How have I become an addict?

Addiction can take many forms, as you can see from the word map above. An addictive pattern is formed from a habitual repetition of an action and is therefore a part of being human. It is when those repetitions become detrimental to us, we need to act.

Observation is the first step on the way to change, notice noticing what you are doing, become more consciously engaged with your actions, at a quantum level,
observation is the beginning of change. Repeating things is how we learn, it is also sometimes how we soothe ourselves. The ability to absorb a habit through repetition is what enables you to drive your car, walk, talk and do all the things you have ever learned that are useful to you. The dark side is the repetitive drinking, smoking, eating and drugs etc. These are obvious as addictions, but something we see as healthy such as a sport can be addictive; when we push and push our bodies to the limits, setting ourselves goals we must meet and can end up causing damage to our bodies. Or perhaps we find ourselves scrolling through social media, overstimulating our brain, flooding it with dopamine, of which we need more to satisfy the craving, these become addictions and it can feel like they spiral out of our control.

Many of these negative addictive patterns are used to distract us from our life and the discomfort and stress that are an inevitable part of living in the modern world. We find it harder to sit with emotional, physical or psychological discomfort and so our addictive patterns grow. Because the pattern of addiction is locked in the subconscious, it has become instinctive, we barely take a second to process it as the subconscious provides the fuel for it. A smoker knows there is cyanide in their cigarette, yet still they smoke it, yet if you gave them food laced with it, they would not touch it. In hypnotherapy we can work directly with the subconscious mind to sit with feelings and to find something that will do for us, what the addiction used to do for us but will not do for us anymore. We work to break the cycle of addiction, we put a firebreak in, and then we can bask in the relief of being released from the habit, feeling back in control of life, making active choices again, no longer on addictive autopilot.