InnerSelf

by Barb Rogers.

Exhaustion was the catalyst that took me to a recovery program. I was just so tired — tired of being sad and lonely, tired of fighting everything and everyone, and tired of living with my strange thoughts that would surely lead me to insanity. Do your days feel like an exercise in frustration and misery? Do you wake up with a feeling of...

by Chönyi Taylor. The mind of addiction goes like this: “So I need to stop playing computer games. I will take up marathon running instead.” Keeping away from the addiction does not stop the need for addiction and the need to look at the underlying pain or unhappiness...

by Chönyi Taylor.

The mind can be changed. I doubt whether anyone would dispute that point although we often feel as if we are stuck with an obstinate mind that refuses to do what we want it to. In addictions this feeling of being stuck can be very powerful. But...

by Jack Gebhardt.

Try not to worry too much if your smoker tries to quit and fails. A study by the University of Ottawa found that most smokers try to quit five times before they finally succeed. If your smoker doesn't quit this time, he or she will quit next time. If not next time, then the time after that. Your smoker will succeed. If you can honestly enjoy your smoker's predicament, laugh about it, and make light of it, your smoker is more likely to do the same...

by Gary Reiss, LCSW. Traditional approaches to addiction emphasize stopping use of the substance. Process work emphasizes saying "no" to the substance, but also emphasizes saying "yes" to the part of the personality accessed and supported by the use of the substance. Often addictions...

by Brigitte Mars.

Current estimates suggest that addictions affect one-third of the population in the United States. Of course, when most of us hear the word addict, we think crack, or cocaine, or heroin... Certainly we don't think about, say, sugar -- and yet sugar is the most prevalent addictive substance in the world!

Many of us have become so steeped in what is wrong with ourselves in relationship that dysfunction becomes our accepted norm. We are so expert in why we can't commit; or keep attracting abusive partners; or how our parents' poor role model squashed our self-esteem; or; or; or . . .

by Caroline M. Sutherland. An addiction is anything that has a "hold" on us, such as work, exercise, sex, food (especially chocolate, sugar, and coffee), alcohol, cigarettes, illegal drugs, medications, money, worry, material possessions, relationships, negativity, overachieving, gambling, and so on. People can even be addicted to illness...

by Joan E. Childs. In America, our only "down" time seems to be the daily drive to and from work, which, if it happens to be on Florida's I-95, tends to exacerbate stress and anxiety rather than temper it. By the time most of us are home from a typical day's work...