Help! I'm Addicted To A Person! 💙💔

Yes, it is definitely possible to be addicted to a person. And in this video, we are going to discuss all the major aspects of that. Meaning, what is an addiction to a person? How does it happen, when does it happen? And of course, most importantly, how to break that addiction. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the shovel down. This YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life back on track, your family back on track, and get back out there to live the life that you want to live. And this is the only channel that helps you understand addiction from every single angle. I guess a good place to start with this topic is to identify what exactly does it mean to be addicted to a person. Well, to be honest, it's kind of the same as being addicted to anything else that you can be addicted to, like drugs and alcohol, gambling, spending, all the addictive things. In its simplest sense, addiction means that you continue to pursue something despite the fact that it's having a ton of harmful, negative effects on your life. So looking at addiction that way, it's not a far jump to see how it's pretty possible to be addicted to a person. You can continue to pursue a relationship despite the fact that it's having harmful effects on your own life and maybe even other people's lives. But to add a little bit more depth to the idea of what an addiction is, other addictive symptoms include craving, obsession, loss of control, and an inability to stop. Now, I want to take just a second to clarify the difference between being addicted to a person and being madly in love with a person. Because there are some similarities there, right? You might have that craving, that obsessive thought. What you don't have in the madly in love department that you do have in the addiction department is all the harmful negative effects. In fact, what makes relationships addictive tends to be the inability to actually have that relationship. If you feel crazy obsessed with a person and they feel crazy obsessed with you back then, I would probably call that madly in love. If you feel crazy obsessed with a person and they either don't feel it back for you, or feel it sometimes, or feel it, but not as much as you feel it, or they did feel it, but now they don't, that's when it's more likely that you could experience an addiction addicted state. When you think about anything else that's addictive, like a substance or the addictive behaviors, it's like you get close to achieving this certain feeling state, but you can't quite get There, and that is the addictive part. Or you get that feeling state, but you get it inconsistently, which then leaves you wanting it more and more and more. Addiction is like destructive desire. Now, here are some incidences where the possibility of becoming addicted to another person go up. If you've had a history of trauma in your childhood, just like your chances of developing an addiction to anything go way up in one of those, like, unrequited love scenarios, maybe you've had this mad crush on someone and you've never even met them, or you've had this mad crush on them, but you've never told them. So you have these strong feelings, but those feelings are not being mirrored back towards you, which can happen for a lot of different reasons. Two most common types of situations where I see people addicted to other people is right after a breakup, which I'm going to explain in just a second. And when you are in love with someone who has an addiction. Let's start with the right after a breakup scenario. When you're really bonded with someone, your brain actually becomes physically dependent on that person because you're getting your oxytocin needs met, which is a brain chemical, through your relationship with that person. That closeness, that bond, that touching, that connection, it creates all that good oxytocin in your brain. And when that relationship is just ripped away, you literally go into withdrawal. And when you get in that withdrawal state, you get desperate. You do desperate things. Now, most people that come to see me, they see me for addiction. But another really common reason why people come to see me is after a breakup. And they don't realize that they're in an addicted state. They just realize that they're having some kind of struggle and they need to talk to someone about it. But here's what goes on, right? There's this intense craving for that other person. Person, you know, where you're making up 20,000 excuses to have a reason to talk to them. Like, oh, you found their sweatshirt and they need to come get it or something. You know, just any old reason. Or, I bought this Christmas present for you before we broke up, and I thought I might as well just give it to you. Some reason why you need to be in contact with that other person. Another common breakup behavior is social media stalking. That obsessive, that planning, that scheming. Who are they talking to? What are they doing? Are they happy? Do they miss me? And your brain literally just goes crazy with all this. You may have difficulty sleeping or difficulty eating. Can you see now just how closely this relates to being in withdrawal from any other addictive thing. It's a bad place to be, and most of us have been there at one point or the other. And let me tell you, when you're in this situation, the risk go way up that you're going to make a decision that you later regret, because desperation and fear leads us to make bad decisions. Now let's move on to why being in love with an addict can lead you to being addicted to that person. It's because when you're in a relationship relationship with someone who has an addiction to something else, like a chemical, a substance, or some other type behavior, it's like sometimes