Soft Addictions

October 6, 2008 on 10:25 pm | By | In bluefreesky.com | Soft Addictions
Soft addictions can be habits, compulsive behaviors, or recurring moods or thought patterns. Their defining characteristic is that they gratify a exterior want but ignore the satisfaction of a deeper need. They numb us to feelings and spiritual awareness by substituting a superficial high, or a sense of activity, for genuine feeling of accomplishment.

A good number of soft addictions concern necessary activities such as eating, reading, and sleeping. These activities turn into soft addictions as soon as we go overboard with them and when they are used for more than their intended purpose. Soft addictions are seductive in their softness. E-mailing, watching television, and talking on the phone appear to be totally harmless, pleasurable activities. If we open our eyes to see how much time and energy we dedicate to them, however, we can see how they lower the quality of our lives.

You need to know that there are an infinite assortment of soft addictions. While a universal soft addiction may be television watching, a more personal form could be doodling geometric figures or counting items for no reason.

A few men and women have a difficult time distinguishing an occasional behavior or brief mood from a soft addiction. Is watching TV for an hour a day a harmless habit, while if you watching it for three hours per day (the national average), does it become a soft addiction?

Keep the following in mind: The incentive and the function of your behavior decide whether it is a soft addiction or not. For instance, television can be used as a window in which you can view new worlds -- or it can be a means of escape. I know a lady who's very careful about the shows she watches, using television as a tool to learn about life in foreign cultures and to understand animal behavior. She employs television watching as a tool to gain knowledge. A different lady vegetates in front of the television daily, channel surfing and letting the programs wash over her. Her job is rough and she mistakenly believes her viewing habits reduce her stress. Seldom does she have a particular show she desires to watch or a real cause for watching it. When you contrast the two television watchers, the dissimilarities in motivation and function are easy to see. The 1st woman's motivation revolves around very specific learning goals; the second woman's motivation is to turn her brain off. The first woman uses television to enhance her life; the second woman uses it to escape from her life.

Don't allow soft addictions to take over your life.

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