Hynotherapy for Addictions
Addictions come in many forms, and there are so many reasons why people might find themselves using something like:
Alcohol, Gambling, Drugs (Legal or Illegal), Sex, Porn, Food, or countless other things.
Maybe it’s:
To relax
To be part of a group
To avoid physical or psychological pain
To feel excited
To feel joy
To feel
To not feel
To forget
To rebel
To cope with problems
To relieve stress
To sleep
To overcome boredom
I remember someone wise once saying, that when we find ourselves using something to cope with problems, relieve stress, avoid physical or psychological pain, to fit in, overcome boredom, rebel, or forget, we do so to balance ourselves out. To find a way to offset whatever’s happened, or is happening in our lives, and to get back on track. We don’t tend to do it to feel worse. In fact, all we’re doing, is trying to find something that helps. And to start with, most of these things certainly feel like they do.
However, over time we can start to notice that the things we’re using, can cause other problems. Things that can affect our relationships, our work, our finances, our physical and psychological health. And when we try to stop, there’s often a tendency to focus mainly on the subject of the addiction: The alcohol, the drug, the gambling, the food, the sex, the porn, the consequences. Often forgetting that the use of these things is in fact a symptom of something deeper, not the root cause.
Now some addictions, like alcohol and other drugs, can create a physical dependency, and so it’s always worth seeing a doctor to see if that’s the case, and if it is, to get the help you need to reduce that physical dependency, safely, and to support you to get your physical health back on track.
A sign that there may be a physical dependency is if you are needing to use more of the alcohol or drug, to get the same effect.
If that is the case, then there are services out there that can help. And your GP, or services like The National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline 1800 250 015, can point you in the right direction.
And so, it’s always worth talking to a medical professional, to help you assess what’s happening, and if necessary, to get you linked into the support you need to get you through the physical dependency.
But once that’s dealt with, or if you don’t have any physical dependency or other health concerns, then hypnotherapy can help you take back control.
How can Hynotherapy help?
Hypnotherapy can help you discover the root cause. Something that can often be deeply hidden in our subconscious. And that’s hypnotherapies biggest benefit: helping you communicate with that part of you, and make the changes you want to make. We may have a clear awareness of what that root cause is, a trauma or event in our lives, something we are trying to forget, or manage, through the addiction in question. But sometimes it can be an accumulation of issues, that lead us to believe things that aren’t necessarily true. Stuff about ourselves or the world around us. It can be an accumulation of stress, that we are trying to release, or a combination of all of those things. Either way Hypnotherapy can help us to recognise and manage those situations. Hypnotherapy can help us see them in a different way, and help us to regain control. It can help us to find the resources we have, that we didn’t think we had, and to develop strategies to manage more effectively.
