What's the Link Between Character Defects And Addiction?

Is it character defects that lead to addiction, or is it addiction that leads to character defects? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever had that question? What about the question? Have you ever thought this? If addiction is a mental illness or if it's an illness, why is it that in so many recovery programs there's this emphasis on character defects? There are just some of these questions out there that are a little bit hard to tie together because people talk about addiction being an illness, like a biological illness. Some people say it's more of a psychological thing, and other people think it's more of a spiritual issue. But the truth of the matter is, is that it is all tied together. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's video. We're going to look at the link between the. The biology, the psychology and the spirituality. And in doing so, we're going to answer those questions about character defects. I mean, how does. How does it tie to addiction? What's the link? Is there a link? And what do you do about it? For those of you who are new here, I am Amber Hollingsworth, and you're watching 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 and your family back. Back on track. And today we're going to go into some. Into some depth about the science and the spiritual aspects. And I don't want you to be too panicked because there really is a link and it's not overly complicated once you can tie these pieces together. Now, some of you may be more aware of the 12 step program. Some of you may have, you know, worked 12 step programs. You may know everything about it, and others of you may know hardly anything about 12 step programs. But most of you at least know there are 12 steps in the 12 step program. And there are a couple of steps in there that have to do with this idea of character defects. There's Some steps in 4 and 5 where you identify some things that. That are sort of not going so great about yourself and about your relationships. And then in 6 and 7, you figure out what to do with those character defect. But before we figure out what to do with them, let's figure out what the deal with them is. You know, like, why is it that people that have addictions seem. Or to drugs or alcohol? Why is it that people with addictions seem to be so selfish? Why do they seem not to be able to think about the other people around them? Well, the answer to that really starts with the biology. And I'm not going to go too deep into the biology today. I do have some videos on that, if you want to know all about that. You can totally nerd out with me about the biology of addiction in some of my other videos. But essentially what I want you to know for today's sake. Is that when you have an addiction, you start to operate out of the survival part of your brain. And if you. Even if you don't have any experience with addiction, maybe you're watching this for a loved one. You can imagine that when you are under threat, when you're in a survival situation, you do act and behave in ways that are very different Than you would in your normal everyday life. And so you've got people that have addictions. You're operating out of this survival part. So it's like your brain is under this constant threat. And usually that means I have to get this substance in order to be okay. Or I'm going to be really sick or something bad's going to happen. And so you're constantly chasing that substance, behavior, gratification, whatever it is that is fueled your. That's the fuel for your addiction. You're chasing that now. That comes from the biology part. However, when you find yourself engaging in behaviors like that, those behaviors are inconsistent with your value system, which is what starts this entire, like, psychological process to start happening, which is then what leads into the idea of character defects. Now, every person on the planet has character defects. I've got character defects. And we'll tell you what my biggest one is somewhere in this video. So keep listening. And you have character defects no matter who you are. However, that's not really what causes someone to have an addiction. Now, there are certain character defects that are more prone to developing addictions. Mine is actually one of those. And others that are less prone to addiction. But I want you to know that it's not a character defect that causes someone to be addicted. However, once you have an addiction, that addiction sort of exploits Whatever character defects that you do have. And really magnifies them up, Puts them on display, lets them run the show. And it can even create character defects. That you actually don't even have in your normal self. So I feel like. Even though I feel like everyone has character defects, that's not what's leading to the addiction. But I do feel like addiction creates or at least magnifies the character defects that are there. Because you get put in this survival situation. So you start behaving in ways that really are sort of antisocial in a way. Not in the antisocial, like the clinical definition kind of way, but in the, like, I gotta take care of me. I've got to address this issue before I can possibly think about or care about anything or anyone else around me. Which then comes across as, you know, selfish behavior, impulsive behavior, reckless behavior, inconsiderate behavior, those kinds of things. So it will, the addiction will create those kinds of behaviors. Now this is to me where it gets really interesting because the addiction provokes those kinds of behaviors out of you. Then you then develop these psychological processes to almost like shield yourself from the shame and guilt that those behaviors are causing you. So, right, so follow my, follow me along here. You got the biology makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. Then the psychology comes into the situation because it's like the person you have to start to justify and rationalize why you're doing what you're