Addiction Keeps You Stuck In A Victim Mindset! (Addiction Psychology 2022)

Abusing drugs and alcohol actually keeps you stuck in a victim mentality. And in this video, I'm going to tell you the four reasons why that happens. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life and your family back on track and get back out there and live the life that you want to live. This video is going to be one of those uncomfortable truth conversations of moments when you're overusing drugs and alcohol. It absolutely most certainly keeps you stuck in a victim mentality. And what I mean when I say that is you get stuck on past hurts. You get stuck on things that are going wrong in your relationships. You don't easily get over lost dreams and hopes and disappointments. You stay stuck in financial worries. It just plain keeps you stuck. And there are several reasons for this. The first, and one of the biggest reasons this keeps you stuck is because when we use substances, it causes us to ruminate over all the bad things that have ever happened to us. We replay it over and over and over in our head. And as we do that, those hurts get bigger and bigger and bigger. It's kind of like when a piece of gossip starts. The first time you tell it, it's dramatic enough, but by the 10th time you tell it, the whole story is even more outrageous. The same thing when we ruminate over the things that we're upset about in life, those things tend to grow and snowball. It's like every time we go over it, the story gets worse. The second reason why abusing drugs and Alcoh, or really any addiction for that matter, will keep you stuck in a victim mentality. It's because of the rebound effect. After you've engaged in an addictive behavior or substance, your body rebounds back from that by producing more crappy brain chemicals. Yeah, the anxious depressed ones. And you can even have physical withdrawal symptoms. So you can feel in pain or sick or any number of bad symptoms. And guess what? When we feel bad, we think negatively. Right? And using substances or engaging in addictive behavior keeps us in that never ending loop. Feel better, feel terrible. Feel better, Feel terrible. Feel better, feel terrible. And every time we feel terrible, that affects our mood, our view, our outlook, and how we perceive the things that are going on in our life. The third reason that addictive behaviors keep us stuck in a victim mentality is because typically it causes the people around us to get frustrated with us, right? Because we're not ourselves, and we're not keeping our promises, and we're not doing what we said we were going to do. And we're doing some risky, maybe dangerous things that put them at risk. And when the people around us get upset with us, they start telling us and venting to us and nagging us and preaching and threatening and giving ultimatums. And guess what that does. That makes us feel defensive. And then we get really caught up in defending our actions and how the other person is just such a jerk and they don't understand again, now we're really digging in to that victim mentality and holding on for dear life once we get to this point. And the fourth, possibly biggest, most important reason why addictive behavior and substance abuse keeps us stuck in victim mentality is because essentially it gives us an excuse to make more bad choices. You see, we're stuck in this addictive cycle, and whether we like to admit it or not, we have a very strong compulsion to engage in certain particular behaviors, which a lot of times means we have to go against our own value system to continue with the addiction. And we have to somehow justify that in our head. We have to make right while we're doing this thing that we know probably isn't right or is a bad decision at minimum, or is even maybe hurtful to other people. We have to justify that in our head. And the way we do that is we tell ourselves some storyline of I had to because they deserved it because I deserve it because some kind of victim storyline that basically is some version of I had to because or I couldn't help it. Because now, if you find that you're stuck in this kind of mentality and you're ready to get out of it, then consider signing up for our Recovery to go online support group, and we'll help you get yourself out of this terrible cycle that you don't want to be in. And up next, I want you to watch this video titled do this One Thing and Stop Relapses Forever. It is directly related to what you just learned in this video.