February 2020

Deborah Horton

How To Identify An Addiction

photo of woman looking upwards

Whenever most people hear the word addiction, their first thought is drugs or alcohol. While drugs and alcohol can lead to addiction, they are by no means the only things people can be addicted to.

An addiction is anything in our lives that we cannot stop doing and that we feel compelled to continue doing and if we attempt to stop doing it we suffer negative reactions.

We can be addicted to almost anything. Food, exercise, shopping or spending, gambling, phones or tablets, video games, self-harm such as cutting, soda, hoarding, cleaning, and anything else we are not able to stop doing and that if we try to stop causes us negative reactions.

Addictions are built up over time of repetition and reinforcement. Similar to forming habits, but the difference in addictions is that our brain becomes convinced that we need the thing we are addicted to and that we cannot live without doing it. We are compelled to do it by what becomes a chemical need for it. The addiction releases dopamine into our brains (reward chemicals) that make us want to have that reward or in some cases release more and more.

If we try to stop these addictive behaviors, we suffer withdrawals just the same as we do if we are addicted to drugs and alcohol. In fact, the withdrawals can be exactly the same. Nervousness, shaking, feeling depressed, being irritable can all be present. I have seen many clients who are addicted to electronic devices and/or video games who stop doing them or are prevented from accessing them by parents, who then display these withdrawal symptoms.

Most all addictions have a negative effect on our lives. We may tell ourselves that our addiction doesn’t affect us negatively so that we can continue doing it, but a truthful examination will show that is not true. Addictions cost us money, time, relationship issues, health issues, emotional issues, and much more. What is your addiction costing you, honestly?

Many people with addictions do not want to give them up. Convinced that they are making their lives better or that the addictions make them feel better emotionally (which dopamine can do that) but it is a false sense of feeling better. It is avoidance of dealing with the emotions that are driving the addiction. Many times, I have clients say, I play video games all day because I enjoy it. Only minimally true, it is more likely because they are avoiding a negative emotion or situation. Constant dopamine release can make one feel that way.

So, if you have an addiction, how do you break it? One step at a time. One choice at a time. One moment at a time. And working to gain understanding of what the addiction is helping you to avoid? Emotions, trauma, relationships? It can take quite some time to break an addiction and there will be negative responses by both your body and brain during this time. This is why many people start trying to break an addiction and when the negative responses come they find it too hard and give up or relapse.

Even if that happens, we can always start again and again and again. As long as we are alive, we have the opportunity to begin again. We do not fail because we do not succeed on the first attempt or the 50th, we fail because we do not try again.

One step at a time. One day at a time. One hour at a time. One second at a time. One choice at a time. Repeat as often as necessary. Fail. Try again. And then keep trying.

Deborah Horton

Ways To Find The Good

photo of a woman standing on the sunflower field

Every day we are faced with a choice. The choice to look for the bad or to find the good. Whatever you look for it will be found.

Each day we can look for the things we want to find. Regardless of our circumstances, we can find the good. If we are going through difficult times, it can be hard for us to pull ourselves out of that space to look for the good. But it can be done, one thought at a time.

SLOW DOWN

The everyday stress we carry can sometimes be overwhelming. If you have added stress from relationships, physical or mental health issues, or unresolved past traumas, it can be even more overwhelming. Everything can seem to be moving at light speed. Slow your thoughts and emotions down. Practice deep breathing, just a few very big breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth can lower your heart rate and blood pressure and give you space to think more clearly. Once you have slowed things down a bit, you can look around you for the good.

SHARPEN YOUR SENSES

In the same way that you would use your senses for grounding yourself during periods of stress, you can do the same thing when looking for the good around you. What do you see that is beautiful, magical, uplifting, etc.? What can you touch that is comforting, warm, soft, etc.? What can you hear that is calming, beautiful, uplifting, etc.? What can you taste that is calming, comforting, filling, warm, etc.? What can you smell that is calming, comforting, etc.? Use your senses to find the good around you.

GRATITUDE

Turning your mind to what you are grateful for rather than what you are not can have a profound effect on your thoughts and emotions. Gratitude does not have to be something big. Even the smallest thing that you are thankful for, that makes you happy, that gives you even the smallest joy, is something to be grateful for. Everyone can find something to be grateful for and once you begin to think about it, your mind will help you find others. Find the good in your gratitude.

SELF-CARE

Even if the darkest of times, self-care is still important. When you are overwhelmed, find one moment, one thing that you can do for yourself. Five minutes of decompression before facing something difficult. A short hot shower. A few minutes of meditation or deep breathing. A piece of dark chocolate or a cup of herbal tea. A few minutes smelling essential oils. Self-care can help you recenter and find the good.

Every day, even every moment, offers an opportunity to find the good. There is something you can find if you slow down, use your senses, practice gratitude, and self-care. Find the good in every moment to help get you through stressful and overwhelming times.

We find whatever it is we are looking for. Look for the good. ~ Al Carraway

Deborah Horton

How To Love Yourself More

adult blur bokeh bright

For many of us, so much of our time is spent in things we do not love about ourselves. Things we think are true about us. Things we think others think are true about us. The way others make us feel about ourselves through words or actions or the lack of them.

It becomes so much easier to live in the world of what we do not love about ourselves that it becomes automatic.

Contrary to what we may believe, there are things we like about ourselves and even things we love. We just have to ask our brains the question. What do I love about myself?

It may take some time for the brain to go through all the data in our minds and sift through what we do not love to find the things that we do, but it will find them. The brain hates questions and loves answers.

