Up until recently, I had never thought about being addicted to emotions. Once I thought about it, I realized that this makes a lot of sense.
I love to read other self-help authors and I picked up a book by Joe Dispenza. He has some different ways of looking at the world. I particularly liked his concept of addictive emotions.
How do you know if you are addicted to your emotions? And, more importantly, what can you do about it?
The addiction model for emotions
We normally think of an addiction as a compulsive need to use a substance (such as drugs) or do something (such as gamble), even when the activity proves harmful.
How does this apply to your emotions? When you feel an emotion you are experiencing the result of chemicals interacting with your cells. Candace Pert, who wrote The Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine (1997), called these chemicals the molecules of emotion. These molecules of emotion or neuro peptides are created by your brain and flow throughout your body. When they hook into receptor sites on your cells they produce sensations and you can become addicted to the sensations.
According to Joe Dispenza, author of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One (2012), “We just love the rush of energy from our troubles!” “In time, we unconsciously become addicted to our problems, our unfavorable circumstances, or our unhealthy relationships.”
We become so familiar with our addictive emotions, they start seeming normal.
Addictive emotions become a problem when …
Over time we need more and more emotional chemicals to flood our bodies so that we can feel alive. The receptor sites on the cells become desensitized, so we need more chaos, more anger, more bitterness to get our “fix”.
As you might imagine, being addicted to your stressful emotions is hard on the people you care about and the people you work with.
How do you know if you are addicted to your emotions?
Here are five examples of emotional addiction:
- When everything is calm and running smoothly, you need to stir things up.
- Just when you are about to be successful, you “shoot yourself in the foot” and end up failing.
- Finding simple pleasures in life is difficult if not impossible.
- People start avoiding you because of your emotional out bursts.
- You feel lost if you are not upset.
Do any of these ring true? How do you express your addiction?
Who would you be without your emotional addiction?
You can become defined by your emotional addiction. Sure, you might think, I won’t be angry all the time when people at work start doing their job. Or I’m not the one creating chaos in my family; I’m a victim. Or I won’t be so bitter when my relationship improves.
You may believe that the problem is outside you and when the world changes, you will be fine. Unfortunately, addictive emotions are inside you and you take them with you wherever you go. You can’t run away from them. If life changes, you’ll just find a new reason to be upset or angry.
Can you imagine life without addictive emotions? Without these emotions, you can begin to discover your true self and your purpose in life.
I created a method of releasing the past that can help you. Addictive emotions are rooted in emotional wounds from childhood. I call my method the poetry of emotion process.
Click on “Are you new to the site?” to read more. You will find some background information and then I will walk you through the basic poetry of emotion process. You can release your addictive emotions.
Leave me a comment below.
(Image: Marco Nedermeijer @ Flickr)
