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 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 though
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
it's 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 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 and i do talk about this more in depth
than 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 that 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 you know 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 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