“The secret of change is not to focus all your energy on fighting the old but on building the new”. Socrates
Addiction & Bad Habits
I wonder which of these apply to you?
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Feeling hopeless and powerless
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You operate on an automatic pilot when it comes to “thrill substance” or behaviour
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Feeling guilty and ashamed about behaviours or consumption of “thrill substance”
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Feeling that your life, relationships and career are affected
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Having these “Why did I do that” moments
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Being overly self-judgmental
Is it a bad habit or addiction?
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Bad habits, by definition, are things we wish we didn’t do. But not all bad habits are equal. Nail-biting is an annoying, embarrassing bad habit. Smoking is a habit that’s significantly worse for our health. Substance use disorders resemble bad habits gone amok. Addiction threatens the health of the individuals involved as well as those around them. Ultimately, its ill effects harm entire families and societies.
With all drugs of abuse, our brains get a jolt that creates waves of neural changes, orienting our attention to the drug, creating initial feelings of pleasure, and motivating our continued use. We start to crave the addictive substance and need higher and higher doses to get the same effect. Our judgment and ability to make decisions become impaired. We find the drug difficult to resist, even though we may not like it or its long-term effect on us. Drug abuse thus resembles a bad habit in that it does not depend on our conscious desires and liking for the “high” we get through use. We intend to stop but find ourselves continuing to use.
Addictions and habits ask different commitments from us. With a true habit, our commitments to its ongoing execution diminish over time. Habits settle in, and we can more or less forget about them. An addiction settles in, and it takes over our lives. More and more of our waking day is spent in its thrall.
How can hypnotherapy help?
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Many people who want to stop a bad habit or addiction may have already made multiple attempts to do so before trying hypnotherapy. This pattern can lead to feelings of discouragement, frustration and even hopelessness. Hypnotherapy increases a person’s chance of success by addressing major contributing factors to dependence like low self-esteem, emotional trauma, or stress, as well as resolving conflicts between conscious and subconscious motivations.
Conscious and subconscious motivations may differ. For example, a person who has made the conscious decision to stop their dependent behaviour may still continue to make choices that undermine that goal, which could be due to subconscious motivations.
Subconscious motivations are often related to the desire to meet basic needs for well-being, comfort, pleasure, and safety. A conflict arises when an attempt is made to change the behaviour that has met those needs in the past without providing a viable alternative. The hypnotherapist can help the person identify these unconscious motivations and find healthy alternatives to meeting those needs.