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

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:

• Dr. Jud Brewer
• 319 Dr. Jud Brewer: Simple Ways To Break Bad Habits
• 388 Dr. Jud Brewer | Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind

[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

• Dr. Jud Brewer
• 319 Dr. Jud Brewer: Simple Ways To Break Bad Habits
• 388 Dr. Jud Brewer | Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind
• Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins
• A Painful Case by James Joyce
• Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D.
• Gabor Mate
• Mindshift Recovery
• The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk

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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, 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.

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