	because we don't know how our brains work.
0:47.0	Because if we don't know how our brain works, how can we possibly put our brain to work for us?
0:52.8	And the only way to change it is to...
0:58.0	So, people are doom scrolling at a rate maybe we've never seen before. And you said something
1:05.2	recently in an interview that just rocked my world. You said, shame is a habit loop. Self-flagellation feels better than doing
1:13.2	nothing. How does that relate to our addiction with phones right now? Oh, it's everything.
1:19.9	You know, shame feels bad. Doom scrolling numbs us out. And so it feels better than beating ourselves up.
1:29.1	So we do it.
1:30.0	So you can see that shame feels better than doing nothing.
1:34.2	Doom scrolling feels better than feeling ashamed of ourselves.
	...

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