My world is suddenly very tuned in to those familiar with addictions. Helpguide.org defines the problem in this way: Addiction exerts a long and powerful influence on the brain that manifests in three distinct ways: craving for the object of addiction, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences.
The website states the obvious by saying that nobody starts out intending to develop an addiction. However, it is estimated that almost one in 10 Americans—nearly 23 million—are addicted to alcohol or other drugs. Of course, it is not just alcohol or other drugs that people get addicted to. People can also be addicted to worry, work, relationships, food, gambling, and even exercise.
The reason addiction happens is simple: we are hardwired for pleasure! We seek experiences that give us pleasure and we avoid things that create pain, unless we are unaware of our emotions….
When a person is unaware of emotions, those emotions influence him or her below the level of conscious awareness. This may have resulted in your having been controlled by parts of yourself that were generating those emotions. Even deep emotions, like depression, are not the real problem—but rather they are pointing to the problem, a sign that something requires your attention.
Beneath the pain of depression can lie anger, or an ocean of fear—fear of being alive, of not belonging, of being alone or abandoned, or of being unprepared or powerless. Ignorance of the feelings of insecurity, unworthiness, lack of value, or a sense of powerlessness had been the source of all emotional pain. Pain is the driving force of addictions.
This is a natural consequence of brain chemistry, and because brain chemistry is a natural bodily function, the solution is in the solution. It is a matter of choosing to change the chemical solution influencing your brain. All choices create perfect consequences. The term, emotional freedom, means the freedom to choose the emotions that will best serve your purpose, the emotions that will allow you more joy, more health, more vitality, and greater abundance in every way.
The previous three paragraphs are a direct quotation from the Emotional Freedom guided imagery audio. Guided imagery, and music itself, are two of the tools that can help you retrain your brain so you are able to crave the things that make your life better. It would always feel better to feel better.
As I have been consulting in the area of recovery, I very often mention how our well-being resembles a three-legged stool (body, mind, and spirit). A friend who works in recovery mentioned a passage in what those in AA call The Big Book. In Chapter 2, “There is a Solution,” Bill W. and Sam Shoemaker write, “The great fact is just this, and nothing less: that we have had deep and effective spiritual experience* which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God’s universe.”
Obviously some addictions pose more dire consequences than others. You are not likely to be arrested for a food addiction, but people do die of obesity or develop life-limiting health consequences of being overweight.
Continuing on from the Emotional Freedom guided imagery audio:
Your developing genuine self-worth allows you to move beyond whatever emotions that had gotten the best of your inner knowing and sensible outlook on life. You can come up for air, look around, and get your bearings. It is important for you to be still, and to be comfortable being alone. Now that you are moving from having been addicted to whatever brain chemistry interfered with your health and well-being, you can wisely delegate responsibility when appropriate. The cemeteries are filled with people who once believed that they were indispensable, inadequate, or otherwise miserable, but you can now learn new ways of being in the world.
You can visualize yourself looking over your entire life. It may seem as though you are standing before a gateway, perhaps on a hilltop. However you think of it, pause and review the past: the learning, the joys, the difficulties—everything it took to bring you here.
Someone, somewhere, or something invites you to notice that you are able to change now by choosing to be in the light now that you know you can recognize and utilize your inner wisdom. You are tapped in to a source of great strength and can use this to improve any situation that had limited your sense of emotional freedom.
From this level of awareness, you can observe it all; you bless it all, and you release it all.
We cannot do everything alone. Someone or something helps us to make the connections and to have the insights now that will help you accept wisdom, energy, and assistance from other realms.
You can see yourself soaring into undreamed of heights, empowered by trust and the creative life force that is all around you, above and below you, and within you. Everything you do, now, you do from a position of strength.
Those of you who know about NLP are aware of the many techniques that help you get free from the addictions of limiting beliefs and destructive habits. Of course, like birth control and AA, it works if you work it!
You are here to become more and more alive; you are here to become more and more intelligent—wise; you are here to become more joyful, more secure, and more relaxed and confident.
