Addiction to chaos! Great video.

[Bill W]

A big thanks to @Leonora for this.

The title of the video is How To Heal Excitement Addiction In Attachment Disorder and is fascinating for me, hopefully some others with resonate with it. I've never viewed my chaotic living and issues around financial mismanagement, procrastination, being late for things, and generally being involved in dramatic relationships as anything to do with addiction. 

I also don't associate my above issues with the term "excitement" or being an "adrenaline junkie" but the way she puts it makes so much sense to me.

Here are my notes based on the above video, most of it verbatim notes that resonate most with me.

 

Addiction to excitement – Dr Aimie Apigian

·       Coping patterns that get wired into the nervous system.

·       Arriving late is a pattern that is consistent with an addiction to excitement. Behaviour that leads to financial insecurity and emotional insecurity is the same as it provides adrenaline and dopamine. Relationships, work, finances. This is because of how the nervous system has been wired.

·       People have to have these higher levels of chemicals in order to feel normal.

·       All addictions have three phases of healing; withdrawal period, stabilisation to actively maintain tight boundaries to not slip back into what has been familiar, then maintenance phases (relapse prevention) – you don’t have to think about it constantly in order to avoid slipping back. What steps have you taken to maintain your emotional sobriety? What strategies will you implement if your nervous system goes back into survival mode when triggered? To not act out in ways that are hurtful to you or others, including self-sabotage.

·      In the maintenance phase you begin to not need the inner tension and anxiety to feel alive.

·       Tools; exercise, schedule helpful activities, supplements (tyrosine 1000mg first thing in morning on empty stomach, up to 3000mg daily but not after 3pm). Tyrosine can help take the edge of withdrawal. Exercise almost to exhaustion, in short bursts if that's all you can do. Hard exercise. More gentle and moderate exercise is also good, but the effects are not as good as high intensity exercise, especially when you are withdrawing. 

·       Keep active, don’t sit idle for too long as you need some dopamine and adrenaline during the withdrawal period so you don’t end up relapsing to a more extreme and unhelpful dopamine and adrenaline surge. It's better to feed the dopamine and adrenaline need through movement in the early days rather than repress the need totally and then relapse straight into unhelpful behaviours such as overeating, procrastination and general mismanagement of daily affairs. 

 

 

[Aeris]

so it isn't real it's just my junky addiction to chaos ?  

 good way to see things, but what is there remaining when you're out of all addictions ?

[Zigzag Idiot]

Very true. IME  Addresses a real phenomenon. Worse for me was letting go of unnecessary suffering.

The idea that we can't let go of our unnecessary suffering is primary in Gurdjieff's Teaching. It took me years to understand the scale of this.