Obsessions, Compulsions & Addictions

Are you plagued with obsessional thoughts or actions, compulsive actions or binge eating or do you suffer with a more serious drug, alcohol or eating disorder?

(Please note that sufferers with serious drug, alcohol or eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia should also seek specialist professional help).

It is amazing how many of us do suffer with at least obsessive or compulsive actions or thoughts. For many this is confined to counting, but can also extend to checking e.g. locking the door/windows a number of times before leaving the house). Counting or checking may be irritating, but may not cause a detrimental effect on our life or health.

Binge eating or drinking can start to have more of an effect on our daily lives. If a physical cause has been ruled out, then we have to look at the emotional issues that can underlie such actions.

Sometimes the obsession will be a physical action and can then change or increase to include repeated thoughts that are enough to 'drive one mad', playing round and round the same record of thoughts or scenarios. Since no one can actually 'see' these thoughts, it doesn't look as if anything is wrong, but they can have a detrimental effect on one's health. How many dieters find, for example, that they are thinking constantly about food? Dieting and food becomes their obsession.

The Underlying Causes of Obsessive-compulsive behaviour

So what underlies these needs for compulsive, obsessional and addictive actions? Needless to say, we are all different, but I believe that they are due to deeply rooted emotional issues, at a soul level, which tend to be locked in our unconscious minds. Many people in this state also seem to be locked in some sort of a trance state in their waking life, living out the unconscious response. As a result, working with the conscious, rational part of the mind tends to be of little help in many cases. After all there is no logical, rational reason to the obsession, compulsion or addiction, so why try to find the answer in the logical, rational part of the mind?

Underlying these actions of obsession and compulsion tend to be the emotions of high levels of rage and frustration which are the sense of 'driving us mad'. How do we get here? Usually from extreme levels of feeling inadequate which have built up from childhood where we feel we have not been heard or listened to. This may not, on the face of it, seem important, but tends to cause us to close down from an early age and we start to sacrifice our normal abilities of instinctiveness and intuition (our gut instincts) and bottle up how we really feel about things. This then tends to lead us into further depths or rage, anger, frustration and outrage.

When in this state we also tend to start to fear intimacy and being vulnerable and truly intimate and we quickly develop into being someone we are not, rather than someone we truly are. We bury our gifts, our purpose and our life destiny and then wander through life like a lost soul.

As a result of this we tend to give up on our creativity, sexuality and our balance of being truly masculine and feminine. This results in our starting to feel powerless and disempowered. Very often in order to get our power back, we enter inappropriate relationships where we 'give to get' - I'll give you my power if you give me your love - which of course does not happen. We than end up feeling unloved but also even more disempowered and inadequate.

Feelings of Self-disgust

When the obsession, compulsion or addiction are in full swing we tend to feel disgusted with ourselves 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A truly dreadful feeling where we are haunted by our actions, bedevilled, possessed and tormented by our thoughts. The feelings of disgust are about outbursts of emotions (the rage and anger and frustration driving us mad) that can't be kept down any longer. Very often in this state we have what I call 'toilet dreams' - dreams at night associated around the toilet, sitting on the toilet, locked in the toilet, surrounded by 'crap'. If you suffer with them, you will know exactly what I mean.

At this stage our soul is desperate for help and crying out for help and for being saved.

We now feel totally betrayed by our bodies and have a belief that our bodies are keeping us from heaven. This adds to the sense of anger, nausea and sickness that we feel.

Unfortunately, love and compulsions have similar thinking and feeling patterns. As such, when we fall in love it can aggravate our need to be obsessive and compulsive where we get confused and go back to our old friend the compulsion rather then realising this is a different feeling - the feeling of being 'in love'. This then tends to lead to disaster in yet another relationship. We need to learn it is OK to be 'in love' and that, although the feeling is similar, we can learn to differentiate between our feelings of love and compulsion. It is how we interpret the energy that determines the outcome.

On the positive side it is also this 'state of mind' - the tantrum - which is the most creative state, but also keeps us from our destiny!

The Way Forward...

Is there a way forward? Yes, but needless to say it isn't going to happen overnight. Personally, I find working with the unconscious part of the mind, which holds the key to unlocking the door of the compulsion and obsession, of most help in these circumstances.

If you would like to discuss this further, do not hesitate to contact me.

Email: susan@spiritualvision.info
Telephone: 01423 861051