Typically, when we hear about addictions, it has to do with being addicted to harmful substances or damaging behaviors like cigarettes, cocaine, heroine, sex, or gambling. Of course, there’s a good reason for this, as these tend to be some of the most addictive experiences out there. However, if we are really honest, addiction itself is incredibly destructive no matter what you are addicted to. And if we look closer at addiction, you’ll notice it’s all around us.
What are we addicted to?
It’s simple. Anything we continue to use, despite adverse consequences:
Continued scrolling through our social feed
Continued procrastination and putting off our lives
Continued excessive drinking and driving
Continued obsessive thinking and criticism about our past mistakes
Continued denying ourselves of basic needs or not spending money on legitimate needs
Continued vomiting of food, or using diuretics, exercise, etc. to avoid weight gain
I could continue, but I am also sure you are able to come up with a list of your own. We do all these things, despite adverse consequences.
For myself, thinking about these behaviors as “addictions” can be a powerful framing. I know from my own experience, addiction took years of being faced with negative consequences repeatedly before I realized I needed to change. After all, it is much easier to normalize my existing behavior. If you’re being beaten with consequence after consequence, by this point they have probably become so loud, and perhaps feel as if they’re coming at you in every direction, they become difficult to ignore. Your ignorance and constant silencing of your inner child’s needs and wants are now causing you significant problems and catastrophic consequences.
How to Break an Unhealthy Addiction
First, you have to make a decision to change. After all, I can drop you off at rehab, but if you are completely rigid in your belief system and committed to your wounding patterns, you will most likely carry resistance to the idea that anything can actually change in your life. You might spend a long time telling me why it can’t or won’t happen, or how you “can’t do that” or “you don’t know how.”
Very commonly, your rigidity (your stubbornly held beliefs) resides in your body—which show up as TMJ, hives, rashes, and digestive issues from your buried unresolved rage and resentment. All of these consistently reinforced patterns will stand directly in the way of your belief in your capabilities, therefore blocking any ability to heal yourself.
One way I like to help my clients move past their resistance and open to possibilities is with an Intuitive Healing Session. Together we can cancel, un-create and delete any disempowering beliefs, and then download empowering beliefs from the creator of all that is, in their place. We also have the opportunity to run your energy with the help of Reiki, as well as incorporate an energetic cord-cutting, increasing the speed in which the energy flows throughout all of your chakras, allowing you to feel lighter and brighter. When we bring your karma, contracts, and agreements into present time, we free you from any past life experiences connected to your unhealthy addictions. Through all of these energetic and psychic practices, you’ll notice that your resistance and the intensity of suppressed emotions will feel different immediately. You may feel more present awareness, instead of dragging your past around with you. Your focus, attention to, and sensitivity around receiving pleasure will be increased and heightened in a way you previously thought was unattainable.
What Does an Energetic Healing Do for Addiction?
An energetic healing instantly opens you up to the wisdom of your higher self, allowing you to trust in what you receive through your crown chakra (located at the top of your head, which symbolizes your connection to source, God, universe). If that energy continues flowing smooth and freely, it then allows you to see and believe in the wisdom of what you are creating (third eye chakra). If your throat chakra stays open, you receive discernment through active listening. In addition, you begin to share your truth—releasing the message you hear and your own inner guidance out into the world around you. You are “speaking things into existence.”
When a higher frequency of energy passes down through your energetic pathways, you have the opportunity to release any sadness, grief, despair, guilt, shame, anger or betrayal through your energetic and emotional bodies. When energy continues to flow freely through your heart chakra, this allows your love, compassion, and empathy to energetically pass through you into full expansion, just like your breath. In addition, the heart chakra is the gatekeeper and necessary to the lower three chakras.
From here, your imagination and creative ideas move into the integrity of your actions and self-belief (solar plexus chakra), finally moving down and into your passions and self-determination (sacral chakra) and becoming grounded through your root chakra (located at the base of the spine). This is how our ideas are born and delivered out into the world.
Through energetically releasing what is no longer is serving us, we shift our vibrational frequency, and become fully embodied, centered, and engaged in our aligned path—in integrity with our inner truth. When your chakras are clear and in alignment, your life can feel so much clearer and in alignment as well. Everything in life just gets easier.
How Else Can I Ensure My Success?
Prepare yourself and others to make the change you’ve committed to.
Set boundaries around what you plan to share or not share. If you are letting go of an addiction which incurs heavy symptoms of withdrawal, call on a relationship with those who also want to see you become a success. Find someone(s) who can cheer you on when you can’t find the strength to. Surrender your guilt around needing someone else’s help. Don’t worry, you can always return the favor.
Have a plan for coping with any withdrawal symptoms, or soothing your judgement around not being perfect or not enough when you slip up.
Getting mad at yourself indicates that you need to step in and rescue yourself from your learned ability to be unkind to yourself. In these moments, create confidence by asking yourself, “Am I empowered at this moment, or disempowered?” This offers access to your experience in a more somatic (feeling) approach, and encourages an answer to come up from somewhere other than the thinking part of you (which is where we usually get mentally and emotionally stuck). When we send our bodies the message that we are not good enough, we create additional shame and guilt that will need to be addressed later. We also energetically drain ourselves, which is a waste of precious energy that we could use in positive and beneficial ways that would increase our enjoyment in other areas of our life.
Continue to encourage your awareness around any replacement addictive behaviors and cultivate self-love around any comparison, impatience, or despair.
As our awareness increases, our innate impulse toward health and well-being will be activated, moving us out of danger and into a more positive and more natural, compassionate and loving relationship with ourselves.
Learn how to be your own best friend.
Take the time to ask yourself, “What advice would I give my best friend right now?” and take the advice. Ultimately, how can you better love yourself in that moment and make a healthier, more loving choice for you moving forward.
Continue to look honestly and deeply at all of your behaviors.
Look where the complacent person in you might justify your behavior and say, “Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be doing that, but it’s not that big of a deal… it doesn’t have a major negative impact on my life, so I can just let it slide. I just want things to be easy.”
Realize that as you change, you may have major changes in relationships and friendships.
Unfortunately, the people around us don’t always appreciate when we change, as it puts pressure on them to change their behaviors and how they are showing up to your relationship, as well. Be prepared for any resistance others have to you being what they need you to be.
An Invitation to Sobriety
The point here is, don’t feel bad about yourself and slip into an addiction of self-criticism. Let your awareness be an invitation to your sobriety. As someone who has gone from becoming an alcoholic, to becoming sober, I can say that life is about 1,000 times better when I approach it with a clear mind, reliably centered, and not under the influence. When I am able to approach my life from a place of energetic neutrality, I am more successful at knowing how to be emotionally contained. And for every other untraditional addiction I’ve let go of, like passive-aggressiveness, the movement into “sobriety” has significantly improved my life. This can be your experience as well.
What are your addictions? Are you open to looking at those (with self-compassion)? What might life be like if you went “sober”? If you really want and are ready for change, I have confidence you will make it happen. I know, through my own experience, that anything in life can be overcome.
