The Psychology of Gossiping – in a snapshot

When to Fake It Till You Make It (and When You Shouldn’t)

Faking it for the right reasons can change you for the better. Here’s why.

Posted Jun 27, 2016By Amy Morin

One day, a client came to see me because she felt socially awkward. She knew that her inability to make small talk was holding her back both personally and professionally. As a shy person, she hated going to networking events. But making connections was vital to her career.I asked, “What do you usually do when you go to a networking event?” She said, “I stand awkwardly off to the side and wait to see if anyone will come talk to me.” I asked her, “What would you do differently if you felt confident?” and she said, “I’d initiate conversation and introduce myself to people.”

Right then and there, she discovered the solution to her problem: If she wanted to feel more confident, she had to act more confident. That wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear. She’d hoped for a solution that would immediately make her feel more confident. But the key to becoming more comfortable in social situations is practice.Her instinct was to wait until she felt more confident, but that confidence wasn’t going to magically appear out of thin air—especially if she was standing around by herself. However, if she started talking to people like a confident person, she’d have an opportunity to experience successful social interactions, and each of these would boost her confidence.

Acting “As If”

Acting “as if” is a common prescription in psychotherapy. It’s based on the idea that if you behave like the person you want to become, you’ll become like this in reality:

1. If you want to feel happier, do what happy people do—smile.

2. If you want to get more work done, act as if you are a productive person.

3. If you want to have more friends, behave like a friendly person.

4. If you want to improve your relationship, practice being a good partner.Too often we hesitate to spring into action. Instead, we wait until everything feels just right or until we think we’re ready. But research shows that changing your behavior first can change the way you think and feel.

The Biggest Mistake Most People Make

Faking it until you make it only works when you correctly identify something within yourself that’s holding you back. Behaving like the person you want to become is about changing the way you feel and the way you think.If your motives are to prove your worth to other people, however, your efforts won’t be successful, and research shows that this approach actually backfires. A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people who tried to prove their worth to others were more likely to dwell on their shortcomings. Ambitious professionals who wore luxury clothing in an effort to appear successful, and MBA students who wore Rolex watches to increase their self-worth just ended up feeling like bigger failures. Even worse, their attempts to project an image of success impaired their self-control. They struggled to resist temptation when they tried to prove that they were successful. Putting so much effort into faking it used up their mental resources and interfered with their ability to make good choices.

How to “Fake It” the Right Way

Acting “as if” doesn’t mean being phony or inauthentic. It’s about changing your behavior first and trusting the feelings will follow. As long as your motivation is in the right place, faking it until you make it can effectively make your goals become reality. Just make sure you’re interested in changing yourself on the inside, not simply trying to change other people’s perceptions of you.

Addiction fundamentally alters the brain’s reward and decision-making systems through well-documented neurobiological mechanisms. When substances like drugs (including alcohol and nicotine) are consumed, they trigger massive releases of dopamine in the brain’s reward circuit, particularly in areas like the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area. With repeated exposure, the brain adapts by reducing natural dopamine production and decreasing the number of dopamine receptors, creating tolerance and requiring increasingly larger amounts of the substance to achieve the same effect. This neuroadaptation hijacks the brain’s natural reward system, making everyday activities less rewarding while the addictive substance becomes disproportionately important.

Over time, addiction also impairs the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for executive functions like decision-making, impulse control, and weighing long-term consequences. This creates a neurological double-bind: the midbrain structures driving craving and drug-seeking behaviour become hyperactive, while the prefrontal systems that would normally regulate these impulses become weakened. Chronic substance use also disrupts stress response systems, making individuals more vulnerable to relapse during difficult periods. These changes help explain why addiction is recognised as a chronic brain disease rather than simply a matter of willpower – the neuroplastic changes can persist long after substance use stops, though the brain does have remarkable capacity for recovery with sustained abstinence and appropriate treatment.

