WEEK THREE
Your body is your subconscious mind, and it’s easy to forget that it’s not separate from us. It remembers too much of what you don’t, and it’s often the abusive relationship that you wouldn’t have with anyone else. As an empath (which you probably are), you usually take your anger and channel it into avoidance.
Pretty much everyone has an addiction: something you utilise to check out of life and the present moment. When you get comfortable with that solution to numb you from your reality, it becomes your survival mechanism. Some addictions are more harmful than others, and some take longer to cause harm. But anything you’re using to check out of your life is holding you back. It’s keeping your nervous system in a state of pain or pleasure. Addictions often give you a sense of the time that you most feel alive, too.
Not all addictions are substances, some are behavioural. No one is bad if they have an addiction; it’s a survival mechanism, though the judgement around some is greater than others. In the beginning, it’s a way to check out, but due to the rush of life it affords you, it can end up leading your life.
Your habits and patterns and programs are formed in your first seven years. Your brain is a problem solver, and it searches for the problem it feels you are having. When you have used something to hide your traumas, that is what is searching for: the next hit to make you feel better. Even if your conscious mind is really committed to quitting the addiction, your brain is still searching for the release on your behalf.
Behind every addiction is a significant avoidance. Grief that has not been processed, broken hearts, disassociation. There is a lot of potential in learning about – and processing – your addictions. Addiction is a search for connection, and your hormones respond when you find it through substances or behaviour.
Often when healing an addiction, it is resolved with another addiction, Even healthier ones like swapping a food addiction for the gym. Either way, it’s a focus away from the grief or trauma that kickstarted the search for highs.
Inside every addict is a broken child and the fastest way to reconcile an unhealthy addiction is to first swap it out with a healthy one. Addiction is on your mind 24/7 even when satisfied – addiction to people, places or things.
If you can fix the fight or flight response, and look at the toxic influences, toxic people, toxic food, addictive thinking, social media, judgement, etc., you can correct the addiction. Addiction is like your old best friend – the one that was really your frenemy. It’s easy to go back to for comfort, but it’s not going to resolve anything.
This Quantum Fitness programme has been designed so that you don’t return to the addiction. There will be options to wean you off the addiction; Jess calls this the Methodone Effect. You start with an exchange of energy – where you’ll get something in return for your addiction that feels equally (or close enough) as exciting.
First up, list what your addictions are (without judgement of them). Ask yourself what the slightly healthier version of your addiction? Take food, for example: instead of replacing unhealthy food with healthy ones that you resent, you’re looking for the comparable feeling. What does your addiction feel like and what could you create in your life that would give you the same feeling? But instead of poisoning you, you look for the version that still feels like the food and the treat, but doesn’t have the same toxins. Like a cake made with monk fruit and high in protein instead of the laden sugar, chemicals, and empty calories. You can have anything you want in that meets your addiction, you just have to find the alternative that satisfies your inner child. If it doesn’t start to please you, you then move or do something that gives your energy a place to go. With the Methadone Effect, you don’t fall into a guilt and shame cycle. While you’re substituting your addictions, it allows you to work on turning on your body back on.
Movement options you can do when you need to release some energy: painting, drawing, colouring, dancing, gardening, walking. Plus, create a playlist to help you to experience and release your moods (and angry playlist, for example). Breathwork also works to clear your energy.
HOMEWORK
With your addictions list, detail what less toxic options you will substitute them with.