ADDICTIVE CYCLES
If you are a human being, living on planet Earth, you’ve probably experienced some level of addiction or compulsion in your life. Alcohol, heroin, porn or flipping the light switch on and off a hundred times in a row are not the only examples of addiction or compulsive behaviors. Over-eating, co-dependency, even exercise-abuse can become harmful and addictive cycles that restrict your life and keep you unfulfilled. Compulsive behaviors like these often go undetected for a lot of people who accept them as a part of their “normal state”, and for others who are self-aware of these cycles, they can seem impossible to break out of when you don’t have the tools to interrupt these deeply-ingrained patterns.
What makes these cycles so uncontrollable and so difficult to break free from is the fact that the human body is physiologically wired to avoid pain and chase pleasure. This animalistic survival mechanism has allowed us to progress as a species for countless generations. However, it is also this survival mechanism that sabotages us from living thriving and fulfilling lives. Our bodies were built for fear (to survive), not for happiness (to thrive), after all.
“If you are a human being that is seeking fulfillment, happiness and a thriving existence, you have some work to do...”
So, if you are seeking fulfillment, happiness and a thriving existence, you have some work to do— to reprogram your survival mechanisms, lodged deeply in your psyche, and replace them with nurturing conditions, which will allow you to be free of the automated patterns that restrict you from living your best life. (This is essentially what I see as the whole point of being a “self conscious species” - because we are capable of overriding our own body’s conditionings and evolving into more advanced states… but that is a topic for another time!)
What is an addiction, exactly?
Typically addiction is classified by dependency and being unable to stop doing a compulsive behavior—it becomes automatic and uncontrollable. In essence, an addiction is anything that you find yourself repeatedly doing, even though you know it will result in not feeling good afterwards. So this can really apply to a lot of things. But no matter how severe or mild the behavior may seem, the fact that this pattern exists keeps people locked in a restricted state that stifles evolution and fulfillment. It’s also particularly notable to mention that addiction causes people to say or do things that are out of alignment with their intended integrity, authenticity, or who they really are. Stealing from people you care about, staying home to binge eat instead of attending a party, lying incessantly to try to get people to like you, uncontrollably needing to check and recheck how many likes your post got… whatever the compulsion may be is essentially a quick fix that ends up feeding the need for more of that thing.
A lot of people experience hopelessness, shame, judgement and decrease of self-esteem when stuck in cycles like this. Why can I not get myself to stop? If I tell myself I don’t want to eat more than three bites of cake, then why is it that when the cake is in front of me, I lose all self-control and eat the whole thing until I feel sick? Where is my willpower?
Well, long story short, addiction is not about willpower, nor self-control. It’s about pain, trauma and lack of the nurturing feelings that can help heal those shame-inducing behaviors.
Fortunately, there is a way out of this shame-inducing pattern. It involves reprogramming the psyche.
So, how do you recondition your own psyche?
First, acknowledge that we all basically just want to feel good all the time and avoid feeling bad.
Then, realize that this is completely unsustainable! The more you avoid pain, the more junk accumulates in your psyche, and that junk is what is fuelling your addictions. Because you are wired to avoid pain, and every time life puts you in a circumstance that makes you uncomfortable you accumulate more junk, your body is automatically and compulsively seeking anything and everything that will put it out of this pain. Your body is trying to soothe all that junk that is starting to really stink and rot wayyy back in the crevices of your unconscious mind - kind of like if you threw away a bunch of banana peels with your plastic recyclables - the plastic won’t decompose, and the banana peels will just fester and get super gross. Because you didn’t dispose of your junk properly, it’s going to cause you more problems, more pain to try to avoid. So it becomes impossible for you to stop at just one glass of wine, or bottle. You’ll say or do anything it takes to end up in relationship that ends up toxic again. You ate that entire chocolate bar when you told yourself you’d just have a nibble, and now you feel sick… You get the point. It feels good momentarily, numbs your pain, or provides fleeting pleasure, and your body is wired to want that, so it’s undeniable. You feel awful about yourself, and then the cycle continues, over and over again because the junk has never been removed.
Once you’ve acknowledged this pattern exists in you life, you can start looking for the junk. This magical process is all about locating the junk, and processing it, so it can decompose and dissolve— kind of like composting!
There are many ways you can compost the junk in your psyche, and if you’re familiar with me and my work you’ll know that some combination of unconscious or subconscious-accessing meditations and hypnosis are most effective. But you can also practice some exercises in a waking state:
Locate the junk:
What are you stressed/upset/angry about?
What uncomfortable emotions are you avoiding?
Where did these feelings originate?
Figure out why you didn’t process it when it originated
Were you too young to understand?
Did you not know any better?
Were you avoiding the pain?
Process it now:
If you needed to scream in anger then, but didn’t, scream it out now! Into a pillow or out in a field, but get it out.
If you needed to cry then, but held it in, give yourself some space to cry now.
Allow yourself to have the feelings that didn’t get a chance to be expressed when the junk originated.
Identify what you needed in that moment:
What made you upset/stressed/angry/etc?
Did you lack nurturing or affection?
Did you lack attention or acceptance?
Learn to give yourself what you lacked in that moment when the junk originated:
If you needed nurturing from a parent and didn’t receive it, learn to nurture yourself.
If you needed acceptance from someone and always felt you lacked it, learn to accept yourself
Assess your relationship with the thing you’re addicted to
Whether it’s food or heroin, it doesn’t matter, your unconscious mind has made an association with this thing and identifying what it provides you is key
Learn to give yourself the thing that this substance is a substitution for
This is not an overnight process, but it is a magical one that can change your life. Shattering addictive cycles can open up an entirely new, elevated, optimized state of existence. If you’re willing to do the regular and consistent introspective work, you’ll be stepping into an evolved, thriving and fulfilling life!
