Addiction to Sadness

Hello, dear friends, and welcome back to my podcast. It's been a while I took a little break. But now I'm back and I have some great topics prepared for you. Today we are starting with the topic about addiction to sadness. And yes, you heard me correct and talking about addiction to sadness, because that's something that happens and it happens a lot. First of all, let's describe what is the addiction, we get addicted to things that we connect to, you may get addicted to substances, alcohol, drugs, gambling, that's something we are not surprised to hear. We all know about examples for the situation. But you can get addicted also to emotions. It's always about emotion, actually, whether you take medication, alcohol, whether you're gambling, or you're addicted to Netflix, it's so because you receive some kind of emotion, you experience some kind of emotion, because you are in touch with this substance or whatever. And the same principle may apply to the negative emotions as well. With the positive emotions, I think we don't have problems to understand how it works. We want to feel excited, we need this joy, or whatever we get from the substances. That's clear. But negative emotions can also be addictive. It might sound strange at first, but let me explain to you how it really works. When you experience certain emotion, your body gets in touch with it. And it may literally become a habit. How does it happen? Well, basically, every emotion is also related to certain hormones, and chemical chemical substances within our body, the chemicals that our body produces. And this combination may also become addictive. Think about it, how, for example, women in menopause, their emotions are changing, their moods are changing, people who suffer from some kind of thyroid issues. They also have problems with emotions, usually depression, sometimes it could be anger as well. So the hormonal state, the hormonal condition, defines also our emotions, but the connection goes both sides. And what comes first? Is it the emotion or the hormones? Well, it's a question. But first of all, we need to understand that that our body can become addicted to different hormones and different emotions. And one of the reasons why it happens is because we are designed and our mind is designed to record everything that we go through. And sometimes in childhood, or in our early age, we may go through some kind of challenges personal crisis, family crisis. And there is a reason why we may feel upset or betrayed or sad or whatever. And all of that is being recorded. And when you are in this condition, in this state for too long, your body gets used to it. Yes, your body can get used to feel sad, or angry, or annoyed or anxious. You name it. When you stay in one condition in one state for too long. Your body gets used to it. This is part of our ability to adapt. And humans can adapt to so many things, even the unpleasant things, the challenging things at certain point. We are designed to adapt because the main purpose is to be able to survive. That's the purpose of our Chi print to protect this to allow us to adapt so that we can survive and what happens is that especially in early age young age, if we go through crisis challenges, you know, whatever. And we experienced those emotions of sadness. at certain point, we can literally get addicted, our body gets addicted to experience those negative emotions. And we tend to recreate them over and over again, because it's already a habit, it feels like home, it feels safe in a way, this may sound very strange to some of you, but just let this idea sink in your mind. And you may realize how it's actually happening for you, as well. And I'm talking about this addiction to sadness, when it's not necessarily related to something concrete that happens in your life. I mean, if you have suffered some kind of loss in your life, and basically, it's a grieving process, this is normal, you know, when something in the material world in your life happens, which is sad, like losing a parent or whatever, it's normal to go through this sadness. But we know that there are many cases, many situations when more or less, our life is fine, it may not be the best, we may still have goals, desires, things we want to accomplish. But we haven't lost anyone at that point. We don't suffer from something extremely serious. And yet, we feel sad, quite often. Those are the cases we time addressing today, when we have this sadness, more as a habit, which is not necessarily based on something happening in the outer world, it's an internal experience, which is triggered within ourselves. This is the mechanism, this is how we can get addicted to this emotion, and basically any other emotion as well. So it's important to understand this is related to our hormones. And we are capable to recreate this, the subconscious mind, the our nervous system, all of it can be triggered in a way that produces the hormones, the chemicals that are related to certain emotions. In this particular case, we talk about the sadness. So it's a habit. And it includes triggering hormones and chemicals so that we can get into this familiar state that we know how to handle. So that's very important. And another important point is also to take responsibility to take responsibility that we are somehow creating this state. It's not the outer