Addiction is a product of repressed emotions

Strive for a 5. Is a common mantra in recovery. Addicts tend to think situations are 1's or 10's. This isnt realistic. Nothing is either perfect or so awful it cant become better. So 5 is average. If you can view 5 as a normal day or a normal experience of any situation, expectations dont become so life & death & so overwhelming.

Nice one Louis,

Ya know, i always want to ask the same question to people who comes on here: " what's your story & what are you running from?".
Addiction is a way to escape hard emotions. It's the state you can feel a lil different & just maybe accepted and validated for who you are (in your own clouded thinking). Putting plaster on the injury & thinking it's healed huh!

By no means i say we should start blaming the past, events, stuff what's happened, what people said or did. No...we made the choices we did. We got that "oh..now i feel a lil more normal and f**k the rest" feeling. Every human needs emotional connection, us, addicts lack this the most & are almost scared to admit it.
However, what addiction does, as Dan rightly put down is it's making us want highs & if we don't get it - we hit low!. Recovery is a way to learn and find that middle again, to aknowledge and appreciate the balance of both worlds.
For me it's a journey of the lifetime, painting that picture all colours is a must as it's life.

Just my thoughts...(ha..had to giggle here as wanted to apologise for them but... it's debate section so no knifes are flying around :-D..pheww..yay!)

S x

My addiction over all these years has been of form of escapism from thoughts, emotions and dreadful anxiety that I needed to run from and forget even just for however long my funds lasted and that could be 48 hour binges online with no sleep.

I am not sure if everyone does this, I just know that my gambling is a need to escape and in another sense a form of self harm. So yes mine is a result of repressed emotions

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Addiction can also be the result of certain personality types. My cousin was addicted to gambling and that has affected their family in a very serious manner. I started researching about those people who can easily become addicted and made certain conclusions.
What I understood was that those individuals who had trouble in accepting failures and don't know how to manage their emotions in a controlled manner are more prone to addiction.
Although gambling cannot be considered that troublesome, gambling outside of your means can invite troubles easily. I came across an interesting blog ( http://edgewoodhealthnetwork.com/blog/what-your-personality-says-about-your-gaming-behaviour/ ) which describes the various personalities that are more prone to addiction and how to treat them effectively.
With proper care and treatment, every addiction can be made under control.

Make me feel better stop me feeling bad. Addictions two primary purposes

day@atime wrote: Make me feel better stop me feeling bad. Addictions two primary purposes

What a great quote this is. Sums it all up. For me my addiction has primarily been a means of escape due to not being able to deal with situations and emotions.

Some excellent material on this thread - can really relate to the story about just sitting there throwing money away knowing you are going to lose but just gambling and gambling and gambling till you have lost it all. Starts off as a means of trying to make one feel better but ends up with feeling 100 times worse after you blow everything you have, so you still have the issue / problem / emotion you wanted to escape from in the first place but you also have no money and in all likelihood increased debt.

Interesting to see general agreement regarding the role of emotions in addiction

What I find a bit scary, is that repressing emotions can sort of work - as in, we CAN by and large repress our emotions. Of course we can never extinguish, they deaden. We literally stop feeling as much. Yes, add that to the list of devastating consequences.

I know that when I was addicted to gambling, I often didn't know how I felt. I can see that with people on this board - they will describe how they feel 'not right' or 'a bit off but can't quite put my finger on it'. So often I felt like that - that things just weren't quite right. Is something wrong with me? Am I depressed?

I really believe that this was an issue of repressed emotions. In hindsight, I was having an emotion, but it had become so deadened I didn't know what it was. I just had a sense of unease as I couldn't let the emotion express itself.

It might sound tempting to someone in deep gambling mode to have repressed emotions - after all, who wants sadness or shame? But then what's life without emotions? Surely the purpose is to experience the range of emotions and in doing so to FEEL ALIVE. Otherwise we're just counting down the clock trying damage limitation (and failing miserably at that too).

Louis

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Definately and I cant put it any better than you Cardhue.

It sounds pathetic to admit to loneliness and a lack of friends but I was repressing unhappy emotions due to that. I am tall, I am good looking (ho ho) but I became reclusive and more introverted.

I was starting to repress emotions and delude myself I was happier that way. I was becoming grumpy and mildly angry due to sadness. I had distanced friends because Ive had some real manipulative and unsuitable people latch on to me, I let the good ones drift away and Ive been lazy in making the right kind of friend

My past was haunting me...relationships that should have worked...somebody I loved that was really just a holiday relationship to her...but then again what is love. I tried the dating sites around that time but couldnt get replies and felt no love for or even connection to the women who were contacting me (even though they got a polite reply, It just all felt shallow and awkward) I just thought it was a waste of time and felt even more worthless because it just seemed like a material and emotional checklist of what they wanted from me

I had become numb. I tried the material possessions thing over the years and spent a great deal of money. It didnt ultimately make me happy and much of it sat on the shelf unused.

So when my gambling problem was at its worst I was heading straight for an arcade rather than shopping for a new shirt or something. I can only describe that towns and people were becoming cold and uninviting to me but the arcade/bookie machines seemed to offer a comfort blanket to someone who was emotionally in the wilderness.

Through the process I wasnt really sure what I was feeling or what was driving me. I just wanted it. I knew I couldnt walk away from the feeling playing was giving me and liken it to a shot in the vein or drinking session to oblivion.