doing. And so now you have this. Not only do you have this like obsession to find, get, do whatever the addiction is, but you have this entire different psychological defense mechanism wrapped up in justifying and rationalizing the behavior that your brain feels like it has to do, it has to have. And when that happens, and you guys, some of you guys have heard me talk about this before, most often people create kind of a self pity, a victim story of some sort. And they hang on to that and they build resentments to everyone and everything around them. So you really have a twofold process happening here. Yes, the addiction, the biological part of it drives behavior like maybe like lying, stealing, you know, not paying your bills, stuff like that, that can drive that kind of behavior. But you have to. The psychological part of is you have to somehow come to terms with that in your own head. So you start to change. Either you start to change your own value system in your head to fit with your behavior, or you start to say, well, you know that person, they deserved it. Or they didn't treat me right or I can't help it because so then there's this justification process wrapped up into that. And ultimately it's that process of behavior that doesn't fit your value system of the justifying and rationalizing that leads you into a spiritual deficit. Ultimately, anyone that has an addiction has issues with self esteem, self confidence, self worth. They have tons of shame and guilt. Some of people with addiction will express that to you and they'll let you see that part and others will not. But even if they won't let you see that part or express it out loud, trust Me, it's there. Shame is like the fuel for addiction. So it is definitely in there. And that leads to like. Like if you were in a 12 step program, they would call that a spiritual malady, right? Something's going on with you spiritually. Now, you can take any person and let that person develop an addiction. And you can see a pretty predictable pathway of behaviors and psychological processes that are going to come shortly after that. Regardless of what that person's character was like to begin with. You are going to behave in selfish way. You are going to tell lies, you are going to be dishonest, you're going to deceive, you're gonna do lots of not so great things in order to feed your addiction. Now, a while back I had a video about like something about lying and addiction. And, and some people made comments on my video and said, that's not fair, not everyone that has an addiction lies. But I'm gonna stand by that and say everyone has addiction lies. And if you can't admit that, then you're lying to yourself. You can argue with me in the comments if you want to, but I haven't seen it be otherwise. So even if someone's like, yeah, I did this drug, or yeah, I stole this from you, then they're lying to themselves about why that's okay or not okay, or they're lying to themselves about their ability to do something about it or not do something about it. Trust me, there is some deception going on in there somewhere. And so throughout the process of developing this biological addiction, it leads to the psychological process, which leads to the spiritual malady. Now all of this comes into play when you get into looking at a lot of recovery programs that use the 12 step process. Because in the 12 step process, truly what those steps are about, it's all about becoming a better person. And you may think to yourself, well, how does that like, help addiction, becoming a better person? Well, number one, it puts everything in the light. Everything has to be up on top of the surface. No secrecy, no lying, no hiding, and all that kind of stuff. And you guys know that I always say addiction can only live in secrecy and darkness. It cannot live in the light. So for one thing, bringing everything above board creates the kind of environment and circumstances that just really doesn't allow addiction to live. And secondly, once you start to address these character defects that either were there before or if weren't they weren't there before, they're there now after you have an addiction, then once you start to address that, what happens is, is that little process we talked about between the biology, the psychology and spirituality. If you can change that same sort of feedback loop, you can get yourself back, right? And there are actually some biological reasons for that. When you're doing all these things that you don't like and that you don't feel good about, and you're just fine rationalizing, and your anxiety is getting up, and your depression's getting up, all of your serotonin is getting in this like really negative deficit range. Your dopamine, you don't have any of that. And these are your good brain chemicals. And there are actually some behaviors and things you can do to get your good brain chemicals back in the right place. And when you get your brain chemicals back in the right place, you're actually a lot less prone to addiction. So you can take the same pathway out as you took to get into the message. The first thing you got to do to get out of it is you gotta stop engaging the addictive behavior. Completely stop engaging in the addictive behavior. And that gets the biology to stabilize. Once you do that, then you have to address the psychology of the issue, which to me means you got to get come to terms with the things that happened, the things that you did. You've got to look at the relationships around you. And, and most of all, if you look at It From a 12 step perspective, you've got to look at these behavior patterns that you've developed during this process and you've got to correct them. This is sort of the difference between what a lot of people call being in recovery versus just being dry. It's kind of a recovery thing that you can stop using the substance and you are what they call dry, or you can stop using the substance and you can work on all these other things like fixing your relationships, these character defects. And