Breaking The Cycle: Addiction Or Indulgence
Written by Crystal Yeager
Breaking the cycle of addiction or indulgence will be a long road, however, working with a therapist can help with this need for dependency. This dependency can be prompted by the lack of self-satisfaction or ongoing issues in one’s life. An addiction is an obsession or compulsion to a certain thing or act, that you create a need or dependency on, in order to feel satisfaction in your life.
“Be it sugar, social media or sex, the response in our brain is the same: It produces the "feel-good" neurochemical called dopamine, which brings on feelings of pleasure and motivation. "It may be even more important for motivation than for actual pleasure," says Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford Medical School psychiatrist, researcher and author of the new book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. A dopamine hit brings about pleasure, and then is quickly followed by pain, or a come down, in order to keep us motivated, (Hu and Nguyen, 2022).
Working with a therapist or clinician is a great way to address any addictions that you may be struggling with. It is important to address these addictions head on, instead of minimizing or pushing aside the things you are struggling with. A therapist will refocus and provide skills to assist with the addiction. Therapy aims to help individuals understand what causes addiction, learn to recognize risk factors for relapse and develop tools for coping with stressful situations. Common techniques include:
Cognitive behavioral therapy, Motivational interviewing, and even EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).
“Facing our unconscious fears and fantasies rather than avoiding them brings a whole new perspective. Over time, it actually tends to make them less scary. The monster under the bed is revealed to be just what it is: more imaginary than real, (Hu and Nguyen, 2022).
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