What is a Soft Addiction
Soft addictions either habits, obsessive behaviors, or recurring moods or negative thought patterns. Their essential defining quality is that they gratify a surface want but ignore or block the deeper need. They numb us to feelings by substituting a superficial high for genuine feelings of accomplishment.
Many soft addictions involve basic activities like eating, reading, and sleeping. These activities become soft addictions as soon as we go overboard with them and when they are used for things other than their intended purpose. Soft addictions, unlike hard ones such as drugs and alcohol, are charming in their softness. E-mailing, watching television, and talking on the phone all seem like completely harmless, pleasurable activities while we're engaged in them. When we realize the amount of time and energy we devote to them, however, we can understand how they hurt the quality of our lives.
You should understand that an almost infinite variety exists. A soft addiction can be as idiosyncratic as any individual personality. Though a universal soft addiction might be watching TV, a more personal form may be doodling geometric figures or counting things for no reason.
Several men and women have difficulty distinguishing an infrequent behavior or brief mood from a soft addiction. Is watching TV for an hour a day a harmless habit, while if you watch three hours per day (the national average), does it become a soft addiction?
As a general rule, keep the following in mind: The incentive and the function of your behavior determine whether or not it's a soft addiction. For instance, TV can be a window to view new worlds -- or it can be used to escape this world. There is a woman who's very careful about what she watches. She uses TV as a tool to gain knowledge about foreign cultures and to better understand the behavior of animals. Another woman vegetates on the couch in front of the TV daily. She leads a tough, hectic work life, and she incorrectly believes her viewing habits relieve her stress. Rarely does she have a specific show she wants to view or a actual reason for watching it. When you contrast these 2 TV viewers, the dissimilarities in motivation and function are clear. The 1st woman's motivation revolves around very specific learning goals; the 2nd woman's motivation is to turn her brain off. The first woman uses television to enhance her life; the second woman uses it to escape from her life.
Don't let soft addictions take over your life.
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JUDITH WRIGHT is hailed as a world-class coach, inspirational speaker, best-selling author, and corporate consultant. She is cofounder of the Wright Institute for Lifelong Learning. {See her book's press release|See the press release for her book, "One Decision".