These 3 Destructive Thoughts Are Why You Can't Beat Addiction

If you've been trying to overcome an addiction, but you just keep falling back into it over and over and over again, chances are it's because you're having one of these three really destructive thinking patterns or mindsets. So in today's video, we are going to confront those head on. And I'll actually give you an extra little bonus one in the end that will really help to ensure that you are successful at beating these addictions when once and for all. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth and you are watching the YouTube channel put the Shovel Down. We're here to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can stay five steps ahead of it on this channel. We are more than just inspirational stories. Yes, we do have some of those and we love them. But our goal here is to tell you how to get the job done, to give you actionable steps that will work. I've been helping people overcome addiction for more than 20 years now. And I'll tell you, there are many ways to beat addiction. If it's your goal to put addiction behind you once and for all, subscribe to this channel and I'll make sure you have all the tools and resources you need to make you successful. Alright, so let's get on to our three really destructive mindsets that pull people back over and over and over again. Sometimes these mindsets disallow people from being able to break their patterns at all. And other times, people can break the patterns for short periods of time, but they keep falling back. These are sneaky little mindsets that are actually reinforced by our brain chemistry and our environment and our past negative thinking patterns. So let's look at each one carefully. And as we talk about these, I would love to hear about your experience with these negative addictive mindset patterns. The first one, and maybe even the most common one that's like almost pushed on you is this idea that most people don't beat addiction. You hear crazy statistics like only 10% of people beat addiction. You go to rehab and they'll say, there's a room full of y' all in here and only one of you guys are gonna make it out. When you hear things that over and over and over again, and then you kind of experience it for yourself, as in you try, but you fall back. Then you, you really start to believe these things. And you may not know it, but you could be subconsciously self sabotaging. Because if you believe that no one really makes it out of this thing, that's Going to keep you from really trying. It's going to keep you from being able to find the solutions that are going to work for you. You're gonna give up way easier. Maybe you're not even aware that you're doing this. But just in case you are, let's confront that head on. The truth is, is that thousands and thousands of people overcome addictions every single day. In fact, most of the people that we see in our office are very successful pretty dang quickly. If you're watching this video, the chances that you're going to be successful at breaking addiction are way, way up there. Because you are taking a big action step to learn and understand what you're dealing with. And that's how you beat it. You beat it by being strategic. This is a chess game. This is not a game of strength. You can't cowboy your way out. You have to outsmart it. And that's what you're doing right now, is you're learning to understand it and get ahead of it. So you're already halfway down that road. Do not buy into the concept that most people don't beat addictions. People beat addictions all the time, and there are tons of ways to do it. A little subset of that negative thinking pattern is, I'm addicted to this specific thing, and people really don't overcome this thing because this is like the most addictive thing. Not that long ago, on one of my live videos, someone came onto the chat and they said, hey, my loved one is addicted to meth. And I've heard people just can't overcome that. Is that true? And I'm like, that's ridiculous. Absolutely not. People overcome every kind of addiction. Now, the reason those statistics are really slanted is because it's really hard to measure how many people really overcome addiction. The first thing I want you to realize about it is that most people that have addiction are not participating in the surveys, and they're definitely not owning up to the fact that they have addiction. So mostly this research comes from treatment centers trying to figure out, like, the effectiveness of certain treatments. But you don't really know how they're measuring the success of these treatments or these rehabs. Does it mean person never, ever uses again? Does it mean that the person never gets arrested? Does it mean the person goes to 12 step meetings? How are they measuring the success? The other thing that I want you to know about it is most people, it takes multiple times before they get it. So if you look at a statistic like only 10% of people in rehab are going to stay sober or whatever. It's like, okay, maybe on this round, but it takes people a few tries at this thing to get it. It really is a learning process. And if you followed people over the long haul, I think you would see that that very, very different than what you might imagine. In fact, research shows that most people beat addiction without ever even going to rehab. That's a surprising one, right? But it is absolutely true. So do not let those negative mindsets get into your brain. People are just trying to scare you straight, but all it's doing is scaring you. Stop. They think it's going to make you dig in and work really, really hard to be that one. But subconsciously it's setting you up for failure. I'm telling you, reject that thought. It's absolutely not true. Negative mindset, thinking pattern that keeps people stuck over and over and over again. Relapsing is this idea that life is going to suck without it. Now, it's understandable why you feel that way because over the long period of time when you develop an addiction, you get dependent on whatever that thing is and it gets to the point where you cannot experience pleasure or joy and you don't look forward to other things other than the addictive substance, behavior, whatever your addiction is. And so when you're without it, life kind of sucks, right? You may feel depressed, anxious, or not motivated or not be interested in things, but that's actually withdrawal. That's not a good measure of what life is really going to be like in recovery. The real truth about this matter is life is going to be exponentially better. Okay, you may not have these giant super high moments, but you also probably won't have those really terrible, awful low moments all the time like you've been having lately. And guess what? You're going to be able to experience joy and happiness and pleasure and motivation from all those regular, simple life things that right now feel like don't interest you or you don't really care about the way that you should. