Abusing drugs and alcohol actually keeps you stuck in a victim mentality and in
this video I'm going to tell you the four reasons why that happens
for those of you who are new here welcome to put the shovel down I'm
Amber Hollingsworth and 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 on track and get back out there and live the life that you want to live
this video is going to be one of those uncomfortable truth kind of moment
when you're over using drugs and alcohol it absolutely
most certainly keeps you stuck in a victim mentality and what I mean when I say that
is you get stuck on past hurts you get stuck on things that are going wrong in your relationship
you don't easily get over lost dreams and hopes and disappointments you stay stuck
in financial worries it just plain keeps you stuck and there are several reasons for this
the first and one of the biggest reasons this keeps you stuck is because when we use substances
it causes us to ruminate over all the bad things that have ever happened to us
we replay it over and over and over in our head and as we do that those hurts
get bigger and bigger and bigger it's kinda like when a piece of gossip starts the first
time you tell it it's dramatic enough but by the 10th time you tell it the whole story is
even more outrageous the same thing when we ruminate over the things that we're upset about in
life those things tend to grow and snowball it's like every time we go over it the story gets worse
the second reason why abusing drugs and alcohol or really any addiction
for that matter will keep you stuck in a victim mentality is because of the
rebound effect after you've engaged in an addictive behavior or substance your body
rebounds back from that by producing more crappy brain chemicals yeah the anxious depressed ones
and you can even have physical withdrawal symptoms so you can feel in pain or
sick or any number of bad symptoms and guess what when we feel bad we think negatively
right and using substances or engaging in addictive behavior keeps us in that never
ending loop feel better feel terrible feel better feel terrible feel better feel terrible
and every time we feel terrible that affects our mood our view our outlook
and how we perceive the things that are going on in our life the third
reason that addictive behaviors keep us stuck in a victim mentality is because
typically it causes the people around us to get frustrated with us right
because we're not ourselves and we're not keeping our promises and we're not doing
what we said we were going to do and we're doing some risky maybe dangerous things that
put them at risk and when the people around us get upset with us they start
telling us and venting to us and nagging us and preaching and threatening and giving ultimatums
and guess what that does that makes us feel defensive and then we get really caught up in
defending our actions and how the other person is just such a jerk and they don't understand
again now we're really digging in to that victim mentality and holding on
for dear life once we get to this point and the fourth possibly biggest most important reason
why addictive behavior and substance abuse keeps us stuck
in a victim mentality is because essentially it gives us an excuse to make more bad choices
you see we're stuck in this addictive cycle and whether we like to admit it or not we have a very
strong compulsion to engage in certain particular behaviors which a lot of times means we have to go
against our own value system to continue with the addiction and we have to somehow justify
that in our head we have to make right while we're doing this thing that we know probably
isn't right or is a bad decision at minimum or is even maybe hurtful to other people
we have to justify that in our head and the way we do that is we tell ourselves some
storyline of I had to because they deserved it because I deserve it because some kind of
victim storyline that basically some version of I had to because or I couldn't help it because
now if you find that you're stuck in this kind of mentality and you're ready to get
out of it then consider signing up for our recovery to go online support group
and we'll help you get yourself out of this terrible cycle that you don't want to be in
and up next I want you to watch this video titled do this one thing and stop relapses
forever it is directly related to what you just learned in this