Ask yourself: How would my life change if my addictive behaviors changed?
As you look at your life and how you’ve veered off course, you may be wondering what happened? How did I get here? What’s wrong with me?
The good news is that you’re not weak, stupid, evil or mentally ill. What has happened is that you’ve learned to depend on substances or behaviors to help you deal with your life, or to solve a problem: be it depression, anxiety, pain, a difficult or traumatic childhood, a bad relationship, or lack of fulfilling relationships, sexual issues, or other things.
People with addictive behaviors tend to think that they are different from other people, that they have good reasons for doing what they do. It is common to hear clients say, “if you had my life, problems, job, childhood, boss, spouse, pain, you’d do this too.” The reality is that you most likely are not so special, that millions of others have had your problems, and worse, and have learned to live life without harmful or degrading behavior, whether they once did or not. You can change, I’ve seen hundreds do so.
What might be especially difficult for you to grasp is that for all of your efforts, intelligence, will and desire, you just can’t stop going back to the harmful behavior. No matter how many times you promise yourself to quit, you eventually find yourself back at it, and feeling even more miserable afterwards.
The problem is that you are using the thinking, reasoning part of your brain – the prefrontal cortex – to figure out why you use or how to quit, but the deep urges, the desire for relief or excitement, is coming from a much more primitive part of the brain – the mid-brain – where much more basic functions are controlled, like hunger, safety (fight or flight) and core sexual urges. You have trained this part of your brain to believe it needs to continue the behavior, and all of the logic and reasoning in the world isn’t going to change that.
How do you change this? Understanding the concept is a good start, but actually not entirely necessary. Of course it must begin by stopping the addictive behavior. I help you achieve this by doing a full assessment of your history and current habit and behaviors. Then we map out what changes you need to make to start living the life you want to live.
Science has shown us that if you can reach ninety days of abstinence your chances of long-term change are greatly increased. This is when the start of real changes happen in your brain chemistry – your brain begins to return to its state prior to your using. Simple pleasures come alive again, depression can lift, and additional work can invigorate and revitalize you. Stop putting it off – decide to changing your life today – decide that you are ready to do whatever it takes to get you life back on track!
How many times have you said “I’ll quit tomorrow?” Today is that day. Take back control of your life right now. Call now for an appointment.
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