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about looking at sober people. They're laughing, they're having fun, and literally thinking to themselves they're faking it. It's hard to believe that people really are enjoying their life without that addictive substance or behavior. But that is a symptom of addiction. Addiction robs you of the ability to experience joy and pleasure from anything else. If you want to know why that happens scientifically, then take a look at the videos in my playlist called the science of addiction. And then you can totally nerd out into exactly why that happens. There's science behind it. But what I can tell you is you will be able to experience joy and pleasure and happiness like you haven't in a very long time from simple things. In fact, sometimes I think people in recovery Experience more joy and pleasure and happiness. It's almost like people who have maybe, like, beat a terminal illness, and then they appreciate their life better, and they notice the great things better. Kind of happens when you're in addiction recovery, too. If you've been sober for a while and that's not happening for you, Then you may want to ask yourself, is there something else going on that's maybe untreated, like a depression or a trauma or something? Or is it that I've told myself for so many years that life is going to suck without it? It's sort of like the placebo effect. We can talk ourselves into anything. Which is why I want you to confront this thought head on. It's another one that is completely not true. In fact, it's the opposite. That's true. Now, this third one might be a little bit surprising to you. One of the biggest things my clients get nervous about what other people are going to think about them now that they're not engaging in that addictive behavior. And that may seem crazy to outsiders, and they may not understand that. But let's explore it just a little bit. Over the course of time, you've developed addiction. If there's a social component to your addiction, maybe it's gambling, maybe it's drinking, maybe it's smoking. Whatever it is, if there's a social component, you've probably developed other friendships and relationships that revolve around this addictive behavior. A good amount of them might also have an addiction. I'm not saying all of them do, but the likelihood that some of them do, maybe even a lot of them do, is pretty high. Because not only have you probably surrounded yourself with people who also engage in this behavior, whatever it is, but you probably surround yourself with people who engage, engage in this behavior a lot, so that it has normalized it for you. And you might have even done what I call, like, big talk, and talked negatively about people who don't engage in that behavior, because you've built up a lot of mental defense mechanisms, rationalizations, justifications, narratives to facilitate your addiction. You see this a lot in, like, people who drink, Especially people who drink, like, a lot. They feel uncomfortable around people who don't drink because they think that those people maybe are judging them or it makes them feel not great about what they're doing. But actually what ends up happening is the people that are drinking a lot end up judging the other people. They put negative labels on them, they think they're lame, they think they're boring. And again, nothing could be further from the truth. I'm gonna tell you what I tell my clients. There may be a few people out there who judge you when you give up whatever it is you're giving up. But the ones who are doing that are the ones who also have problem. Because other people, they either not gonna care whether you engage in that behavior or not, or they're gonna be really happy for you. And some will really admire you and respect you even more for it. Those few that have those negative judgment thoughts, the reason they're having those is because they're projecting onto you. It's because it's making them have to look harder at the truth about what's going on with themselves. Or maybe they think that you're judging them. Oh, now you're on that side. You think you're so good, those kind of thoughts. So I'm not telling you that no one will judge you for that. But I am telling you that most people won't judge you for that. And the ones that do are really struggling themselves. So we're not going to judge them for that. Heck, you may have been in that position yourself in the past and know exactly what I'm talking about now. I told you at beginning I was going to give you a sort of like a little bonus one. And I didn't include this one because it's not really one specific thought. It's kind of a group of thoughts or a set of thinking patterns that I want us to look at. I talk about these a lot with my recovery coaching clients. In fact, the majority of of what we end up doing usually is confronting these kind of negative, destructive addictive mindsets. Over the course of building an addiction, you have built many, many, many defense mechanisms as a way to support your addictive behavior. Essentially it's a way of deflecting shame and guilt and distracting yourself from dealing with the actual addiction. It's essentially a bunch of rationalizations, justifications, resentments, self pity thoughts. And just because you, those thoughts actually don't automatically just go away. In fact, you've been reinforcing these thoughts for so long that you've sort of brainwashed yourself. That and then neurochemically because you've been kind of on a roller Coaster. Everything feels kind of crummy. One of the hardest things to get people in early recovery to realize is that the way you feel about things right now will change drastically. So please don't make any giant, major decisions, like don't quit your job, don't get a divorce. Don't move to another country, because right now it feels like you hate those things. What I like to encourage people to do is I'm like, look, it could turn out that you definitely need to make those exact changes, and we're gonna figure that out together. But in the meantime, let's figure out this sobriety thing, because you're gonna feel differently. Because possibly the reason you feel that way is because your brain chemistry is all messed up and your anxiety's not great, and you're not sleeping good. And so you're not viewing things through the lens that if you are in a happier, healthier state, it basically makes you more negative. It's kind of like having your hormones all out of balance. You're not going to be seeing things the same way. So neurochemically, things are being filtered in a negative way. Another reason why that's happening is because your relationships probably aren't great right now. A lot of people in your life are probably frustrated with you, which makes you feel defensive, which makes you feel resentful towards them, which makes you feel sorry for yourself. And it makes you think, I don't want these relationships. These people are bad. These people are judging me. These people are concerned, controlling. These people are negative. These people are trying to sabotage me. All of those kind of thoughts. But oftentimes, those negative relational patterns are symptomatic of the addiction. So I've got a little assignment for you. I want you to look deep inside and see if you can identify some of your really common rationalizations, justifications, resentments, all these things that you're either telling yourself to feel okay about making that decision over and over, or that you're telling yourself to keep yourself distracted from dealing with whatever the situation is. Like, I hate my sister. I hate my boss. My parents like my brother more than me. Those are basically like, when we're focused on other people's flaws as a way of not dealing with ourselves. And, hey, if you're early in recovery, I don't expect that you're gonna fix all of these things right away. But what I do want you to do is just keep an open mind, because you're gonna feel very differently about pretty much everything in your life. So let's give it time. And let's see what washes out before we make any of those big decisions. And be open minded to the fact that you're gonna have to un brainwash yourself, which is gonna mean not only admitting like, okay, I have an addiction and I made bad choices, but admitting that I probably told myself some not great truth, I've brainwashed myself in a way that's not great. And I'm gonna have to confront and admit that maybe I was wrong about some things more than just the addiction, about other things too. If you want to know more about conquering an addiction, then check out my playlist on this channel that's specifically for people trying to conquer an addiction. And if you feel like you need more than that, like you need some one on one or you want to consult about your situation, there are links in the description to additional resources and I will see you in the next video.