When I say the word addiction, what comes to mind? Drinking? Drugs? Gambling? Sex? Growing up in church I often heard people tell stories of how God helped them overcome their addictions, which, in the late 80s and early 90s, was drinking and “drugs” without being specific. These were the signs that you were a baaaaddddd person living a baaaaddddd life, and these were said to show how far he or she had come. Now that I’m an adult I realize this experience just means how sheltered I was. You drank alcohol? The thing 98% of the world does? Woooowwww… said as sarcastically as I can. As a therapist I’m well aware of the dangers of abusing substances, but the bigger problem I find is we often don’t realize how many so-called “normal” activities in our culture are also in the unhealthy addictions category. For instance, doing weddings I meet a lot of young couples who love ‘binge watching Netflix’. Apparently, it’s pretty common for young couples to spend a day or more in front of a television in order to watch a whole series. They tell me they do this with so much joy in their eyes and I can’t help but think “Do you not realize how bad this is for you??” An addiction (without looking in a dictionary because what are those?) is essentially an activity that consumes our time and mind that has a negative affect on our health and ability to fulfill responsibilities. For instance, as a workaholic, I struggle to balance a healthy lifestyle of proper social interaction and relaxing. Watching too much TV, on the other hand, is bad for our bodies and minds and limits healthy social interaction. If people are watching TV all day while on exercise bikes that’d be better, but it’s still hurting them. Just like we can’t eat a week’s worth of food in a day and not eat the rest of the week, we need to find healthy balance of relaxing and other healthy activities. The following is a list of addictions we often miss.
- Over parenting (i.e. helicopter parents who are too involved with kids)
- Cell phone use (e.g. answering calls and texts, games, having it with you at all times, etc.)
- Happiness (i.e. people who are obsessed with finding happiness; main problem with this is happiness can’t be found; it finds us when we’re doing good things)
- Complaining and gossip
- Too much screen time (e.g. TV, video games, phones, youtube, etc.)
- Overspending (e.g. shopaholics, gambling, etc.)
- Overeating or under eating
- Over fitness (working out to the point it hurts our bodies and relationships)
- Workaholic and Jobaholic
- Wine drinking (if you believe ‘wine makes everything better’ you’re very likely an alcoholic, a classier alcoholic than someone who licks spilled beer on a bar counter, but you still likely have a drinking issue. One definition of alcoholic is more than 7 drinks a week)
- Sports addiction (e.g. watching too much football)
So now that I’ve pointed out some addictions that often go unnoticed, here is a quick breakdown of tools to help break the addiction. It’d be rude to just point out here’s a problem and not offer some help.
- Celebrate each day you don’t do the addiction
- Have a list of things you enjoy doing as a tool to fight temptation when it pops up
- Have social connections who keep you accountable and encourages you
- Have a group that cheers you on and can distract you from temptation
- If you screw up don’t beat yourself up
- Change your habit with someone who is also trying to change theirs
- a) Replace activity with a healthier one
- b) Focus on the good of new habit you’ve started
- c) Remember the bad of the old habit
- Blame God for habit and situation (anger is motivating and my secret way to convert people because if you’re willing to blame God one day you’ll be able to believe in Him)
This week may you have the motivation to fight the temptation to do something you now know you shouldn’t be doing.
Rev Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people