Activities - just like sports, innovative projects, reading through, work, TELEVISION SET, meditation - could be a wonderful way to take it easy, convey yourself, or hook up with yourself. Or they usually are an addiction. How could you know the difference?
* Angie might surf the channels when she felt stressed or alone.
* Karen would lose herself from a book when things sensed overwhelming.
* Keith would retreat and meditate when his wife needed to talk.
* Patty's time-table left her little time at home.
* Carl spent more hours in the garage fixing things than along with his family.
* Patrick's like of running was interfering with his family time.
Whether an activity is an addiction is dependent upon your INTENT.
* If your intent of an activity is always to avoid the pain regarding aloneness and loneliness, it truly is an addiction.
* When the intent of an activity is usually to avoid the pain connected with rejection or the fearfulness of domination, its an addiction.
* Once the intent of an activity could be to put off doing anything you don't really might like to do but need to complete, its an addiction.
Whenever an action is used in order to avoid something - sore feelings, complicated or boring tasks - it becomes an desire. It's definitely no different than applying substances such alcohol, medicines, or food to stop painful feelings or hard tasks. The matter with using addictions in avoiding painful feelings would be that the feelings don't actually disappear completely. They may be just numbed for the instant but are silently eroding one's perception of self. You can easliy get away with it limited to so long before it shows up in some way - illness, separation and divorce, despression symptoms, etc. And avoiding tasks ensures that the tasks pile in place, eventually causing the very stress we want in order to avoid. Our society is containing ways to avoid. Yet it really is avoidance that leads to the very feelings we are striving to prevent!
If the intent of an activity is usually to take loving care of yourself by providing by yourself with fun, creativeness and expression, enjoyment, personalized growth, non secular growth, real health and well-being, then it's a loving action rather compared to an addiction. It all depends on your OBJECTIVE.
Next time you wish to participate in your beloved activity, you need to notice your intent. Are you interested to relax and watch TV or are you currently avoiding some difficult emotion or task? Don't you find yourself scheduling more work than you may really handle to avoid handling aloneness, isolation, or conflict which has a mate, or are you currently really loving your job and feeling fulfilled by means of it? Will you be exercising to support your quality of life or to avoid inner thoughts?
Once you notice using an activity to avoid, here's what can be done about it:
1. Welcome the sensation you are trying so hard avoiding. Pay attention to the feeling - fear, being lonely, aloneness, agitation, monotony, nervousness.
only two. Determine to learn what There's a chance you're doing to cause this feeling as opposed to continuing to avoid this.
3. Explore what you could be doing to cause this particular feeling. Precisely how are you not responding to yourself that is inducing your painful feeling? Thinking of procrastinating, judging by yourself, or not standing for yourself in clash? How thinking of avoiding responsibility for your own personel well-being? Are you allowing yourself as a victim, needing someone else to cause you to be feel better?
several. As soon as you understand what you are doing to cause your relax, then you might want to ask "What would often be the loving action to get myself? " You are asking this question of this highest self, or of your spiritual guidance in case you are connected with a supply of guidance. In case you open to learning about what on earth is loving, thoughts will pop into a person's mind.
5 various. Now it is advisable to take the loving action on your behalf - complete a new task, perservere for yourself and talk your truth with someone, and the like.
6th. Re-evaluate how you are feeling. Do you think you're feeling more peaceful and much more powerful? You will feel more peaceful when you have taken the loving measures. If you are not feeling better, don't just turn back to your addictions. Hunt for another loving action until you find what really makes you experience safe on a strong level, not simply the temporary pacification of an addiction.
You will discover your addictions fading away since you learn to take supportive care of yourself.