that is what most people would consider like actual recovery. And it's more than just, okay, I need to be a better person and fix all this mess. If you don't fix this mess for most people, they're going to fall back into addiction because it's going to keep you staying in a state of not liking yourself, bad self esteem, keeping secrets, feeling shameful, harboring all these really bad things inside. And that will ultimately lead you back to drinking, using whatever that addictive behavior is that you engage in. And so, you know, way back when Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob came up with the 12 steps, they didn't know a whole lot about the science behind addiction. And one of the things I think is really cool is because their Process of beating addiction, which is not the only way to beat addiction, but their process really is effective. And now we have the science to show why. Because once you start addressing these character defects, maybe it's like selfishness or impulsiveness, or a tendency to lie, or a tendency to be inconsiderate, or to take what you want, want or what you need from other people. Once you address that, you actually start to feel really good about yourself. You start to feel proud of yourself. And that raises your serotonin levels and that raises your dopamine levels. And eventually you feel so much better, not just physically, but spiritually. You like yourself again, the people around you like you. You actually build a life that is so much better than it was when you were addicted, that you don't need or even want those addictions anymore. Hopefully you're following along with the process. Now there are a couple of ways to identify your character defects. If you are in a 12 step program, step four is the process by which you kind of identify what your character defects are. Now we all have all kinds of them, but most of us have some character defects of choice. I would call them like some favorites or some, some kind of like situations or behaviors that you tend to fall into regularly. It's like your go to bad coping skill kind of thing, or your go to negative defense mechanism sort of things. It's these patterns that you fall into over and over. And going through the fourth step can help you identify what that is for you. If you do not necessarily want to do the 12 step process, there are other ways to go about doing that. But I do think it is really important to help you become a person that you like and help you to stop engaging in those old addictive behaviors. Because just because you take the drug out, it's almost like now you gotta like learn how to stop like impulsively being dishonest. How do you learn how to wait you turn? How do you learn how to be consider of other people? And I know that seems crazy, but when you've been in addictive behavior for so long, it's not just the drugs, the alcohol, the addiction that's automatic. It's all of these other things, behaviors, habits that we've developed along the way that have become automatic as we sort of fallen deeper and deeper into addiction. And that has to be fixed. Now. Some of that will go away just by getting the addiction out, but not all of it. The rest of it is going to take some work to clean and recovery, we call that cleaning up your side of the street. So the other way, if 12 steps isn't necessarily your thing, in order to be able to figure that out, one thing we do in our office is we use something called the Enneagram. It's a personality assessment. And the purpose of using it for us isn't specifically just to find out your character defects. We use it for a lot of reasons because it's. It's interesting. It'll identify your strengths. It helps you understand what your core motivators are. We like it to help families sort of understand how each other thinks and works. But one of the things Enneagram does for you very easily, and it lays it out. It says, if you're this type, here's what your character defect is. They call it a vice. So an enneagram, or sometimes they'll call it a passion. They'll call it like your. Your vices and your virtues for each type. So that's another way you can go about figuring yours out. So, like for me, for example, I am a type 7. And the main vice. I'm sure there are more, but the main vice for type seven is gluttony, as in excessiveness. And I can tell you that's definitely my main vice, right? If it looks good, smells good, feels good, sounds good, it's exciting, it's new novel. It's like bring me for everything I do, I tend to do in excess. You know, if I like something, I want it in every color. You know, that sort of thing. And so that's the. That's the one that I struggle with. Using the Enneagram, you can come up pretty easily. You can come up with what's very likely to be your main vice. You can do that by coming up with the steps. There are other ways you could determine that. You probably already have a pretty good idea about what those defects might be anyways. Kathy. I just saw Kathy come on here, and she said she's a nine and hers is sloth. And that's absolutely correct. And you guys let me know in the comments if you want to know each of the Enneagram types. There are nine of them. What the vices are. I'll. I'll tell you on here in case you know what your type is, but you don't know what your vice is. So how do you go about correcting. Well, guess what? It's actually pretty simple. Maybe not easy, but simple to understand. If gluttony, for example, is your main vice, it's not so easy to just go around and say to yourself, like, don't be gluttonous. Don't be gluttonous. Like, if, if, if you have a tendency to automatically lie just because it's like such a habit, it's not that helpful to say, okay, don't tell us. Don't tell I. Don't, don't tell us. It actually makes it worse when you do that. However, if you look at what your vice is and then you figure out what is the direct opposite of that. What you need to tell yourself is you need to give yourself a goal or a mission to try and practice the opposite of