world, it's not the government, it's not our spouse who may or may not do something, it's us. And when we get this responsibility, that's how we can also change things, when we consciously take the decision that we want to change. Because the strange thing about this addiction to sadness, is that it may also feel very comfortable. And if you are familiar with this, if you are somehow used to feel sad, you will admit that's true. At some point, it feels like home, it feels familiar, you are experiencing some kind of strange fulfillment when you feel sad, very strange. If you haven't experienced that, it may sound like oh my gosh, it's crazy. But I'm sure that there are other people who will recognize themselves immediately. It feels like home, it feels safe. Somehow it feels even nurturing. And the other question, the next question is actually, what do we get? Why are we getting confused? Why are we getting addicted to this sadness? There might be couple of reasons for that. But the major one is, this allows us to connect to ourselves. This is I will take the most important point from the whole podcast from that all the way. And all this concept that I want to present to you today is to understand that your prediction to sadness, or if you don't want to call it addiction, call it the habit of feeling sad. also works, it's basically the same thing. But you are having this habit to feel sad, because you are getting something out of it, that's for sure. Everything that happens to us happens for a reason. And when we have the habit to feel sad on a regular basis, that's because we are getting something even from this negative condition. And the most important thing we get, in most of the cases is connection to our self. connection with the self. Think about it, what do you do when you feel sad? Usually, you isolate yourself, you become more internal, you focus more on your needs, on how your body feels, how, what kind of thoughts you have at the point, you allow yourself to pay attention more to yourself. That's one of the main reasons why people get addicted to sadness. I mean, this type of Not, not based on material events, but more like internally triggered habit, the feeling set, it happens to you, because this is the way you allow yourself to connect to yourself to take care of yourself. And why does this happen, or which are also the cases when it happens the most. It happens when we don't allow ourselves to go relax or to take care of ourselves unless we feel we are unless we feel we need. And usually it comes down to the fact of how how much you think you deserve. If you think that you deserve to take care of yourself on a daily basis. And you deserve to be the most important person for yourself. And to define your own priorities, and basically, focus on yourself, then usually you don't need to feel sad. But if you are someone who neglects themselves, who overwhelms themselves constantly worrying or taking care of other people, constantly working, or over overwhelming yourself with responsibilities, usually, you are not taking care of yourself, you are neglecting yourself. And in order to allow yourself to take care of yourself, you need a solid reason, you need to feel bad, so that you feel like you deserve to really take care of yourself, or to not do this thing today, or just stay at home and give yourself half a day of a break. For example. The point here is that if you put yourself first, if you accept the idea that you deserve to take care of yourself, you deserve to be the number one person in your life, you don't need a better reason to relax or to take care or to say no to others, then you won't need this secondary mechanism to feel sad so that you allow yourself to do something nice for yourself, or your allow yourself to say no or whatever. So a very important note here. What do you think you really deserve? And when you allow yourself to feel like you deserve to get your full attention to connect to yourself, and nurture your own nature. You won't feel the need to go back into the sadness or any other negative emotion. So very important note self connection. other possibilities of why you might be frequently feeling sad, is because there's also something magnificent in sadness. Usually there is some kind of depth. If you think about our age, every area of art, literature, music, paintings, every other area, usually artists are very creative when they are sad. And they are also capable to do something much deeper as a piece of art or, you know, as part of their work. And there is part of us, at least some of us also may think that, you know, joy or constantly, you know, feeling positive, is actually something superficial, and it's like avoiding the senior side of life. And basically, people who also feel sad, frequently, may have this model, it's like, a mechanism to escape the superficial side of the world, you don't want to be superficial, you don't want to be, you know, constantly having fun, that's just not okay with you, you want to go T, you want to go serious. And this is also a mechanism that may start the same type of chemical reactions within the body, you create the hormones and all of it, that becomes a habit, because you feel like you're going deeper. So it's a question of personal choice, of course, sometimes, you know, the truth is that we can really go deeper when we allow