Otherwise I was deadened....I could have a laugh at times but that would be mainly watching the telly or playing a video game. I was getting nothing of substance like human love or an aim in life

Add this to the fact that Im not comfortable being older and sometimes I see no future but looking at all the rubbish Ive accumulated in a care home. and you can see how gambling might take a grip.

Its hard to explain...like my life is a mess so come on reels put me in your escape trance zone. yes wanting some comfort and the buzz of an up feeling (be good to me someone) is a part of it but essentially I was playing to lose which sounds even more crazy....an empty wallet would make me feel rotten but I think it was almost something to use as a cry for real help.

I think it was just an outlet to say help me Im lonely I never think Im going to meet anybody half right for me and Ive got no job ladies. :)...Its deeper than that though related to real blues and depression

Dont worry Im getting through it now but I feel that most if not all problem gamblers have repressed emotions or some issues in life they are not coping with.

Best wishes to everyone

@Allainepo

I don't tend to have that 'general unease' thing so much now, as 'stuff' is more readily identifiable as a (negative) emotion. I'm learning to FEEL rather than repress or struggle with it.

I discovered Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) 18 months ago. Can't speak highly enough of it. The bottom line of ACT is to live a values based life - but this requires an open and accepting, mindful approach.

Take anxiety (fear) - anxiety becomes a problem when we struggle with it and it stops us doing stuff that's important to us (meeting people, doing a job, helping others, being intimate, being creative etc). Fear of anxiety leads to our lives becoming small and detatched from who we really want to be and how we want to live. This leads to major secondary problems such as feelings of failure, shame and frustration etc.

ACT shows us that anxiety itself isn't so much the problem as our response to it. Emotions become akin to paper tigers when we face them. What we fear isn't as scary as we've been thinking all along.

The first time I really 'got it' was a revelation. I received an internal phone call from my scary boss who sternly summoned me to her room. I could feel the physical sensations of fear rushing up through me - my instinct was to distract myself,maybe by flitting around the internet. But then, for once, I paused and remembered what I'd read. I let the physical sensations build into a crescendo, which almost became overwhelming, but then washed over me. I then felt released from this sense of anxiety. The same technique can apply to 'urge surfing' which is of course very useful for recovering addicts.

There's a slightly different approach to unhelpful thoughts (eg, I'm not good enough, a failure etc). These are of course 'opinions' but are dangerous when we start treating them as facts and thereby again limit our lives. The solution is to 'defuse' from them, learning to accept thoughts as transitory, we are not our thoughts, type thing. This aspect if more classic mindfulness. It's not about logically understanding this - it's about actually practicising it and experiencing it.

It's quite different from say CBT, which will try to get rid of, or alter our negative thoughts and feelings. The problem with this approach, is it's like a coiled spring, you push it away but it bounces back - which can itself make people feel like they've 'failed again'.

Or actually, I believe CBT can work on a rational level, but not in a deeper more instinctive level, as humans are basically programmed to have the range of emotions, whilst our mind will churn out hundreds of unhelpful thoughts. - it's what minds do. It's in our DNA. It's a result of our mind still perceiving events in terms of fight or flight, a system which worked well 50,000 years ago when there were real threats to life - but now our minds are triggering similar responses when we look at everyone having a great time on Facebook and feel inadequate, when we give a nice smile to someone in the kitchen at work and they don't reciprocate.

But as I say, the bottom line of ACT isn't just to P***e around doing mindfulness stuff. It's really about enabling more of a values based life. By learning to accept the inner feelings and thoughts you previously fought against, but to carry on doing what's important anyway. And the bonus is, if you don't fight this stuff, then the negative stuff does lose its bite anyway (although the tricky bit is learning not to do ACT as a means to get rid of stuff - cos if you do, you've fallen back intro the trap of trying to get rid of stuff which is doomed to fail).

I don't always practice it, it comes and goes in terms of my attention, but the psychological skills stay with you.

Would highly recommend 'The Happiness Trap' or 'The Confidence Gap'. £8 very well spent IMO. I spent a while looking into different approaches to recovery and this made by far the most sense to me (although I didn't do the Steps programme, or GA,- it is evidentially very sucessful).

ACT has got an Eastern aspect but is totally secular, doesn't involve pretending you have to be happy all the time, and, well, just extremely helpful. Each time I properly refocus on it, it just makes more and more sense.

Sales pitch over.

Louis

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Thanks Allainepo, very generous as ever, thanks for your kind words.

Obviously people will have their opinions on what works best and often, surprise surprise, whatever a person is 'into' is often the best way. Things get tribalistic around methods of recovery. I certainly am no exception to this (I try not to bang on too much but will every so often have a very lengthy missionary drive, as above).

I've heard that the 'gold standard' of therapy is actually group therapy - so in this respect GA has a clear advantage.

I would love to do ACT with an ACT therapist but can't really afford it. You have to be very committed if you're going to work a therapy method alone.

I think most addicts will need some kind of framework to work out how to live healthier. Therefore, whether it's ACT, GA/steps or CBT therapy, we can argue their relative merits but at least they all provide a kind of structure and way out of negative spirals. 'Our own' way has been proven very much not to work.

Best

Louis

Some one once said to me the great thing about recovery is that you get your feelings back. The same person said the bad thing about recovery is that you get your feelings back. Too true I say!!