that. Because when you do that, it kind of like crowds out the vice. So it's like instead of focusing on not doing something, the better way is to focus on what you are going to do instead. So if you have a tendency towards selfishness, then you want to practice being considerate of other people. Instead of telling yourself, don't be selfish, it's like, okay, what's the most considerate thing to do here? You can stop and consciously ask yourself, what are the needs of the people around me? How can I be of service to someone else today? And eventually when you do that long enough, you sort of, you may not entirely get rid of that character defect, but you can really get it down there, right? And you can feel so much better about yourself. You gain so much power and control about your life and what you want, and ultimately it's, that's what can allow you to live, I call it your best life. That's how you get to your best self and you live your best life. Now I see on here Deborah is saying that she's a type 1. What's the vice? The vice of the type 1 is anger. Type 1, for those of you who don't know, is called a perfectionist or sometimes they will call it a reformer. And perfectionism or reformers, they're, they're about following the rules. They do what's right. They, you know, they, their virtue is integrity. You know, they're the keepers of the rules. They're the keepers of rightness. They are in the world. They, they make sure that they do the right thing. And that actually is what leads to them, to the anger. Because sometimes if you're a type one, you feel like you're going through the world all the time and, and you get mad because you're like, am I the only one does it right? Like, why won't people act right? And that leads you to feeling angry. And this is just sort of a, an interesting sidebar. On that. In my experience, I don't know if this is in literature, but my experience, the anger from the type one, it comes out, like, out of nowhere. I've seen it a bunch of times. It comes. It's like, whoa, what happened? I always say it's like stepping on landmine you didn't even know was there. And it's like a flash of light and it's gone. It's like, what happened? The people around you. So type ones tend to struggle with anger. Like I said, we all have a lot of character defects. But if you can identify, like, your main biggie that really causes you trouble and work on it, you're gonna move into the better version of you. All right, let's look in here and let's see what your comments, questions, concerns are about this. I definitely want to hear your feedback. Have you guys ever worked the steps? What was your experience with it? Did it help? Did it change who you are as a person? Did it help you feel better about yourself? Do you feel like that helps you to protect yourself against addiction or to overcome addiction? What are your thoughts on the subject? I'm an anonymous user. What if someone who's stuck in the addictive behavior and is dry won't take the steps to go forward? That's actually a question I get a lot of, usually from family members. Like, let's say you have a loved one who used to drink alcoholically, but now they don't. But they really haven't worked on themselves. That's a tough one because you can't really force someone to work on their character defects. And people don't usually take it very lightly when you try to or when you point it out. The best thing I know to tell you is that when you change the way that you react to another person in this situation or any situation, they will change the way they react in you. So you can even figure out, are there any things that you can do that bring out the best version of that person? And then once you see those other behaviors, those good values, those. Those like that best version, you want to positively reinforce it. So it's a way you can kind of gently lead someone there without them even knowing that, that that's even happening. Let's see here. Mary says willpower from the addict is needed. That's actually a really good comment. Malian. I said. I said Mary. I think Malian is. Someone said that comment. But that leads me to think I had a good friend in recovery, and I can't remember asking him one time. I Said, I said, what if you have a carrot defect and you know you have it, but you don't want to let it go, or you're not ready to let it go? And my friend said, well, in the 12 step tradition, you're supposed to. To pray that you will want to let it go. It's like for the willingness for the desire for the character defect to be taken from you. That's how they word it in 12 step. And I remember thinking, that sounds kind of scary to me because in my mind, usually it's like, if God were going to make me want to give up my character defect, it would probably mean that something really bad happened because of it to make me want to. So it's almost like this scary process of. But instead of this thing of, like, I don't know if I want this defect to be taken from me, just look at that opposite behavior because it's some kind of positive value. And it's probably not so hard to think, oh, I'd like to be more like this. I'd like to focus on having more integrity. I'd like to focus on having more courage. I'd like to focus on being more proactive. You know, those are all good values. That. That probably doesn't feel nearly as scary sometimes as letting go of some of our defense mechanisms. Because even though we know that they're negative, they have protected us. They've done something for us for a long time. And it can be hard psychologically to let go of those things consciously. Never mind. It's hard to do because it's a habit. But. But there's a conscious part of our brain that, that kind of wants to hang on sometimes to those behaviors. Luanna says, how can I help someone get on vodka when he wants help but doesn't want his job to know if he takes a leave of absence because he has to pay his bills? He tells me, starting a 12 step meeting, that's actually. It sounds to me, Luanna, like he's already in a good