How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked

　　By Pema Chödrön

　　Shenpa is the urge, the hook, that triggers our habitual tendency to close down. We get hooked in that moment of tightening when we reach for relief. To get unhooked we begin by recognizing that moment of unease and learn to relax in that moment.

　　You”re trying to make a point with a coworker or your partner. At one moment her face is open and she”s listening, and at the next, her eyes cloud over or her jaw tenses. What is it that you”re seeing

　　Someone criticizes you. They criticize your work or your appearance or your child. At moments like that, what is it you feel

　　 It has a familiar taste in your mouth, it has a familiar smell. Once you begin to notice it, you feel like this experience has been happening forever.

　　The Tibetan word for this is shenpa. It is usually translated "attachment," but a more descriptive translation might be "hooked." When shenpa hooks us, we”re likely to get stuck. We could call shenpa "that sticky feeling." It”s an everyday experience. Even a spot on your new sweater can take you there. At the subtlest level, we feel a tightening, a tensing, a sense of closing down. Then we feel a sense of withdrawing, not wanting to be where we are. That”s the hooked quality. That tight feeling has the power to hook us into self-denigration, blame, anger, jealousy and other emotions which lead to words and actions that end up poisoning us.

　　Remember the fairy tale in which toads hop out of the princess”s mouth whenever she starts to say mean words

　　 That”s how being hooked can feel. Yet we don”t stop—we can”t stop—because we”re in the habit of associating whatever we”re doing with relief from our own discomfort. This is the shenpa syndrome. The word "attachment" doesn”t quite translate what”s happening. It”s a quality of experience that”s not easy to describe but which everyone knows well. Shenpa is usually involuntary and it gets right to the root of why we suffer.

　　Someone looks at us in a certain way, or we hear a certain song, we smell a certain smell, we walk into a certain room and boom. The feeling has nothing to do with the present, and nevertheless, there it is. When we were practicing recognizing shenpa at Gampo Abbey, we discovered that some of us could feel it even when a particular person simply sat down next to us at the dining table.

　　Shenpa thrives on the underlying insecurity of living in a world that is always changing. We experience this insecurity as a background of slight unease or restlessness. We all want some kind of relief from that unease, so we turn to what we enjoy—food, alcohol, drugs, sex, work or shopping. In moderation what we enjoy might be very delightful. We can appreciate its taste and its presence in our life. But when we empower it with the idea that it will bring us comfort, that it will remove our unease, we get hooked.

　　So we could also call shenpa "the urge"—the urge to smoke that cigarette, to overeat, to have another drink, to indulge our addiction whatever it is. Sometimes shenpa is so strong that we”re willing to die getting this short-term symptomatic relief. The momentum behind the urge is so strong that we never pull out of the habitual pattern of turning to poison for comfort. It doesn”t necessarily have to involve a substance; it can be saying mean things, or approaching everything with a critical mind. That”s a major hook. Something triggers an old pattern we”d rather not feel, and we tighten up and hook into criticizing or complaining. It gives us a puffed-up satisfaction and a feeling of control that provides short-term relief from uneasiness.

　　Those of us with strong addictions know that working with habitual patterns begins with the willingness to fully acknowledge our urge, and then …

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