When A Habit Turns Into an Addiction
Here are a few clues to help you define the line between a soft addiction and a productive activity:
Zone out. A good way to identify a soft addiction is to ask if you zone out as you are doing it. When we are zoned out, we are not fully engaged. We might be in another world or have a "no one is home" expression on our face. Zoning out hints that the goal of the activity is to become numb. Even though we're physically participating in an activity, our minds are somewhere else. After the activity, we often don't remember the things we've done, seen, or read. Though this generally happens while watching television, it may also occur during shopping, working, having superficial conversations, or doing any number of activities.
Avoiding feelings. Certain activities help numb us to our emotions, especially very strong emotions. We avoid feelings by being numb to them, increasing the feelings we like to the exclusion of others, or even indulging in your favorite unpleasant feeling to avoid other unpleasant feelings. Many of us are uncomfortable with our most intimate feelings, whether positive or negative. We frequently don't know how to deal productively with our sadness or anger so we find an activity or a mood that facilitates an emotion-muting state, leaving us with subdued sadness, low, level anger, or other unsettled feelings.
Compulsiveness. Does an irresistible urge drive you to indulge a particular activity or mood? Do you feel compelled to do, have, or purchase something, even though you know you do not need it? This may be accompanied by a helpless, powerless feeling. You may not be able to quit or reduce the amount of hours used on a given activity. Despite the fact that you receive temporary pleasure, you generally feel bad about yourself afterward. You keep on following the habit, repeating to yourself, I'll never do this again. No matter how hard you try to quit, you cannot find the power to do so.
Rationalization. If you are defensive or make excuses for your behavior, it's probably a soft addiction. Denial is a refusal to acknowledge and rationalization is an excuse or explanation to justify a compulsive behavior. Both dull our self-awareness and lower our expectations of ourselves. To make our actions acceptable, we ignore, conceal, or gloss over the actual reason or price. We either convince ourselves that our addiction is not a problem or we make excuses 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 justification. Another rationalization we might make is to deny that the hours spent surfing the internet are a waste of time and energy. The impulse to rationalize an activity implies that you have a soft addiction.
Stinking thinking. "Stinking thinking" is distorted thinking based on false beliefs. Oversimplifying, amplifying, minimizing, justifying, blaming, and emotional reasoning are a couple examples. Stinking thinking produces the silly rules and logic of soft addictions. For instance, "there aren't calories if I eat standing up," or "I can't exercise if I have already taken a shower." Woven throughout soft addiction routines, this type of thinking is addictive. The tainted thoughts prompt indulging in a soft addiction in the first place and later make it easy for us to justify the indulgence.
Hiding the behavior. Be cautious of habits that become guilty pleasures you seek to hide. Hiding the amount of time you spend participating in an activity or being deceitful to those around you about how you frequently use your time or money are signs of soft addictions. In other words, you feel are embarrassed of the things you are doing and that is why you want to conceal it from others.
Judith Wright is an author, speaker, educator, life coach, and seminar leader. She teaches workshops on overcoming soft addictions and creating "More" for twelve years. You can contact her through her Web site at www.theremustbemore.com. See also American Community Corrections Institute (ACCI)