3 Powerful Ways to Begin Releasing Addictions in Your Life Right Now

prim·i·tive

adjective

1. relating to, denoting, or preserving the character of an early stage in the evolutionary or historical development of something.

tool

noun

1. A?tool?is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task.

That's what an Addiction is.

A primitive tool.

It is something that helps you "modify features of the [neurological] environment" or otherwise, "accomplish a particular task [like feeling emotional safe, secure or confident]," and it is of the "early stage" of your development.

For example, if you eat, smoke, drink, watch, work and/or masturbate compulsively, in your brain at least, you are solving a problem for yourself.?

Perhaps you are "emotional eating," which is one way to describe alleviating anxiety with food, or perhaps you are simply "calming your nerves" or "relaxing" with cannabis, tobacco or alcohol.

Perhaps you are working incessantly, "busying yourself" with as much professional content and responsibility as possible, in order to avoid the pain, the anxiety and the helplessness you feel in other areas of your life.

Perhaps you're attempting to alleviate your own sense of emptiness by scrolling Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or Disney+ at any given moment.?

Perhaps you're watching porn and masturbating as often as possible to feel more connected, more powerful and more wanted in your life. Perhaps you?literally do all of these things everyday?as an attempt to actually meet your unmet emotional needs.

Whatever it is that fries your personal chicken, the truth of the matter is, you are using these things as "tools," mostly to alleviate the anxiety that you're experiencing. And of course, the same is true with cocaine, methamphetamines, heroine and even excessive physical training.

Think about it.?

All of these things (food, sex, money, drugs and many others) offer a temporary sense of relief, joy and power.

They elicit the release of neurochemicals like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline and other endorphins that, literally, yield the experiences of connection, happiness and power -?granting you the literal opposite?of fear, anxiety, loneliness and helplessness.

And it works. Like, actually works.

These things?actually?make you feel happier, more connected and more powerful and thus, not afraid, not helpless and not anxious - for a little while, at least.?

And this is where the "primitive" part of these tools come into play.

Because, what inevitably happens is, as the temporary-nature of these "tools" comes into play - and that high feeling becomes a fleeting one - you begin wanting more. And your tolerance for these things grows. A gram/day becomes an eighth. An eighth becomes a quarter. One cookie/drink/hour of screen becomes two. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight. Eight becomes sixteen.

And you know what, eventually, a million isn't enough anymore either. Neither is two.?Hell, I know that I said $10M would be enough, but now I'm half-way to $20M, so I might as well right?

And so what happens now is, you've become addicted to your addiction.?

The lack of your "tool" now becomes the source of your anxiety, which thus, strengthens?The Need?for that thing in your life, and your own?Neediness?in general. You begin perceiving yourself as totally powerless without these things.?

Without your?tools?of survival - your actual emotional fragility shows up and you crumble. ?

In fact, who YOU are in the first place, is totally lost in your own man-made jungle of who you thought that you needed to become (working, smoking, drinking, watching etc) in order to avoid what was creating your own anxiety in the first place.?

But what if, once you become aware of the use of the "tools" in your life (and their unsustainable, costly nature) you actually began to shift your focus onto the original source of the anxiety in the first place?

Have you actually ever thought about it? Did you know that was even an option?

I mean, truly, have you ever actually created the space for yourself to poke around inside your own heart and mind to ask why you feel the way that you do?

Was it the sadness from your parents divorce that was always ignored??Was it the pressure from your family's expectations? Was it the lack of attention they gave you? Was it the death of a loved one that was never actually talked about? Was it being black, brown or queer in a white world? Was it being the poorest kid in your own friend group? Or perhaps, was it being the wealthiest?

Whatever it was, I CAN GUARANTEE YOU it was some version of:

• NOT FEELING HEARD?(or feeling seen or cared for or valued from your parents or primary caregivers)

and/or

• NOT FEELING in the HERD?(meaning, feeling unaccepted by your family, friends and social groups where you sought connection)

There are not greater human needs than these right here.?

Both of them, being?seen?and "heard," and also connected with others around us, feeling in the "herd," is how we, humans, define ourselves. It is how we know that we are safe and alive and?good?in our own lives. And without these two needs met fully, fear, insecurity and disconnection (i.e. loneliness) grow and spread until stopped.

So, if you've actually read this article to this point, and you're actually interested in your "3 Powerful Ways to Begin Releasing Addictions in Your Life Right Now," please hear me now:

Addictions are NOT:

• Diseases (at least not in the medical sense)
• Mental "Disorders" (you aren't "out of order," you're not an arcade machine)
• Moral or Ethical Failings (you are not "bad" or less than somehow)
• Who You Are (i.e. - you are not?an addict; unless you decide it so)

Nothing is?wrong?with you.

