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:

Zoning out. One way of identifying a soft addiction is to notice whether or not you zone out while you're doing it. When we are zoned out, we are not fully engaged. We may be in another world or have a "no one is home" expression on our face. Zoning out suggests that the goal of the activity is to become numb. Although we're physically engaged, our mind is somewhere else. When we're finished with the activity we often do not remember what we've done, seen, or read. Though this often happens when watching television, it can also happen during 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 escape feelings by being numb to them, enhancing specific feelings that we enjoy to the exclusion of others, or even wallowing in one unpleasant feeling to avoid other unpleasant feelings. Several of us feel uneasy about our deepest feelings, whether they are good or bad. We frequently haven't been taught how to deal productively with 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. Are you driven to indulge in a particular activity or emotion? Do you feel constrained to do, have, or buy something, no matter if you understand that you don't need it? This may be accompanied by a helpless, powerless feeling. You may not be able to quit or reduce the amount of time used on the activity. Although you receive temporary pleasure, you frequently feel bad about yourself after engaging in it. You persist in following the routine, repeating to yourself, this is the last time. Even though you attempt to quit, you cannot find the power to do so.

Denial. If you are defensive or make excuses for your actions, odds are it's a soft addiction. Denial is refusing to admit and rationalization is making excuses to justify a behavior. Both blunt our awareness of ourselves and reduce our expectations of ourselves. To make our actions acceptable, we ignore, conceal, or gloss over the actual motive or cost. We either convince ourselves that our habit is not a problem or we rationalize why it's a good or necessary way to use our time. "What is so horrible about a couple cups of coffee?" is a average 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 implies that you have a soft addiction.

Stinking thinking. "Stinking thinking" is distorted thinking based on incorrect beliefs. Oversimplifying, magnifying, minimizing, rationalizing, blaming, and emotional reasoning are a couple examples. Stinking thinking produces the rediculous rules and logic of soft addictions, such as "there are no calories when I eat standing up," or "I can't possibly work out if I've already showered." Woven throughout soft addiction routines, this type of faulty thinking is addictive. The distorted thoughts prompt indulging in a soft addiction in the first place and later make it easy for us to justify the indulgence.

Concealing the behavior. Beware of habits that turn into guilty amusements that you attempt to conceal. Hiding the amount of hours you spend participating in an activity or being deceitful to other people about how you commonly use your time or money suggests that you have soft addictions. In other words, you feel ashamed of what you're doing and that's why you want to conceal it from others.

NOTE: Use of this article requires links to be intact.

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

How to Advice .com