Soft Addictions

There are many things that we do often that we would not consider an addiction.  For some of us admitting we have any addictions is a hard pill to swallow, yet the soft addictions are as important to address as any common addiction like smoking or alcohol addictions.  Is is very hard to let go of any habit we have formed yet there are ways to do resolve addictions.  First we must admit we have an addiction, then we have to identify the addiction and lastly find a way to heal the addiction.  At times this is something we want to accomplish for the sake of the ones we love who are in the background and being effected by it whether it is because you are taking the time to indulge or you are doing it at times when it effects someone else in an adverse manner like when people smoke and the second hand smoke effects their children and their spouse.

Some soft addictions are things like: 

Food: 

Many of us are addicted to food.  Food is an commonly overlooked addiction in that it is so prevalent and people hide it.  I remember a friend who was gaining more and more weight.  I could not understand how she became so heavy and then looked in her cabinets and found out why.  They were filled with snacks of every kind.  Then I looked in the fridge and there it was: ice cream, whip cream, cool whip and very sugar filled drinks and soda.  I realized that she must have been consuming these products behind my back.  She would talk a lot about being confused that she was gaining so much weight and sighted my being a witness to what she ate.  It was true that in my presence she ate small portions and did not seem to ever overeat.  Yet someone was eating those snacks and that ice cream in her fridge.  There are many variables to gaining weight including the propensity for some of us to gain more than others due to our individual reaction to food.  Food is a soft addiction yet it has a hard impact on people.  When we are addicted to food we can't control what we eat and not being able to control what we consume effects our health in ways that should motivate us to address this addiction.  

A Person or Relationship:

Some of us are addictied to a person we love.  Love is a beautiful thing but being addicted to someone you love is not.  We don't realize we are addicted to a person yet when we depend on another person to feel joy or complete we are addicted and it's not a good thing.  Love is one thing and addiction to love is quite another.  If you are addicted to someone in your life doing things on your own could be healing.  Making a circle of friends and doing things with them can be helpful in healing your addiction to one person.  It is in actuality a dependence that you have on one person.  Being dependent on one person is not a good thing especially considering that fifty percent of relationships end up terminated.  Being addicted to a person gives them unusual power over you and creates a situtation where you may even be suffocating him or her.  That has a domino effect what most of us understand can be hurtful.  Being an addict to a person is not unusual but it is unhealthy.  

Self-sex: 

It is not unhealthy to pleasure ourselves through masterbation.  What makes it an addiction that is no healthy is when it is what you do rather than to have intimacy with someone else, especially intimacy with our partners.  I spoke to one women who shared that her husband would masterbate when he thought she was sleeping at all kinds of odd hours of the night and morning.  It could have been at 2am or 3am in the morning.  When she would offer to participate he would stop master-bating and turn is back on her.  His self sexing was an addiction that to this day one could find hard to explain.  Why was he master-bating in the middle of the night when his wife was laying next to him and then refuse to have sex with her when she would wake up and offer to participate?  Self sex is an addiction that is not rational.  The person who has this soft addiction has to figure out why they prefer master-bating over having sex with their partner or spouse.  My guess is fear but is is also a way for the person to control the relationship and a message that their partner is not good enough or attractive enough.  This addiction is complex and is one that only the person who is in it knows why they choose self sexing over sex with a partner who loves them.  

Bad Boys:

Addiction to bad boys is one of the most heard of addictions.  Women and men who are addicted to bad boys cannot tell  you why.  I think that the reason that women and men are addicted to bad boys is about their own self image.  They are people who don't like themselves or find themselves worthy of anything better.  The bad boy addiction is one that tells a lot about who we are and what we think of our spirit, mind and body.  Many times you will find that the men and women addicted to bad boys or bad girls need to be healed ot their own self image.