Soft Addictions- Signs

When A Habit Turns Into an Addiction

Here are a few ways to help you define the line between a soft addiction and a productive activity and determine whether or not your behavior is a soft addiction:

Zoning out. A good way to identify a soft addiction is to ask if you zone out while you are doing it. When a person is zoned out they aren't completely engaged. We may be daydreaming or have a "nobody's home" expression plastered on our face. Zoning out implies that the truegoal of the activity is to become numb. Regardless of the fact that we are physically engaged, our minds are somewhere else. When the activity is over we usually don't remember what we have done, watched, or read. While this regularly occurs when watching TV, it can also happen while shopping, working, having superficial conversations, or doing any number of activities.

Avoiding feelings. Some activities help numb us to our emotions, especially very strong emotions. We avoid feelings by being numb to them, increasing specific feelings that we enjoy to the rejection of others, or wallowing in your favorite unpleasant feeling to escape other feelings. A good number of us are uncomfortable with our most intimate feelings, whether good or bad. We typically don't know how to safely handle our sadness or anger so we find an activity or a mood that facilitates an emotion-muting state, which only represses our sadness, anger or other unsettled feelings.

Compulsiveness. Does an irresistible urge drive you to indulge a particular activity or mood? Do you often feel compelled to do, have, or purchase something, no matter if you know it's not necessary? Do you feel helpless or powerless against these feelings? You may be unable to stop or reduce the amount of time spent on a given activity. Though you receive temporary pleasure, you frequently don't feel good afterward. You persist in following the routine, all the while saying to yourself, I will never do this again. Even though you attempt to stop, you cannot.

Rationalization. If you are defensive or make excuses for your behavior, it is most likely a soft addiction. Denial is refusing to admit and rationalization is an excuse or explanation to justify a behavior. Both dull our self-awareness and reduce our expectations of ourselves. To make our actions acceptable, we ignore, cover up, or gloss over the actual reason or price. Either we maintain that the habit is not a problem or we make excuses why it is an acceptable or necessary way to use our time. "What's so bad about a few cups of coffee?" is a classic justification. We may deny that the many hours spent surfing the internet are a great waste of time and energy. The inclination to justify a behavior suggests a soft addiction.

Stinking thinking. "Stinking thinking" is faulty thinking centered on mistaken beliefs. Oversimplifying, amplifying, minimizing, justifying, blaming, and emotional reasoning are a few examples. Stinking thinking creates the rediculous rules and logic of soft addictions, such as "there are no calories if I eat standing up," or "I can't work out if I've already showered." Woven throughout soft addiction routines, this kind of faulty thinking is addictive. The tainted thoughts encourage indulgence in a soft addiction in the first place and later on let us justify the indulgence.

Concealing the behavior. Beware of habits that turn into guilty pleasures you seek to hide. Hiding the amount of time you spend on an activity or being deceitful to those around you about how you normally use your time or money are signs of soft addictions. You feel ashamed of what you are doing and that is why you desire to conceal it.

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