Soft Addictions- Signs
Soft Addictions- Signs
Here are a couple ways to help you define the line between a soft addiction and a productive activity:
Zone out. One way of identifying a soft addiction is to ask if you zone out as you’re doing it. When a person is zoned out they aren’t completely engaged. We may be checked out or have a "nobody’s home" look on our face. Zoning out implies that the truegoal of the activity is numbness. Even though we are physically engaged, our mind is off somewhere else. When the activity is over we frequently don’t remember what we’ve done, watched, or read. While this frequently happens when watching TV, it can also happen while shopping, working, having superficial conversations, or during any number of activities.
Avoiding feelings. Some activities numb us to our emotions, especially very strong emotions. We escape feelings by being numb, enhancing certain feelings we like to the exclusion of others, or even indulging in your favorite unpleasant feeling to avoid other feelings. Many of us feel uneasy about our most intimate feelings, whether positive or negative. We frequently don’t understand how to safely handle our sadness or anger (or, in some instances, even our joy), so we find an activity or a mood that facilitates an emotion-muting state, smothering our sadness, anger or other unresolved emotions.
Compulsiveness. Are you driven to indulge in a specific activity or mood? Do you feel compelled to do, have, or purchase something, no matter if you understand that it’s not necessary? This may be accompanied by a helpless, powerless feeling. You may be unable to stop or reduce the amount of hours used on the activity. Although you may find some transient pleasure, you usually don’t feel good about yourself after engaging in it. You persist in going along with the routine, all the while saying to yourself, this is the last time. No matter how hard you try to stop, you can’t.
Rationalization. If you are defensive or make excuses for your behavior, chances are it’s a soft addiction. Denial is refusing to admit and rationalization is making excuses to justify a compulsive behavior. Both blunt our awareness of ourselves and lower our expectations of ourselves. To make our actions acceptable, we overlook, cover up, or dodge the actual reason or price. We either convince ourselves that the habit isn’t a problem or we rationalize why it is a good or necessary way to use our time. "What’s so terrible about a few cups of coffee?" is a typical rationalization. Another rationalization we might make is to deny that the many hours spent on the internet are a great waste of time. The inclination to rationalize an activity implies that you have a soft addiction.
Stinking thinking. Related to denial and rationalization, "stinking thinking" is faulty thinking centered on mistaken beliefs. Oversimplifying, magnifying, minimizing, justifying, blaming, and emotional reasoning are a few examples. Stinking thinking generates the silly rules and logic of soft addictions. For example, "there are no calories when I eat standing up," or "I can’t exercise if I have already taken a shower." Woven throughout soft addiction routines, this sort of faulty thinking is addictive in itself. The tainted thoughts encourage indulgence in a soft addiction in the first place and later on make it easy for us to justify the indulgence.
Covering the behavior. Be cautious of habits that become guilty amusements you seek to conceal. Hiding the amount of time you spend on an activity or lying to others about how you frequently use your time or your money are signs of soft addictions. In other words, you are ashamed of what you’re doing and that is why you want to hide it.
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By: Blake Provo
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Judith Wright is an internationally recognized author, speaker, educator, and seminar leader. She teaches workshops on overcoming soft addictions and creating "More" for 12 years. You may contact her through her Web site at www.theremustbemore.com. See also American Community Corrections Institute (ACCI)
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