Categories: #Addiction #MentalHealth
“I can’t believe that 150/1 accumulator lost by one game!”
“That bet was a sure thing….How did it lose??!”
“Just one more and then I’ll stop”
Any of those sound familiar?
For me payday used to mean one thing. A fresh deposit into my bet365 account. But why did I start betting in the first place? And how does it go from being a once-a-week bit of fun, to throwing money at some random team I’ve never heard of? And most importantly, what helped me stop?
Like most addictions, to the non bettor, a gambling addiction appears to make no sense whatsoever. What possible pleasure can be derived from throwing your hard-earned money away? This can make it seem like a ‘lonely addiction’ and a hard place to come back from. You come to see it as your issue and your issue alone and this in turn can make it harder to seek help.
I felt that if other people couldn’t understand my issue, it must just be a ‘me problem’ and this led me to accepting (mistakenly) that gambling just was part of me, and as long as I could restrain the urge the majority of the time, however painful it might feel, then everything would be fine.
But as Ekhart Tolle said ‘What we fight only grows stronger, and what we resist persists’. In other words by resisting the urge and trying to beat it through will power, you are only serving to make it stronger.
The good news is there is help out there. And for me, that came in the form of Cognitive Hypnotherapy.
Cognitive Hypnotherapy helped me to understand that our unwanted behaviour’s and especially addictions are so rarely the actual problem. But it’s hard to see that until you actually analyse the beast.
Addiction is very often the straw man we build our focuses around so that we don’t have to face and deal with our deeper issues. The patterns that drive our addictions hide and thrive in the unconscious part of our minds. So they remain a mystery until we begin to wake up their movements.
Hugh Osbourne: Insights from the edge
What is key to beating an addiction is to understanding why it is there in the first place. Hazel Gale says in her book Mind Monster Solutions (an absolute must read!!) That ‘people can make considerable leaps by doing little more than asking some analytical questions about their unwanted behaviour’s.’
By taking the time to listen to the monster in our heads and by asking it analytical questions, we can begin to understand the nature of the beast. Question such as:
- What intention does this behaviour have?
- What do you think about yourself whilst you’re doing it?
- What was different about you before it started?
- What do you stand to lose by stopping?
- What will change in your life when you stop?
Can have a real impact on beginning to understand our most mystifying moments of self sabotage.
Research shows that placing a bet gives you a hit of dopamine, leading to a rush of excitement, and an ‘illusion’ of pleasure. The trouble with dopamine, and particularly why it is so dangerous in terms of a gambling addiction is that it comes and goes very quickly, therefore it requires a top up in order to maintain the brain in its state of euphoria.
But by understanding our inner thoughts and the reasons for our behaviour’s, we can replace the addiction with more constructive behaviour’s and create the life we are trying to lead.
It is a fundamental belief of Cognitive Hypnotherapy that no one is broken. That each person has the power within themselves to fix whatever issues needs addressing. And for me, this is the magic of it.
I’m not going to sit here and say that I never think about gambling. Of course I do. It’s hard not to when so much is spent on advertising it every year. But I now know I am able to choose not to gamble. Cognitive Hypnotherapy is about making you aware of your thought processes and triggers so that you can take control of your behaviour, and this is what’s so great about it. It makes quitting the habit a pleasure and not a painstaking step by step process.
For me this is where Cognitive Hypnotherapy differs from other therapy. We do not need to wait until clients are completely void of their issues before giving them the techniques and tools to ensure they are on the right path of growth and personal development. This means that within only a few sessions something in the brain can click and the client is able to keep working on themselves outside of therapy.
With each day that goes by, and with the self-empowering techniques I now have at my disposal, gambling is now a thing of the past. And a huge side bonus of that is I can now enjoy watching the football again without thinking about placing a bet!