The Challenge of Stopping

The challenge of stopping stems from the profound neurobiological changes addiction creates in the brain’s fundamental survival systems. The brain essentially learns to treat the addictive substance as necessary for survival, similar to food or water. When someone tries to quit, they face intense physical withdrawal symptoms as their neurochemistry struggles to return to homeostasis, combined with psychological cravings that can persist for months or years. The damaged prefrontal cortex makes it extremely difficult to override these powerful urges with rational decision-making, while stress, environmental cues, and emotional states can trigger automatic drug-seeking responses that feel almost involuntary. This creates a cycle where attempts to quit often lead to temporary success followed by relapse, which many interpret as personal failure rather than recognising it as part of the neurological reality of the condition.

Addiction appears progressive because tolerance drives escalating use over time, while the brain’s reward system becomes increasingly dysregulated. What begins as recreational use gradually shifts to compulsive use as natural dopamine production diminishes and neural pathways become more deeply entrenched. The condition typically follows a predictable pattern: initial experimentation leads to regular use, then to use despite negative consequences, and finally to compulsive use where the person continues despite severe impairment in major life areas. Additionally, chronic substance use often damages the brain regions responsible for insight and self-awareness, making it harder for individuals to recognise the severity of their condition. The progressive nature is also influenced by external factors – as addiction advances, people often lose social supports, employment, and housing, creating additional stressors that fuel continued use and make recovery more challenging.

Understanding addiction when you’re not “addicted” to alcohol or other drugs

The difficulty in understanding addiction, even among people with their own compulsive behaviors, stems from several key differences in how these conditions manifest and are perceived. While behaviors like sugar consumption, social media use, or shopping can indeed activate similar dopamine pathways, they typically don’t create the same level of neurobiological hijacking that occurs with substances like alcohol, opioids, or stimulants. Addictive drugs often produce dopamine surges 2-10 times greater than natural rewards, creating more profound and lasting changes to brain structure and function. Additionally, many behavioral compulsions allow people to maintain relatively normal functioning in major life areas, whereas substance addiction typically leads to progressive deterioration across multiple domains – relationships, work, health, and legal standing.

The social and cognitive factors also create barriers to understanding. Most people can relate to losing control occasionally – eating too much dessert or spending too much time scrolling their phone – but these experiences usually involve temporary lapses that can be corrected relatively easily through willpower or environmental changes. This creates a false sense of equivalency where people think “I can stop eating cookies when I want to, so why can’t they just stop drinking?” They don’t grasp that addiction involves a qualitatively different level of brain change where the substance has become neurobiologically essential, not just psychologically preferred. There’s also often a moral lens applied to addiction that doesn’t exist for other compulsive behaviours – society tends to view overconsumption of legal, socially acceptable things as personal quirks or minor character flaws, while addiction to illegal substances or excessive alcohol use carries heavy stigma and assumptions about moral failing, making it harder to see as a medical condition requiring treatment rather than simply better self-control.

A Word On Nicotine (Tobacco Products)

Yes, nicotine absolutely does release large amounts of dopamine, making it highly addictive despite being legal and socially accepted in many contexts. Nicotine causes an increase in dopamine levels in the brain’s reward pathways, creating feelings of satisfaction and pleasure.Research shows that nicotine, like opioids and cocaine, can cause dopamine to flood the reward pathway up to 10 times more than natural rewards.

This helps explain why nicotine addiction can be so powerful and difficult to overcome, even though people often view smoking or vaping as less serious than other forms of substance addiction. Repeated activation of dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area by nicotine leads not only to reinforcement but also to craving and lack of self-control over intake. The addiction develops through the same basic mechanisms as other substances – as people continue to smoke, the number of nicotine receptors in the brain increases, requiring more of the substance to achieve the same dopamine response.

What makes nicotine particularly insidious is its legal status and social acceptance, which can make people underestimate its addictive potential. The rapid delivery of nicotine to the brain (within 10-20 seconds when smoked) creates an almost immediate reward that strongly reinforces the behaviour. This is why many people who successfully quit other substances still struggle with nicotine, and why nicotine addiction often serves as a gateway that primes the brain’s reward system for addiction to other substances.

Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, gives four options for any problem that you face: Solve the problem, change your perception of the problem, radically accept the situation, or stay miserable.

When we are overwhelmed by a life challenge, one way we might naturally respond is by defending our position. Perhaps, we’ll resort to an effective yet temporary coping strategy like denial, projection, victimhood, or blaming. We attempt to cope in ways that lessen the stress – the internal discomfort and unpleasantness. Coping strategies that offer temporary relief generally make the situation worse in the long run, especially when fostering relationships at work and in our personal lives. For example, crawling back into bed when you need to work or have commitments with friends. Maybe you over-eat, use chemicals or resent the world, which alleviates the immediate emotional pain, then feel guilty or ashamed afterward. 

Sometimes, in an effort to take action, people attempt to solve problems cognitively – problems that cannot be solved, becoming more and more frustrated when their efforts don’t work. Others become paralyzed or dissociate, unable to decide what to do. Intense emotions can be overwhelming, fatiguing, and compromise our ability to think with an open heart and a clear mind. Searching endlessly for the right solution adds to anxiety and distress.

Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, gives four options for any problem that you face: Solve the problem, change your perception of the problem, radically accept the situation, or stay miserable.

Choice 1: Solve the Problem.

There are many problem-solving strategies, but most use the same steps. First, define the problem. Be as specific as possible. Use numbers whenever possible. For example, “I’ve been late for work four days this week.”

Next, analyze the problem. Is it in your power to solve the problem? If not, then consider one of the other three options. If yes, then continue to analyze the problem.

What are the reasons you’ve been late? Is the reason always the same?  Does it depend on your mood or what time you went to bed? Does it depend on what tasks you have to do at work? Who you work with? Where you went the night before?  Consider the who, what, when, and where of the behavior you want to change.

The third step is to consider possible solutions. Think of various solutions that could solve the problem. Evaluate the solutions carefully to determine which might work best for you. What are the pros and cons of different actions? What could go wrong? What can you do to make the solution more likely to work?

For example, if you decide to give yourself a weekly budget and to freeze your credit cards in a block of ice, what would you do in case of an emergency? Would giving yourself a certain amount of spending money for the day work better than an amount for the week?

A key variable to remember is how difficult it is to make changes in behavior. A strong commitment to change is important. Be specific in stating the change you want to make. Be willing to make small changes at first. Implement the solution: Take action. Trouble-shoot as you go along, tweaking it to resolve any issues you didn’t anticipate.

Choice 2: Change Your Perception.

Changing your perception of the problem can be a challenge. An example of changing your perception of a problem might be to see a difficult boss as an opportunity to work on coping with someone who is disorganized and demanding. If you feel irritated because your house is cluttered with toys, maybe change your perception to one that the clutter is a signal to be grateful for young children in the home. Changing your perception could also mean changing your view of emotion. Instead of trying never to feel anger, look at your frustration as a source of information, perhaps a signal that you need to speak up for yourself.

Choice 3: Radically Accept the Situation.

Radical Acceptance means wholeheartedly accepting what is real. Radical acceptance is like saying, “It is what it is,” and giving up your resistance to the situation. Radical acceptance could be about issues we can’t control or concerns that we decide not to change, at least for the time being. It doesn’t mean you agree with what has happened or that you think it is reasonable.

Choice 4: Stay Miserable.

Of course, staying miserable is not a choice anyone wants to make, and no one would want to consider it as an option. But if you can’t solve the problem, can’t change your perception, and you aren’t ready to radically accept the situation, then staying miserable is the only option left.

Staying miserable may be all you can do in certain situations. Sometimes staying miserable may be what you have to do until you are ready to do something else. There are ways to cope that can help until another option can be used.

In future posts, we’ll look at specific skills that enhance your ability to problem-solve, change your perception, or radically accept situations. We’ll also consider ways to get through the times when you can’t make any of those choices.