It doesn’t matter if the addiction is to substances, gambling, alcohol, shopping, or sex. Everyone with an addiction shares things in common:
1. Strong feelings: everyone has a wide range of feelings that can be positive or negative. However, people who lead with their feelings often end up living in the ditch. I have found over the years that many of my addicted clients report that their anxiety motivates them to resort to unhealthy coping strategies. Your unruly feelings often play a key role in your addiction pattern.
2. Lack of skills – Those who do not know how to deal with their feelings in a healthy way, seek alternative methods. For example, someone who has relationship problems and doesn’t have a good self-image could be a likely candidate for becoming a workaholic. They can become very valuable in the workplace and learn specific job skills, but they don’t solve your other personal problems.
3. Facilitators: Most people with addictions can name the person who first introduced them to the substance or activity that triggered an addiction. They also often have people in their lives who have contributed or allowed the addiction to continue with their inappropriate behaviors.
4. Fantasy and cravings: When a person is thinking about addiction in an obsessive way and has a craving to use his approach, he is not available for his responsibilities.
5. Detachment – Sometimes it can appear that the addict has two people living inside. There is the public person who presents himself well and the private person who is involved in a secret lifestyle. In many cases, the person has been able to separate one from the other and sometimes does not even remember doing specific things because he has become so good at separating the two. This is common in a number of problem areas, such as eating disorders and sexual addictions.
6. Tolerance: Over time, it will be necessary to increase the amount or potency of a substance or activity that is needed to produce a high to obtain the same effect. Those who start out looking at porn, for example, may require more and more frequent or more powerful images. Some may advance chat lines and affairs, start hiring prostitutes, or add violence to their sexual experiences.
7. Withdrawal: distress can occur when addiction is not fed. A person may feel frustrated, angry, or unable to function when abstaining. Withdrawal can be physiological and / or psychological in nature.
8. Consequences: People with addictions often also experience relationship problems, financial and work problems, legal encounters, deteriorating health, shame, and self-loathing. Over time, their lives can become unmanageable.
9. Defense mechanisms – Denial, projection, blame, repression, rationalization, intellectualization, minimization, diversion and manipulation are some of the ways in which the person avoids facing reality and receiving treatment.
10. Temptations – An addicted person has formed a life that promotes addiction. Your friends, activities, schedules, and habits revolve around addiction. He / she is able to get a short-term “fix” easily, as that has been his / her pattern. Recovery, therefore, involves tackling one day at a time, knowing that a long-term commitment to change will be difficult.
11. Opportunities to change – No matter where one goes in the world, there are supports and resources to help the addicted person. But that person has to be ready and willing to change. Alcoholics Anonymous, group therapy, public agencies, and private therapists are just a phone call away. Employers offer Employee Assistant programs and insurance companies generally recognize addiction as a medical problem that qualifies for disability benefits.
12. People who love them: If you are worried about someone who is involved with an addiction, you need help. You cannot change another person, but you can work on yourself. The best thing to do today is to schedule an appointment with a psychologist who specializes in addiction so that you can start working on your healthy future.
