What to do to remedy addiction?

[sillypumpkins]

I had a recent insight into the workings of the subconscious recently.

I've been struggling with addiction for a while now (with varying intensities thru the years). I didn't really "get" why I was doing these things. Why the f*** am I smoking when I don't actually wanna be? Seriously confusing..... and upsetting.... so I would just get hard on myself. I would be y'know, like mean to myself.

"You know you shouldn't be doing this" things like that. Also harboring feelings of guilt and shame. Really just bringing myself down so much to a point where the only choice was to seek that relief. At least that's how it felt.

So I have been seeing a hypnotherapist and we were talking. We were talking about the subconscious mind. Out of the blue, he mentions, the subconscious being the "primal" part of consciousness. The monkey mind.

So I was like, "okay, that makes sense." I had been sort of confused about the subconscious for a while, so there was some clarity there.

I went home, and walked my dog. We were walking on a long road and we always reach a point where we have to turn back. 9/10, my dog will just freeze and not want to go back. So I would like, force him. I would physically move his body so he would come in the direction I wanted, or I would just pull on his leash until he came. This never felt good and I could tell it always made him more nervous.

So, this time, I tried something different. We reached that point, and I got down to his level, gave him a pat on the back, and said "Henry, we're going to go back home now" and off we went!

It's funny, but that was a real learning moment for me.

Especially in light of learning about the subconscious, and it's connection to the "monkey mind."

Think about your subconscious as a part of your consciousness which is a remnant of that animal mind. Begin to understand it in terms of how you would train a pet.

If you're teaching a trick to your dog, and he doesn't quite get it at first, are you really going to be an a****** to your pet and start yelling at him? The dog doesn't know! He's just doing what he knows works. He's just acting out his very nature. Just like the subconscious.

So, it's been helpful for me to cultivate a relationship with my subconscious that resembles a master-pet relationship. Not an authoritarian one by any means, but one that has mutual respect for those aspects of my conscious experience. Harmony.

The nature of the subconscious can obviously be more complex..... this is just something I learned.... hopefully I worded that in a way where it's understood, and if not i can reword it.