Our brains are wired to keep us safe when we sense danger. If we are experiencing physical or emotional pain, our brains work every possible scenario until it finds the most effective and efficient way out of the pain. What our brains do not understand is that sometimes those pathways out of pain actually create more lasting and long-term pain because they negatively impact our overall quality of life. 
Wendy defines a vice as something we turn to when our emotional or physical resources are low. It is something we do to escape, numb, cope, or provide us the temporary relief. Something becomes a vice when it interferes with your quality of life and impacts it negatively. Most vices start out as something pleasurable or something healthy, but when done to excess, cross into the vice category. 
Identifying and addressing our vices is an important step to finding our happy, healthy weight and overall contentment after bariatric surgery. These vices will eventually lead to weight regain because vices make us feel shameful or guilty, which then draws us back into our old eating habits. We must identify our vices and work to cope with stress and discomfort in different, healthy ways. 
Episode Topics:

Defining vices.
Describing how vices impact our lives before and after bariatric surgery.
Finite vs infinite vice resources.
Learning how we can identify our own vices and how we can get to the root cause of the vice.
Tools that we can use to replace or vice with healthy coping skills. 

Wendy Rawlings is an amazing Licensed Mental Health Counselor who seems patients all over the nation. Visit Wendy online at www.wendyrawlings.com
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