Emotional addiction is even harder to break than both drug and alcohol addiction combined. This is because the substance addiction is merely the mask behind the underlying emotional addiction which is being protected by one’s preferred method of relief. It’s this emotional addiction which sits in the thread of your frontal cortex as an imprint of your historical emotional experiences .
These imprinted emotional experiences are then carried into all of a person’s relationships. As other mammals , humans are creatures of habits for the mere fact of “survival”, so these neurological imprints motivate a person to seek familiar emotional experiences even if they bring harm to the person. It’s the pattern that is innate .
Depending upon this black print , a person’s choice might or might not be what society would call a “healthy choice”. Nevertheless , this is the person’s neurological sinus rhythm and despite what reality determines is “healthy” unhealthy emotional addictions feel “healthy” to that person despite their understanding of what is considered “normal”
The only way to change a neurological imprint from something unhealthy to healthy takes both an extinction of the exposure to the pathological condition or environment while replacing that space with new and healthier experiences simultaneously for a minimum of 3 months everyday . This process is called Neuroplasticity or the physical changing of the neurons in your brain 🧠 forming new pathways while the old ones simultaneously fade and die. Brain cells do die when they are not being used.
All addictions are bad habits. Bad habits , like any repetitive behavior, needs to be unlearned and replaced with new ones whether physical or emotional. Neuroscience has proven that you can indeed teach old dogs new tricks. It just takes a horrible short-lived experience of emotional detoxification , and the movement towards exposure and practice of new and self-desired traits and behaviors. Over 3 months of continuous re-exposure and the practice of new and better thoughts and behaviors , change is possible and there is no longer even a reason to wear a mask. You become comfortable in your skin.
The hardest part is getting started and literally pulling yourself by the collar out of a situation that is logically absurd but feels like it’s a physical addiction. Well. It is a Physical Condition. A person becomes addicted to their own Brain Chemistry and anything different, feels like a heroin addict that needs that fix or fear they will die.
Even Dry Detoxed Heroin addicts don’t die if they refuse transitional medications to ease the withdrawal symptoms. They certainly feel like it and develop horrible symptoms like involuntary “shaking” making them feel as though they are losing their minds. Typically, after about seven days after begging to just die and end it all , their bodies have successfully detoxified with the assistance of food , water, rest, and ideally learning an important lesson about what happens when we become addicted to something “unhealthy”. These are many of the same experiences people have when they decide to end a relationship that logically they “know” that is not good for them ( same as a heroin addict ) , but fear death 💀 or the loss of a physical part of them , leaving them frozen and stuck in a block of heavy cement . Often gasping for air , but still alive.
Truth is . An emotional breakup , like the chemicals in heroin are addicting. In this case you are addicted to your own pattern of your own neurotransmitters. So, that person you are struggling to break up with is a physical part of you 😳.
But, so are the 3 drinks 🍷 you consume each night in order to medicate stress to go to sleep 💤 , or the heroin addict that needs a fix. When people survive pathological emotional addictions and conquer self-defeating behaviors , we learn to make better emotional and physical decisions when we go through and get through our worst experiences every time. That old adage , no pain , no gain is the way ones brain 🧠 evolves and gets stronger , not weaker or under the spell of a poison. Consider taking that leap of Faith. You will be happy you did in about 3 months and the likelihood of finding a healthier relationship increases 85% according to Science. No guarantee , but that would be something I would even consider wagering for and I’m very conservative.
