Your brain is composed of a hundred billion neurons instantly sending messages through a trillion miles of neuro-circuitry and somewhere in all that...
...is you.
Every addict has miles of neuro-circuitry directing his addiction and those circuits link up to millions of other circuits, thereby, commanding brain resources and focusing the brain's chief attention toward the chemical or behavioral addiction. Thoughts and behaviors become concrete scripted narratives directing emotion and behavior, based on repetitive neural impulses. Hence, the addiction is not to a specific substance or behavior but actually to the firing of inhibitory and excitatory impulses wired together in the reward center of the brain, generating reward based experiences that, subsequently, require the substances or behaviors.
"Neurons that fire together, wire together." - Donald Hebb, Neuropsychologist
You exist in a brain that is a collection of associations, constantly linking up with other associated circuits in a mental matrix of personal experience.
Just as you could be addicted to a substance or behavior, you can just as easily become addicted to thoughts or ways of thinking to the degree that abstaining from this thinking could provoke withdrawal symptoms of variable intensity.
How the Brain Looks When Forming a Thought
This often occurs when we change routines that we have become hard-wired (addicted) to perform regularly and we may feel agitated and uncomfortable with changes to those routines. This uncomfortable experience is often referred to as cognitive dissonance in which competing pathways generate an uncomfortable experience until the new pathway, and its resulting behaviors, become dominant allowing the older pathway to be pruned or redirected.
Although we tend to refer to these compulsions as habits and not addictions, the effects on the brain are the same. Our daily habitual ways of thinking generate less electro-chemical current in our reward centers than chemical or behavioral addictions, yet they can still become literally hardwired into the neural network resulting in fixated beliefs, distorted thinking, dysfunctional behaviors and maladaptive relationships, especially when not based on an accurate assessment of actual reality.
Many experience life through in a neuro-circuited matrix which has little resemblance to actual reality, but conforms to neural pathways constructed as a result of behavioral and chemical addictions, childhood abuse, congenital brain disorders, chronic medical conditions, brain trauma, subconscious obsessions, PTSD and other traumatic experiences, making certain thoughts and behaviors seemingly impervious to change. Hence, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness becomes hard-wired into this mental matrix causing the doors to recovery and healing to be closed tight.
Yet, you (the I-me experience) are in there...
...and just like the lucid dreamer can direct his dream to achieve intended outcomes, you can direct the mental matrix to rally miles of circuitry around the neurons of your choice. Just as the chemical and behavioral addict can achieve abstinence through altering behaviors, thereby, terminating dysfunctional brain circuits (neuroplasticity), all dysfunctional thoughts, emotions and behaviors can be similarly terminated.
Your prime directive is to identify what requires change, develop a recovery program (cognitive-behavioral), identify relapse prevention strategies (make no mistake, you WILL relapse) and begin the process of healing which, depending on the extent of the addictive thought, feeling or behavior, may take weeks, months or even years.
I know...
...I am a veteran of those psychic wars.
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