I guess I wrote that badly. Did it sound like the second version I wrote involved overriding?

Are you familiar with Dan Siegel’s work? He points to an ever-present (scientifically verified, by the way) calm, peaceful awareness which our pre-frontal cortex (not at all what most people think of when they imagine the “conscious mind”) is well integrated, with the full range of brain structures, cortical and subcrocial.

When resting calmly in that core peaceful awareness, , without any “push” or desire to “control” or “override,” it’s possible to effortlessly “allow” any desire, craving, impulse, fear — even the most traumatic — to arise and pass away with no repression involved.

Jeffrey Schwartz was one of the first — several decades ago — to demonstrate in replicated, well controlled studies that this kind of non controlling awareness can actually lead to physiological changes in individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder, leading to an easy letting go of compulsions rather than using what is conventionally known as “willpower” to “override” the compulsions.

Since then, similar physiological changes have been found when the same process of resting in the open, calm awareness and simply effortlessly allowing whatever arises — in individuals with severe depression and anxiety, severe levels of trauma, attention deficit, and a host of other psychological AND physical conditions (including a wide variety of chronic pain conditions, sleep and eating disorders, and much more).

The use of the word “willpower” tends to confuse people a lot, as it can lead them to feel they are helpless victims of some kind of deterministic genetics, which has been shown in repeated psychological and neurological studies to simply be false.

In any case, if you reflect on it and decide you still want to use “willpower,” that’s fine!:>)) I would just suggest to take some time and let it sink in and see if something else doesn’t spontaneously emerge.

I really like your columns and your overall approach by the way. Whatever language we use, it feels to me like you have indeed an intuitive connection to that inner calm. I’m just mentioning this one thing which might be, I hope, useful.