subject: Controlling Your Addiction [print this page] Controlling Your Addiction Controlling Your Addiction
Controlling Your Addiction
There are only two things in life you can ever control:your thoughts and your behavior. You can't change your feelings; feelings just are. But you can change your re sponse to them and then, like a miracle, the feelings will change without your doing anything about them. At the center we teach a "do-feel-believe" pattern of behaviorchange. Change the behavior whether you think it's goingto work or not.
"Bring the body and the mind will follow." "Fake it till you make it." these slogans (they will appearfrequently in this article) are the distilled word-of-mouthwisdom repeated over and over by millions of people in12-step programs who for many years have been successfully helping each other change their destructive behavior patterns. Nobody knows who said them first, butthey're repeated like a litany because they work.
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As you participate in the treatment section of thisarticle, you will also be engaged in cognitive restructuring. Even while you sleep your mind will be processing the change in thought processes, and your dreams will be likeroad maps on the journey to recovery. Detours don't get you there. Belief systems simply cannot be penetrated in a weekend or even a week-long seminar, no matter howinspiring the lecturer or how confrontational the technique. In fact, highly confrontational seminars can dogreat damage, especially to food addicts, who tend tohave a fragile ego structure. On the other hand, many ofthe more loving and supportive encounter groups thatwere popular in the sixties and seventies were on the righttrack, but they didn't give people the tools to change.They failed because they didn't go far enough.
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