Day 7 gamble free and riddled with anxiety

What do you feel when you play? You say it's not about winning.

What mostly causes your anxiety?

I feel numb when I play. I'm overwhelmed with my life and I realized that playing slots and pushing that button gives me possibly to not think at all. I also don't care about winning. 

As you probably know gambling also creates anxiety. You cannot feel great between games. You feel bad when you have lost and feel bad when you win because you play it off no matter what. So you feel anxious constantly. Yes there is that numb feeling, but I feel that only when I push that button. But money runs out and anxiety comes no matter what.

I have quit before and I can say life is better without it. Don't doubt it! So many doors are going to open if don't gamble. My problem quitting last time was I always thought I gamble for money. But actually that's not true! When I have analyzed it now, it's more about that numb feeling that I urge. So think it through what gambling does for you, what are you searching from that, what pain are you hiding. And try to deal with that!

If you don't gamble you cannot lose. What better place to be. The money you made is yours, you are not throwing it away. That's much peaceful place to be than gambling. 

All the love,

Maria 

Hi Maria,

Yes you are so right it’s just the action that can be numbing but it is surrounded with so much anxiety win or lose. 

I’m hoping this overwhelming anxiety lifts soon and I can start to work on overcoming the other issues.

best of luck to you too!! Xx

Hi

Anxiety stress procrastination were all fear based issues.

The pains earlier in my life caused so many fears I did not understand.

Today I am willing to take my biggest fears and face them one at a time.

Living in so many fears I was hurting my self.

Dave L

Hi

I am Dave I am a cupulsive Gambler.

Being in the recovery over time I would start to understand how many fears held me back from progress in my life.

I decided to write down most of the fears I could identify and then face and reduce the hardest fears.

My Fears were of rejection and or abandonment, fear of telling the truth, fear of being accountable, fear of failure, fear of intimacy, fear of being let down, fear of fear of humiliation, fear of loneliness, fear of the dentist, fear of the doctors, fear of injections, fear of betrayal, fear of disappointing people, fear of what people thought of me, fear of speaking up for myself, fear of being the victim, fear of aggression and confrontation, fear of letting people down, fear of validating myself, fear of taking a compliment, fear of the doctors, fear of the opposite s*x, fear of being committed, fear of Christmas, fear of Tax time, fear of writing my needs my wants and my goals, fear of writing down the pain and abuse I experienced in my life, fear of writing down injuries to my body, fear of writing down the emotional abuse I experienced, fear of writing down the physical abuse I experienced, fear of writing down the sexual abuse I experienced, fear of being myself, fear of my failings, fear of guilt shame regret remorse, fear of therapies, fear of being a loner, fear of setting boundaries, fear of having a voice to stand up for myself, fear of strangers, fear of healing my pains, fear of being a victim, fear of not making it, fear of people faces when they got to know me.

This list seems impossible looking at them in one lump.

Yet over time became so simpler and easier.

Love and peace to every one

Dave L

AKA Dave of Beckenham