You have experienced trauma. Like, actual capital "P"?Pain?and I don't care how nice you think your past or childhood was.?One way or another, you were not Heard and you were left out or rejected from the Herd - and nobody actually ever helped you deal with it. And thus, your own unacknowledged sadness, anger and fear - was denied. It was left outside in the cold. In the darkness.

And like mushrooms, when left in the darkness, unacknowledged pain grows.

And it grows. And it grows. Until suddenly, it starts showing up in your life, in your actually conscious awareness, in new, more noticeable and even more painful ways.?

And yet, when this happens you still don't have any actual "tools" for dealing with it, only now, since it's been ignored for so long, it's actually much more of an issue - so what do you do?

You find some f*cking tools to help you get by.

Are they "primitive tools" that are unsustainable and actually begin working against you at some point? Yes. But do they still get the job done? To the best of their ability, also yes.

Does that make you bad??Does that mean you're disqualified from peace and joy now??Does that mean you don't deserve to feel better or that you're somehow incapable of doing so?

Of course it doesn't.

And that brings me to Step Number One to begin releasing addictions in your life right now.

STEP 1. LET ALL OF THAT SH*T GO RIGHT NOW.

Release the shame and the judgement and the self-punishment of yourself.

You are not bad.

You are not a failure. You are not broken, nor are you damaged goods. You picked up some primitive tools to help you survive in this jungle of life so far - and they actually worked for a bit - and yet, now they do not, so now you're in the process of developing new, better tools for yourself.

And surprise-surprise, judgement and shame do not help you actually do that. In fact, not only do they not help you at all, they actually work against you by blocking you from actually engaging this stuff in your life.

Shame is the fuel for denial, for avoidance and for suppression of the pain of addictions (or primitive "tools") in your life. Shame is what makes it easier for us to lie to ourselves and act like there's "not a problem," when clearly, there is.

And yet, with the removal of shame and judgement (which comes with increasing emotional safety & connection), you actually begin to open, to acknowledge, to "name & claim" the reality of addiction in your life, which then empowers you to actually do something about it.

So that's step one.

Remove shame and judgement, and begin making room for yourself to actually engage this stuff. And once you do that...

STEP 2. START TALKING ABOUT IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Because, let's face it, you can't actually solve a problem if you don't actively understand it - and the only way to increase your understanding of it - is to start talking about it.

And unless you want the pain, the costly impact of using "primitive tools" in your life to continue persisting in your mind, your body, your relationships and your money, your professional career, then I'd start doing it as quickly as possible.

You can't do it all at once, of course.

In fact, it always takes a lot of time and consistent repetition to begin truly changing your behavior at all, hence the importance to get started as quickly as possible. The sooner you get started, the sooner you get the hard part out of the way and the sooner you start living the life that you actually want to be.

Additionally, there's not "perfect" way to get started, however if you can afford it, working with a professional is always going to be the most efficient, most effective route to take if it's available.

Regardless of how you choose to proceed though, the most important thing is to get started talking about it asap.

And lastly, as you begin this process of talking about it..

STEP 3. DEVELOP BETTER TOOLS TO MEET YOUR OWN EMOTIONAL NEEDS.

Look, if you haven't gathered this yet, addictions or "primitive tools," in our lives pretty much only exist to meet some unmet emotional need that we have. There are exceptions, of course, but for the vast majority of us, this is the case.

Unacknowledged and unhealed pain/trauma leads to shame, which leads to anxiety, which leads to addictions, "primitive tools" or other self-medicating attempts to meet our own unconscious needs.

And often, this in turn often simply leads to us creating more pain/trauma for ourselves and those around us, that we inevitably will deny and leave unhealed as well, which naturally will compound the internal issue into a vicious cycle of pain looking something like the below:

Thus, in order to stop this painful cycle, we must actually begin releasing the old, "primitive tools" that help perpetuate it, and start creating new, better ones that lead to new, better outcomes.

Denying, avoiding, numbing and "masking" our anxieties - the root emotions of these anxieties - keep this painful cycle alive. Thus, a great tool for you to begin developing for yourself - especially if you are professionally and financially responsible for other people in your life - is that of directly engaging the anxiety and the emotions via the art of Emotional Regulation.

Emotional regulation simply refers to being able to actually feel and process all of your existing emotions, without the need to avoid, numb or suppress them in anyway. This is the foundation for all true "self-mastery," in the sense of the term.

And it is absolutely the best, most powerful skill (or "tool") that you can learn to begin releasing addictions in your life right now for a variety of reasons, though mainly, because it will remove the need for them in the first place.

If the "primitive tools" in your life are present to mostly alleviate your own anxiety in some way, mastering the art of emotional regulation (which is a fancy way to describe talking about it consistently with a great teacher) is effectively going to remove the anxiety from its source before any other "tools" are even necessary.

It is the one great tool that removes the need for a thousand "primitive" ones (drugs, alcohol, overworking, overeating, promiscuity, prescriptions, etc), so to speak.

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