Addiction Is Manifold
How You Stop Self-Destruction
Addictions are numerous. They are devastating. Killing your wild aliveness.
Addictions are persistent. Once you are in, it can be hard to get out. It takes your awareness and persistence to make a change.
Addictions do not show up out of nowhere. They usually form one part of a broader survival strategy that a person has taken on to cope with life. Your addiction has allowed you to survive so far, so why should you let it go? Even if you can already see the dimensions of your addiction, it is more ‘comfortable’ to stay with what you already know.
After all, your addiction is not the problem — it is the insufficient attempt at a solution to what lies beneath. So what is the real problem?
Different Types Of Addictions
There are different types of addictions. On the one hand, there is the addiction to substances, such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco or medication. On the other hand, there are behavioral addictions. They show up in the fact that you feel a strong urge to repeat one or even several behaviors continuously. For example, scrolling through social media, talking down to yourself, complaining about others, pornography, constantly writing or replying to messages, being perpetually online and available. The level of addiction increases more and more in order to experience a certain kind of satisfaction at all.
In the process, the whole thing gets out of control, and you turn more and more in circles.
How You Recognize An Addiction
In my research and exploration, I have come across a few points that I find very helpful in recognizing addictions. I pass these on to you as a reality check so you can get clarity about your addictions. You can just skim through the next five points, but it will be much more impactful if you let them hit you and write down which of the your behaviors they apply to:
- You feel a strong desire, a constant desire or even compulsion to perform the behavior. Your thoughts keep circling around, “When is the next opportunity?”
- You can no longer stop the behavior — you have become powerless over it. You are unable to just let it go, even though you are already painfully seeing the results in your life. You catch yourself doing it again and still can’t let it go.
- More, more, more — your addictive behavior shows up more and more often. At first it was quite manageable, but now it takes on features that are no longer acceptable.
- You experience withdrawal symptoms when you do not pursue your addiction — for example, you become very restless or aggressive.
- You isolate yourself, other things become unimportant — the main thing is to be able to pursue your addiction.
Okay, do you have your list of addictions? I am transparent first: for me, the main addiction is overworking. I am in the process of consciously dissolving this. How? Read on.
Addiction Is Not The Problem
The real problem with this whole matter is not the behavior itself. It is not good or bad to do sports, to surf the internet, to work, to eat, to watch videos or to think something through.
It becomes problematic when you use this behavior to numb yourself, to not have to feel yourself, your true impulses, Feelings and Emotions. This means you keep turning to your addictive behavior to compensate for something. You are in survival mode instead of consciously looking.
What you repress is mostly very old. It goes back to childhood (maybe you even came to earth with it). Already as a toddler, or during your adult life, you got used to behaviors in order to not have to look at it anymore — because it was just too painful. You started to conform, to make yourself small, to numb, to please everyone, and that still shows in your behaviors today. Are you constantly available in messenger services, afraid someone might resent you if you don’t respond in time? Do you drink alcohol or numb yourself with cake so you don’t have to perceive fears of failure?
And now our parts come into play. We all have parts. And there is a part that does whatever is necessary to keep your childhood survival strategy ‘successful’. This part is called ‘Gremlin’. The part of your Gremlin that you do not own, owns you! And your Gremlin is the master of addictions.
Addiction And Unmet Needs
In my previous article I already highlighted the different parts, our ego states, and also briefly the childhood needs. The driving forces in the Child ego state are unmet needs.
There are five main needs:
- Certainty
- Adventure
- Love
- Belonging
- Significance
If these were not fulfilled, they continue to be the drivers in your adult life. But childhood is over. If you try to fulfill the needs of the Child ego state as an adult, it is the same as trying to change the past: You will never succeed because the unmet needs are in the past. You will never be able to “fix” your unmet childhood needs, just as you cannot make yesterday’s dinner uneaten again. If you are not aware of this condition, you then try to bring your life back into balance with compensation strategies.
And now comes the link: The research in the Gremlin Transformation has shown that if you try with ONE (unconscious) behavior to compensate for several of the unfulfilled needs, then it is an addiction.
Your Gremlin likes to push the Child Ego state so that you can continue to pursue your addictions, those destructive behaviors you use to try to fulfill your unmet needs. This is like trying to put a big Band-Aid over your wound instead of carefully tending to your wound. You just do not want to look. Now, if you also choose a pretty Band-Aid that looks great on the outside, you might get some admiration for your behavior. For that, I am going to take my example with the makeover again. It may look quite great, what you supposedly bring into the world. But if it comes from a motive of “must”, from pure survival, it is not sustainable. You will burn out in your survival strategies.
Shift Your Focus
So how about going right to the root of it? To a place where you actually want to do everything you do instead of having to? One way to do that is to consciously work and heal your childhood Emotions. But not only that! Your addictions, above all, reveal your core wounds. And the core wounds are not resolved with Emotional Healing Processes. Instead what is needed is the is the loving acceptance of a neutral researcher: “Ah, once again my core wound shows up.” By doing so, you no longer need to go into despair or self-manipulation about it, but can create a gap. With the gap, you then have the power of choice not to go there now. Start over. Back to day 0 of not acting out your addiction. And in the beginning you will go back to day 0 relatively often. And with time and working intensively with your own underworld, the span gets longer and longer.
What supports your process is shadow work, Gremlin Transformation, as well as the 12 step programs that now exist in different categories (see Experiment 2).
Research Here Further
If you want to dive deeper into the topic of addiction, I recommend the following websites where you will find more and more distinctions from the context of Possibility Management:
- https://addicted.mystrikingly.com/
- https://gettingoffbraindrugs.mystrikingly.com/
- https://gremlin.mystrikingly.com/
- https://dramaholic.mystrikingly.com/
Love,
Lisa
P. S. For more information on dealing with destructive behaviors, addictions, and Gremlin transformation, please contact info@lisaommert.com.
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Experiments
Experiment 1: SPARK 017
Make the multi-month experiment from S.P.A.R.K. Number 17 (short for ‘Specific Practical Applications of Radical Knowledge’). This experiment goes deep into looking at your own Emotions that lie behind your addictive behavior.
Experiment 2: 12 Step Program
12 Step Programs are international assistance programs that support recovery from drug addiction, behavioral addictions, and compulsions.
The first twelve-step program, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), was developed in the 1930s and helped its members overcome alcoholism. Since then, dozens of other organizations have derived from the AA approach to treat problems as diverse as drug addiction, gambling addiction, sex addiction, and binge eating. You can also look at destructive, violent behavior directed at you or others (perpetrator-victim-rescuer) in the Violence Anonymous program. And, if all your work revolves around meeting your unmet childhood needs, then check out Workaholics Anonymous.
