Additive behaviors are hard on your mental health, and your physical health as well. Unfortunately, addiction is typically associated resorting to alcohol, drugs, sex and food, but also over exercising, being unable to put down your technology and more. If you are having trouble with addictive behaviors, it might be worsened by the daily amount of stress you have. This blog post will guide you through common triggers so that you can learn how to avoid them or work with them so you don’t trigger any addictive behaviors.
Do You Have These Triggers?
If you are just starting out with an attempt to reduce your responses, then you may already know that stress can trigger addictive behaviors. What you may not know is that there are several other common triggers too. Here are a few of them, what you should know about reducing each one, and how you can avoid them in the future to help.
People in Your Life Who Are Negative and Toxic
Everyone has someone in their life, a co-worker or even friend, that causes ongoing stress. They may do this with actions, with words, or both. Either way they bring a toxic environment to your life by causing constant emotional stress. Ideally you would want to simply move these people out of your life.
Unfortunately, you may not be able to remove them completely, leaving them still evident in your life as a trigger. In this case, acknowledging they are a toxic person in your life will help. Once you acknowledge this, you can move to removing your emotions from them. By not giving them the power to hurt or stress you, you can slowly remove them as a trigger from your day. Dodging Energy Vampires is a great book by
Being Constantly Busy and Overworked
One of the more common triggers is to overload your schedule. You say yes to the parent teacher party, the church social, becoming a team leader on an upcoming project, and working extra to make those holiday expenses you have for gifts and family. When you add on too much to your schedule, you may begin to overlook the fact you can say no to certain things and back out of those commitments.
Everything begins to feel like something you have to do instead of something you wanted to do. To avoid this trigger, sit down and look at your schedule. Fill in your day with your sleep hours and work first. Then start adding things in according to priority, making sure you leave at least an hour at the start and end of each day for quiet downtime. Stick to that schedule. If something you want to do fits in, then add it. If not,
then say no.
Being Plugged in All the Time
Technology can be a huge stress trigger for many people, even you. You may not think it is, but look at a few examples. Your phone is set-up to notify you of upcoming events, appointments, and bills. You also have notifications of things going on with friends and co-workers social media accounts. It is a constant attachment that can sometimes lead you to stressing over bills, upcoming appointments, and drama in your friends lives.
To reduce the stress, disconnect from your technology for one hour or so a day. Turn off your phone and leave it on a charger in another room. Go watch your favorite show. You can even pick up something that is a 100% disconnect, like meditation or exercise. The stresses are reduced and something positive is replacing the spot.