they're there with you, and other times they're not. Whether they're physically there or not, it's like emotionally they're connected, and then emotionally they're not. I frequently tell people that if you're in a relationship with someone who has an addiction, you can at best be second in their life. And it's that inability to find consistency in that relationship that leaves you feeling addicted. It's that, like, you get the good part and then you lose the good part. And then you get overtaken by fear and worry about their addiction and what's bad going to happen, and you start to chase them. And before you know it, you have a person who's chasing a substance or some sort of addiction, and then you have another person over here who's chasing that person. And so it's like you have this dual addiction process going on at the same time. Which is why in our practice, when we treat addiction, we treat the whole family system, because it's really two addictions happening, right? One person's addicted to something else, and another person is probably addicted to this person, or at least addicted to trying to fix this problem that they have. And that makes for a really messy kind of situation. Now, when it comes to how do you actually break an addiction to another person? Again, it is not all that different than how do you actually break an addiction to anything else. The first thing you gotta do is get control of those obsessive thoughts. I call it the rabbit hole. Everything inside of you is gonna want to go down into that deep, d dark, obsessive rabbit hole. But I am telling you, there is nothing good down there. Now, you may not can help that first thought that pops in your mind, but you can help whether or not you fuel that thought. Do you entertain that thought? Do you remember when do you open up the social media and start social media stalking? Do you start calling friends to Ask what they know about what's going on with the person. If you're doing those things, then you are fueling your own cravings. Now, I know you can't 100% control this, but like I said, you can control whether or not you give into it. Because when you give into it and you let yourself fall down the rabbit hole, you're fanning the flames, you're making it worse. And the further down the rabbit hole you get, the harder it is to come out. As painful as it may be, if you are really, really, really trying to break an addiction to a person, like especially example of a breakup, the best way to do that is going cold tur. Don't make up all these reasons to communicate with them. That means turn off your social media and definitely quit stalking their social media. Now, that's gonna be against every instinct in your body. But hey, that's what it's like when you're trying to break an addiction. And the more you don't give into it, the more you refuse to feed it, the faster you will get better. If you're obsessively talking to someone else about it, you might need to reign that in. If you're obsessively messaging or calling the person you're addicted to, you definitely need to re that in. And if you find that despite your efforts, you still can't get this under control, then I'm going to strongly suggest that you talk to someone, maybe even a professional counselor. Because to be honest, when you're addicted to a person, you're probably going to wear out your friends and family by talking about it so much. Now, if you already have a counselor or a really good confidant, then that is awesome. If you are in need of a counselor or a really good confidant, one of the easiest, fastest ways I know to access that kind of thing is through BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online counseling service that specializes in matching you to the perfect fit. One of the things I love about BetterHelp is that you can start the process anytime, day or night. Because let's face it, those obsessive thoughts, they don't always come right during business hours. In fact, it's usually kind of after work or after school or after everything calms down that all those thoughts start rushing in. And it's kind of when you become more and more aware of, I've got to do something about this. Another thing that I really like about BetterHelp is that you can communicate with your counselor in a lot of different ways. Yes, you can have virtual sessions where you're seeing them, they're seeing you, and you're talking kind of more like traditional therapy. But you can also have message with your counselor as well, because sometimes you have a quick question or a concern, or you're just really struggling, or you just need a couple of quick words of advice in between sessions. Well, with better help, all of that is possible most of the time in these situations, you're probably not going to need like really deep forever and ever long term counseling for a million years. But you might need someone to help you get through the next couple of weeks or maybe even months, depending on how bad it is. It's time to take your life back, to get back in control so that you can get back to living the life that you want to live. Now. This channel is an affiliate of Better Help, which means using their services also helps support this channel. Going to put the link to them in the description. And if you use our link, you actually get a little discount. If you've really been trying hard and you just can't conquer it, seriously think about having someone objective to help talk you through it. Because if you're just trying to manage it on your own, you might get caught up in making some really desperate decisions that you seriously regret later on. Now, up next, I want you to watch this video on attachment, which is really going to open your eyes even more about this situation of being addicted to a person.