yourself ourselves to feel those deep emotions. But sometimes, we may also take the conscious decision that we are going to enjoy the positive side of the world. And usually, the most common answer is we need to find a balance, that's in most cases, the answer. Another possible reason why we may feel sad on a daily basis or regularly is that we may get some tension because of that. This one is kind of more difficult to admit, even for ourselves. But just give it a try. Allow yourself to think about it, maybe you will realize that when you're feeling sad when you're feeling down, or maybe you feel depressed, this is a way to receive attention and care for other people in your life, who are important. And, again, do you want to be the person who needs to feel weak so that they get attention? And sometimes the answer might be yes, sometimes people can, you know, look at themselves and realize that what they are doing, and also realize that they are fine doing it. This is a conscious adult decision. But in most cases, we may realize that it's not really okay for us, because this is some kind of subconscious manipulation that we are doing. And this may not be okay for everyone. So think about it. Do you get more tension when you feel sad when you feel down? When you feel weak? What do you get from your partner or your parents or your children. And you might realize that this is like an unintentional way to manipulate other people and receive more potential. This may sound kind of harsh, and I definitely realize it's not simple. It's not easy to admit this. But the purpose of our work and this podcast is actually to become more self aware to become more conscious of what we are doing so that we can change it when we want to. And it gets me to another point which is also quite difficult to admit and to, to see in ourselves. It's the fact that sometimes we get into a victim mode. When we feel sad when we feel down, or we feel weak. We get into the victim mode. Someone else's doing something to us or the world is just to prove or I'm just not good for this, you know, material world and we tend to get more into the victim mode. This My friend is mad Good strategy, it puts you in a very weak spot, and you're waiting for someone to save you. There is someone else who is the torturer, and you are the victim, who's not capable of taking care of themselves or getting out of this state. Not a good strategy. So think about it, those last two points are really, they really require a very open a critical mind, I would say, to realize that, you might be feeling sad, because this is your way to receive attention, or you get into a victim mode, and you wait for someone else to come and save, you can solve your problems. Very interesting. With the bed, I guess. Okay, and what can we do? What can we do if we want a change? First of all, you need to be very honest, this is always the answer the first answer, you need to be brutally honest with yourself. What are you doing? Why are you doing it, which are the secondary benefits you get. And after that, don't be too harsh with yourself, don't start blaming yourself, Oh, my gosh, I am a manipulator. I'm doing this because I'm a bad person. No, this is a very common psychological mechanism. That's how we are designed. But you may also realize that it's time for change, and you don't want to be the victim, you don't want to receive attention in this way. You don't want to allow yourself to take care of yourself, only when you are down only when you are sad. And you take the conscious decision from now on. I'm taking care of myself every day because I deserve it. By default, I don't need any other reason this reason is good enough, I am enough. And I deserve to take care of myself to relax at times to put myself first. And then also, you may allow yourself every now and then to get into this state because there might be something nurturing there for yourself. But also, you need to create some kind of habits to get yourself out of this state. So maybe you allow yourself to listen to some sad music for half an hour. maybe think about the past maybe just you know, go really deep, really internal. But then you have like a couple of steps that you're taking to get out of this. Think about it, what is it that may work for you, maybe you would listen to some Jonathan nice music, maybe you will put some makeup and some you know bright color lipstick, maybe you will go out for a walk. Usually things that include the body, things that trigger our physiology can allow us to change our state very fast. So first of all, we focus on the ideas in our mind. And then we focus on our bodies and our physiology. And with time, you may change your habits you know that habits are created, you know with practice, and it may take also some practice to change them. But this may become your new habit, your habit to practice happiness, your practice to your habit to feel good, your practice to take care of yourself every day without any other reason than the fact that you are here. So I hope this was helpful for you. And you will find some kind of wisdom for yourself some kind of answers, and maybe you will take the decision to make a change in your life. Thank you very much for listening to this episode. And if you need any help if you need my support, you can always contact me on my website marstars.net.