Amber Hollingsworth breaks down the five-step cycle of addictive thinking: minimizing the problem, promising to do better, breaking those promises, blaming external factors, then hating yourself. Shame and guilt fuel the loop. The way out is turning the light on addiction, reducing the secrecy that keeps it alive.
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In this video, we're going to be taking a look at the very predictable mindset of addiction. In fact, we're going to talk about how addictive thinking happens in a very circular, predictable pattern. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the shovel down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and this channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction. So. So that you can recover your life and your loved ones and get back to living the life that you want to live. It's my job to make sure you're always five steps ahead of addiction. All right, let's get into it. Here is the five step circular addictive mindset thinking pattern. Ready? It's going to start with I'm not that bad. Now, of course, there are variations of this, but in a really traditional sense, you just think to yourself, okay, the addiction's not that bad. You know, I'm not as bad as so and so over there. Or there are people that are a lot worse than I am. Or maybe you think that, okay, your addiction is really bad, but you're not a bad person, or you don't do some bad things like other people do. So it starts with the I'm not that bad thought. The I'm not that bad thought then leads to step two, which is I'm going to do better. So even when you think that it's not that bad, you do realize that it gets out of hand sometimes and is probably beyond what it needs to be, or it's causing some problems in your life that you don't want to do better. And there are these constant promises of I'm going to do better. It's kind of like on Monday, it's day one, and you'll find yourself thinking that over and over again. And then eventually, after you've broken all those promises to yourself and likely to other people that care about you, then you begin to really get down on yourself. You really begin to sort of feel terrible about it. And then you have the thought of I can't help it. You start to feel really stuck and frustrated. And of course, the I can't help it thought then leads to the it's not my fault, or the other version of that would be, it's your fault, or it's because. Fill in the blank. It's because you're always on my case. It's because I have this underlying mental health problem, and I can't help it. It's because I have this medical condition, and it's because of where I Live. Everyone does it. It's because of the family I grew up in. There's some kind of thought of a justification for why I can't help it. You see, that thought process is just a circular justification for why I can't help it. And eventually all of that then leads to the fifth thought in the cycle, which is I hate myself. And it's at this point in the addictive thinking cycle that you get really, really down on yourself. You're mad at yourself because you keep getting stuck in this cycle because of how much damage it's causing. And you just get so down in the dumps, you can start to beat yourself up and have a lot of negative self talk. Now, I do talk about this more in depth in some other videos, but I want you to know that beating your own self up is just as bad as if someone else is beating you up. Because what's going to happen is when you beat your own self up, that's going to lead you back to feeling sorry for yourself or some kind of way of rescuing your own self. And then you get back into the cycle again. Now, there's a really good way to understand this cycle. You can look at something called the drama triangle. And at the end of this video, I'll link a video up about that, about this very cycle and the thinking patterns involved. But eventually, the I hate myself thought eventually leads back to I'm not that bad. Either my addiction's not that bad or I'm not that bad of a person, or some kind of rescue type thought to make yourself feel better after you've done beat yourself up so bad. And around and around we go. Now, if you can relate to anything in this cycle, give this video a thumbs up. Now, when you really think about it, this whole cycle, this whole thinking cycle all revolves around shame and guilt. You see shame and guilt, it's like the food for addiction. And the more shame and guilt you have, the more it's going to feed into that addiction. And the more bigger and stronger and nastier that addiction is going to grow. And there's only one way to get that to go away. And that way is to turn the light on addiction. Because addiction lives in darkness. It. It needs to be in the secrecy. It needs to have shame and guilt to fuel the fires. But if you turn the light on it, you will literally starve it out. In fact, addiction is very much like a parasite. It just eats away at you and eats away at you until it leaves you with absolutely nothing. Now, up next, I've got a video for you all about how to turn the light on addiction and break the cycle once and for all.
