What if I told you that you can actually prevent addictive behaviors? That would be pretty cool, right?
I think you can. The reason that I say that is when I think about addictions and the things that I read about addictions, I think of this: no addiction is ever about the addiction. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, pornography, irrational behavior, etc.; any addiction is never about the addiction itself. In fact, what addiction is actually about is getting that next comforting feeling and tricking our brains into releasing dopamine because whatever it is we’re experiencing isn’t good enough.
How, then, can we prevent addictions? We need to start noticing when we have a tendency to want something covered up with a quick dopamine release. When do you feel particularly stressed or anxious? When we feel stressed or anxious without any healthy self-awareness, we are going to run around and latch on to the first thing that feels good or gives us comfort.
Basically, the question I have for you is this: When you feel stressed or anxious, what do you turn to to comfort or soothe yourself?
For a lot of us, it’s easy to let anxiety run unchecked. We ignore the signals that our anxiety sends. But the thing is, anxiety doesn’t go away just because we decide to run from it. In fact, it’s going to stick around. You can’t outrun your anxiety, but you can learn to be aware of your stressors so you can anticipate when you will feel anxious.
Once we are aware of what our triggers anxiety within us, we can start working towards prevention of addictive behaviors by asking ourselves two questions:
- What is something healthy that I can turn to when I am feeling this way?
- What is something unhealthy that I need to make sure I turn away from?
Unhealthy behaviors might look like having a late night drink just to numb whatever kind of stressful day you had or eating a tub of ice cream to forget about your anxieties. You can get a quick and easy dopamine release from watching pornography or feel instant calm after taking some sort of drug. All of these things have short term dopamine releases, but none of them have long term benefits.
So, as another reminder, addictions are never about the addictions themselves. Nobody ever pursues addictive behavior thinking it is a good long term solution. When we are stressed and anxious, we are desperate for relief and we often latch onto unhealthy behavior as a solution. Prevent addictions by being aware of how you cope when you are stressed, and learn how to replace those unhealthy behaviors with healthy ones.
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