Before writing this piece, I asked myself the same question in an activity with clients this past week. I found that it was very hard at first to come up with things I love about myself, and I also found that quite shocking. I thought it would be much easier than it turned out to be.

At first, there were just a few things that came to mind quickly. But over the course of the week that I worked on this with clients, my brain found more and more things and presented them to me. Sometimes in sessions and sometimes randomly. But my brain did find them and it will also find yours.

Some of mine were my organization, my determination, my artistic side, my objectivity, my eyes, and on and on it went. My brain is still finding answers to the question and as long as I continue to ask the question it will continue to look.

It can be very helpful to write these things down and then use the things you have written down as affirmations. Placing the list where you can see it daily and reminding yourself of the things you love about you. Repeating them throughout the day. You then create new automatic thoughts of self-love.

Find some time to try it out and teach yourself how you can remind your mind about the things you already love about yourself. They are in there.

Love yourself and the rest will follow.

Deborah Horton

Losing Yourself

alone cold fog forest
Photo by Rene Asmussen on Pexels.com

The more time I spend working in the trauma-focused world of counseling, the more I realize codependency is far more widespread than previously thought. Especially traumas that are experienced in childhood, which makes sense as that is where everything is set for future behaviors, beliefs, and choices.

Codependency most often stems from a childhood that contains either physical/sexual abuse, witnessed domestic abuse, addiction in parents, lack of parents, neglect, parents with mental illness, emotional abuse or any combination of these. Codependency also occurs if the child has no parents especially mothers in their lives.

The child will develop beliefs about themselves and an absolute need to try and contain, control, or cover up the situations they find themselves in. All while desperately wanting to maintain the relationship so their parent will love them or at the very least acknowledge them in some way.

The child will spend every waking moment trying to make sure the parent is okay or in their minds “happy.” If people are happy they won’t take their unhappiness out on them. They also spend their lives being small adults caring for parents who cannot care for themselves. Cooking, cleaning, providing alcohol or drugs, doing what the parent wants no matter what it is to keep them happy, taking care of siblings.

Always, always, seeking love from the parent, approval, even just being noticed is enough to keep the child repeating the cycle.

Through this behavior, the child develops a very low self-image believing they are not worthy of love. They develop poor boundaries and in many cases no boundaries. There is a constant need to save others or make others happy. They never consider what they need or want. There is a constant need for perfection so that they might be lovable. And an absolute need for control over anything that they can control because life with their parent is always chaos.

All of these things become set inside the child between birth and age 7. After this, these beliefs, behaviors, and choices become solid in the psyche and they are then seen as “normal” and they are not questioned. They are just repeated and repeated throughout their lives in every single relationship they have.

They seek out relationships with those who need saving. They never consider what they want or need or how they feel. Every relationship is the one they had with their parent or the one they didn’t have with their parent because the parent wasn’t there. They control their children’s lives because they couldn’t control their parents. They never say no in relationships because they need the other person’s approval for their own self worth.

Codependency can be extremely hard to change because by the time someone seeks out help it has been their norm for years and years. They have no concept of self-love or self-care. Boundaries are a foreign concept. Being alone is an all consuming fear. Children will always want their parent to love them no matter what the parent has done even when they are no longer children – it is genetic.

Learning to say no is one of the most important things codependent people can do to begin to set boundaries with others. Understanding the difference between saving people and supporting them without enabling their behaviors. Self-care and self-love are absolutely necessary to breaking the chains of codependency. Knowing that they have worth in themselves and do not need others to provide it for them.

Counseling can help codependent people see things more objectively and offer ways to start to change. The biggest thing that keeps people from letting go of codependent behaviors is fear. Counseling can help process through this fear and open the road to moving forward. Reaching out for help can be the first step to change.

Until next time,
Deborah

Deborah Horton

Do or Do Not

dodonot

Every day, even every moment of the day we are confronted with choices. So many of them we don’t even consider choices but choices they are. It truly is do or do not at the core, emotions are what makes it grey.

When the alarm clock goes off, we can choose to get right out of bed or we can hit the snooze button. The clothes we wear we choose what to put on. Do we eat breakfast or do we not? And what do we eat if we do? Choices all.

As we go throughout our day the choices are nonstop, every second there seems to be a choice that we are making whether we realize it or not. So automatic some of these choices become that it can seem as if we have no control of them as if we have no choice.

That, however, is the emotion of the choice speaking. Making us sometimes feel that we have no choices about what we do or how we live. If we are struggling financially and cannot see a way out, we can think that we have no choices about what we do in that situation. However, there are still choices.

Choices can be easy, mindless, automatic or they can be agonizing, painful, and traumatic. Many times we will avoid the ones that hurt and keep choosing the ones where we are comfortable – emotionally. But that is still a choice complete with its own consequences.

If we change nothing about our choices then nothing changes about our lives. There is no magic choice and change fairy to come and change things for us. Nothing changes without choices. But are we emotionally able and emotionally strong enough to make those choices?

Many times we have past trauma that causes us to be unable to make these choices. Other times we have become so conditioned to choose what we have always chosen that we cannot see a different choice.

One of the main reasons to seek out therapy is to have an objective, not emotionally involved person who can help us see these choices we may not be able to see on our own. To offer alternatives and paths for us to choose differently.

In choices, there is do or do not two options. The middle ground exists as a result of emotional turmoil, it is a creation of the mind built on past traumas and automatic negative thinking. We can believe with all our hearts and minds that the middle ground exists and use it to justify our choices. It is a false narrative.

Examining the why of our choices in an objective, unemotional light is the only way to see clearly outside of the grey.

Until next time,
Deborah