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| Addiction or Excess |
What if you were to discover that addictions aren't the problem? Bear with me now, I do realize that this flies in the face of traditional exusanology, but what if the problem is pure excess a lack of discipline and nothing more? I am not of the ilk that doesn't believe in addiction, (although there is a huge controversy in the phd ranks over this) what I struggle with, is that non addictive things can be considered an addiction. To my mind, it calls in the Diabetes debacle.
Diabetes type1 is a genuine dysfunction of the body, by labelling the result of overeating, poor eating habits and basically slamming your body with sugars, diabetes those that suffer with this issue are led to believe they are sick and therefore have no control over the outcomes. Telling a person who lives life in all it's excesses they are sick is like manna from heaven, suddenly they can let go of all responsibility and repeat the addicts favourite line. " I can't help it"
Most of us that engage in bad behaviours genuinely hate being told that WE should do something about it. The first box we dive into is the blame game, I was beaten, my parents did it, I didn't know any better. But i digress, here we are talking about excess, perhaps blaming is part of the psyche of excess, it is certainly convenient. If excess is the problem it follows that where we use it doesn't really matter; that is to say, it doesn't have to be addiction if you are practicing a lack of self discipline in general. In my own past I can say that I would meet the AA's reference for an alcoholic, and yet I quite simply stopped one day and when I do drink it is very controlled, occasional and social, but i didn't stop there, I overate gaining a morbid obesity rating by the time I was 21, smoked cigarettes, dope and indulged myself in pretty much every way a person can, even tea of coffee had to be 6-10 a day. When I tried to control some of the behaviours, I would ramp up indulgences in other areas, and this is what creates issues for those trying to get a handle on the accepted addictive part of these behaviours.
There is no reason, for example, if you stop smoking, drinking or gambling that you should suddenly start overeating. I can hear you groan,,, but wait, as an experienced and qualified hypnotherapist, it is common to see more than one excess in a person's life, Recently while developing a hypnosis script for download, a thought popped into my mind, 'what if the problem is excess and not the object or focus of it?' Well blow me down with a feather, I thought, 'how on earth did this not occur to you years ago.' If the hypnosis was for excess, and not specific areas of excess, things could suddenly make a whole lot of sense for the person seeking change.
Excess brings to mind the seven deadly sins, all of which refer to excess and for millennia held special warnings, I have never seen this as a spiritual or religious concept but as one of life and survival, they just make sense. It is to be noted, they are not the seven sins, but seven DEADLY sins, sure enough lack of self discipline can lead to dire consequences. Firstly lets dispel the religious connotation of sin, as a word there are no real origins outside of latin (just saying), biblically speaking there are many words used in hebrew for wrong doing, in more modern times (the last few hundred, rather than thousands of years) sin has pretty much replaced all of them in english translations as a sort of catchall, the problem with this is the tendency to ignore the very thing that exists in the original bible texts. There are sins, and there are sins, the hebrew texts allow for falling short or failing as well as being guilty and yet another word for criminal, it is a terrible shame to lump everyone in together, regardless of how convenient, which often encourages an 'in for a penny, in for a pound' mentality.
Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities, You can see how that could come back to bite you, it leads to making promises you can't keep and often others will shun you after a time when they work out how useless you are. On the other hand it is this energy that prevents good communication when things aren't going well and is the base for many a suicide.
Envy is the desire for what others have, whether it is their stuff, their women or their skills. It doesn't leave much room psychologically, for earning rewards for oneself. This is quite a depressing sin really, it leads to spending inordinate amounts of cash to try and win what others earn, spending the very resources that could lead to material comforts. This is the energy of the gambler.
Gluttony is quite simply about food and drink, you eat to much, you get fat and you might die young. You drink too much and you will become a drunk and ruin your life, even if death is not on the table you will suffer any number of maladies related to overeating/drinking. Something to think about while you are rolling around on the floor drunk and can't get up because you are too fat.
Lust leads to some very poor decisions, your husband/wife or local authorities back in the day might just kill you or you will contract a deadly disease. In a modern world however, while disease is still likely it has been shown that the baser instincts overindulge actually manage to reduce ones capacity for rational thought, Go figure.
Wrath is clearly the winner for ruining lives, there isn't a murder or war in the world that is not driven by anger. Anger will stand between you and anything, if not everything, you want in life. It's major role is in prohibiting happiness as it tends to be isolating. Lets face it, even the most patient of us gets over being around angry people so these people have to go hang together, and there you have it violence, verbal or otherwise will always result. But hey, by all means stay angry, I am sure it is justified,
Greed is clearly the winner of all the sins, it is the one that never has enough, always wants more and requires constant reinforcement, Interestingly greed is not necessarily about money or luxuries, it can be about another's time and energy, if you have ever been around someone who is needy, you are looking at a greedy person. This is the true energy of jealousy.
Sloth is being just too darn lazy to get off your own butt and do what needs to be done. Today's world makes this a whole lot less deadly if you live in a society where you can be compensated for doing nothing much, but back in the day your lazy arse would be booted out of the tribe, as nobody got time for that.
Autonomy = freedom from external control or influence, independence
Now I have that out of my system. what about excess? Each and every one of these sins is about excess, if you can look and acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, you have not learned self discipline you might find you are one of the lucky ones. You aren't addicted because you are unhappy or have a core issue, but no one taught you the benefits of self management, someone forgot to share with you that to be free, we must all be responsible for ourselves and our actions. We can't be blaming the world, society or our families for our behaviours as adults, that mentality is contrary to living in the now, being at peace and being happy. Own your behaviours and habits because until you do, you are powerless to make significant changes. How can that make you free you ask? It gives you autonomy over yourself and your life, that is the only true freedom there is.
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