process. If he's starting a 12 step meeting, then he's already. Then that person. I don't even know if it's a he. Yeah, it's a he. He's already taken steps toward the recovery process, and the 12 steps may work. A lot of people get better without ever having to get any kind of professional help. Sometimes the 12 steps does it. If the 12 steps won't do it just by themselves, then it's going to put them around a lot of people that are trying to be Better people that are trying to be sober. And he may eventually come to terms with the idea that he's going to have to do something more than that to get help. So I would validate the steps that. That your loved one is taking. Really interesting. Have you found a certain enneagram type that coincides with certain addictions? For example, alcoholic test as fours, opiates, eight. So there is some enneagram research as far as addictions is concerned. In my own experience, I can tell you that there are certain patterns that I find not exactly to the specific substance, but related to addiction in general. Like, for example, seven, the type that I am in research wise, is the most prone to addictions of all the types you could imagine. If, if you tend to struggle with gluttony and excessiveness in general, you might be more prone to developing an addiction. So seven is the most prone. But I also see a. A ton of sixes. So sixes and sevens are the most common types that I see in my practice. And I usually see people that have the addiction. And. And it's kind of interesting because it's like sixes have addiction for the exact opposite reason as seven sevens have it, because it's like if one is good, four is better. That's why sevens get addicted. Sixes get addicted usually, in my experience, to alcohol, not always, but alcohol seems to be the one for sixes because they can't turn off all that fear and overthinking and worrying. And so they're using substances usually to turn down all this thinking, turn down the volume. And sevens are using substances to turn up the volume. So it's kind of like both are prone, but for two totally different reasons. See, my Robin says my loved one isolated from the world, except from her boyfriend, who's an addict. How do I get her reconnected? Robin, that is a really good question, but it's such a big question. I don't know if I can answer it on this video. But I do have a whole playlist of videos all about motivating someone to take steps toward recovery. And we have an online program called the Invisible Intervention that can also help. What you're probably going to want to start with, Robin, is, is the. What you're probably going to want to do is you're probably going to want to get her out of that relationship, which is understandable because you're like, if she's with someone who's using, she probably not going to stop using, which is true. But you have to be very careful when it comes to relationships. I always say, like I can, I can get your loved one off a heroin quicker than I can get them out of a bad relationship. So tread lightly. All of the things that I teach about motivating someone towards recovery, you can use every one of those technique to motivate someone to get out of a bad relationship. But you definitely don't want to come at that head on. You want to do that more indirectly. So a lot of you I'm seeing on here do have experience with the, with the 12 step programs. Even if you're a family member and you go to Al Anon, they still have you work the 12 steps. It's the same 12 steps. If you're interested in learning more about this or if you're interested in the Enneagram, I do have a mini course that's like an online course. It's a small little mini course about enneagram and recovery, about understanding yourself on a deeper level. Your strengths, your vices, your weaknesses, maybe what tendencies you might have that might make you more prone to relapse. Some things you can do to protect yourself from relapse. And that whole course is set up to be taken either from the family perspective or from the addictive person perspective, or both. Even better, both at the same time. And I am going to put a link here for any of you who are interested. It's also in the description of this video if you're watching on YouTube. But there is the link and I put a special discount code on there for you guys who are watching this video. You can type in the code. It says learn more. All capital no spaces to get a 20% discount on that if you are interested. Also another very, very, very good resource for you which is completely free is if you want to look at it more from the 12 step perspective, I highly recommend listening to these two guys. Their names are Joe and Charlie and they're these two old southern dudes who they're not clinical professionals. They're just old southern dudes who got sober and worked a 12 step program. And they got really good at explaining how 12 step program works. And there are some recordings of them that you can actually listen to on YouTube or you can download the app, the Joe and Charlie app, which I have on my phone. And I'm telling you, I love Joe and Charlie. Seriously, every time I listen to them, I'm a better person for at least three hours after. And they have a way of explaining this process to you so thoroughly but so simply and such an easy way to understand that. It just makes. It just makes such perfect sense. And maybe the reason I like them is because there's two old Southern dudes. Some of you hate my accent because I'm Southern. Some of you love it. If you like to listen to me, you really gonna, like, listen to them, because they take what my Southern accent about five notches. Maybe that's what I like about them. But they're pretty smart fellas. And I have the link to them in the description of YouTube on the YouTube video as well. If you want to check out some of their stuff with this stuff. And up next, I have for you more videos on how to have successful recovery, how to build a life that you love and that you want and that you don't need addiction for.