Creating your own stress

If there’s one thing we’re sure about when it comes to addiction – of all types – it’s that we have a tendency to resort to our addictive substance when we’re feeling more emotional than we’re comfortable with. It’s just a fact of the way addiction works that we go to it in times of need. Briefly, addiction is maintained, from a psychological/learning perspective by negative reinforcement. That is, the removal of something unpleasant (negative) results in the increase in a behavior (e.g., taking of the substance of choice: behavior that is reinforced).

What is often neglected is the ways in which we become our own worst enemies in recovery because we create our own stress. We manufacture issues when there aren’t any or we make big deals out of not so big deals. We put ourselves in situations that become significant so we have to resort to our addictions. Or we interpret interactions in a way that makes us feel more stressed.

When dealing with clients with addiction, it’s often a given that they will struggle more and have more relapses when they have been stressed. It’s certainly not acceptable behavior as far it treatment for their addictions go but it is not unexpected. But the ways a stressful situation develops is often left unexplored. In DBT, we refer to the circumstances that could lead up to problem behavior “apparently irrelevant behavior”. The behavior seems like it might be irrelevant and could be but it might not and that’s an issue that needs to be explored.

What I’m referring to here is a specific type of apparently irrelevant behavior. It might not be irrelevant but it might be. Are you creating your own stress to give yourself a reason to use? If you find that you’re feeling extra stressed out these days, ask yourself what’s really going on and see if it’s not your addiction trying to get out.