Addiction: Psychotherapy Of The Cause

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Addiction is one of the most common psychological problems. Perhaps, every person has met on the path of life people suffering from one or another addiction. Unfortunately, the statistics are disappointing. According to sociological studies, about 5% of the population has alcohol or drug addiction. The number of people suffering from psychological addictions is uncountable. Addiction hurts loved ones and interferes with a full life for the person himself. However, do not despair. With a well-chosen treatment, it is possible to return to normal life. To do this, you need to understand the mechanism of the formation of addiction, its causes, and most importantly - turn to a good specialist and seriously take up recovery. One can speak of addiction (addiction) when a person actually cannot and does not want to do anything else, despite the fact that he also experiences some discomfort from the activity itself. Actually, this is called "addictive behavior" or disorder of attraction. The addict does not just feel pleasure in contact with the object of his addiction: rather, outside of this contact, he experiences pronounced discomfort, displeasure. Actually, the essence of any addiction is withdrawal (albeit fickle and destructive) from real problems and life difficulties. And it often causes the greatest difficulties in therapy. This is partly due to the fact that addicts themselves, and often therapists, focus not on the causes of the problem, but on its secondary visible manifestations, which can be defined as a co-dependent state. And then there are problems of "breakdowns" and the like. Addiction (Addiction) differs from hobby in that it does not bring any benefit to personal development. It damages social life, relationships with loved ones, and prevents them from unleashing their potential. Addicted person:

• loses social ties, is in conflict with loved ones;
• often devotes all his free time to one activity;
• fails in career and personal life, not having the strength to give up the object of addiction;
• denies the existence of addiction;
• when the object is inaccessible, it falls into dysphoric or depressive states.

The problem with all addictions is that by giving up one subject of addiction, a person will get some other forms of addiction. It's like in the tale with the snake Gorynych you chop off one head in its place, another grows, in the treatment of addiction the same thing, getting rid of one subject of addiction, the patient forms a new addiction. and so on until the cause of the formation of addictive behavior is eliminated. Meanwhile, if you correctly and deeply understand the nature of addiction, its psychotherapy can be easier and more productive. According to the theory of the founder of "Transactional Analysis" E. Berne, each personality has, as it were, three subpersonalities: Parent (censorship, rules), Adult (intellect, logic, consciousness), and Child (unconscious, unconscious desires, aspirations, etc.)). Addiction as such most often occurs in people with an openly dominant Child, who builds all the behavior of the individual according to the basic principle "but I want it, that's all." Moreover, it occurs most often when such a personality-Child has this or that discomfort in life: fear, inconvenience, a problem. What do young children do when they feel bad or scared and want to hide somewhere? They crawl under the covers with their heads, or even just close their eyes. And they are almost sure that they are hiding and protected from external unpleasant influences. The fact that outside the boundaries of the blanket this is an unpleasant effect, if it already exists, they will be expected again - they, as a rule, do not think about it. And when faced with something like that, they crawl under the covers again. And so on ad infinitum. In the same way, addiction is approximately formed in many cases. A personality with a dominant inner Child often hides from his existing discomfort with the help of some kind of "blanket" that comes along: alcohol, drugs, excessive food, gambling, "crazy love" … That is, as soon as a person has used something and at least for a while got rid of the discomfort - he immediately notes it for himself as pleasant and begins to resort to this method again and again. And as soon as he gave up this pleasant thing and the external discomfort fell on him again (the situation did not change) - he again grabs onto something that once "helped" him. And in fact, the main difficulty in getting rid of addiction is that a person simply cannot imagine how he will live without the subject of addiction. Otherwise, at the moment, he simply does not know how, and what is more difficult - he does not want to study. Therefore, when working with addictions, I help my client learn how to use independence and freedom. Including - making your decisions taking into account social realities; set your own goals, bypassing someone else's destructive pressure; be responsible for their decisions and actions, first of all, to oneself. And in particular, I help to analyze the situation and determine how my client can solve this or that problematic problem using more constructive methods that do not harm his physical and mental well-being. As a rule, for the realization of such goals, many people simply lack knowledge: about themselves and their personality (including the unconscious), about those generic script prescriptions, about possible solutions to certain probable problems and difficulties, and so on. I can provide all this knowledge to my client in the process of work (moreover, knowledge is not of a general nature, but individual, directly about him, about his personality and situation): if he wants to receive this knowledge. And not just “get rid of one addiction, running into another”, not lose something, but gain, become intellectually and emotionally richer, not poorer.