In truth, all things that attract us, and which promise and sometimes provide pleasure, carry the latent power to touch a deep strand of vulnerability woven into us all: Through it, any rewarding experience can be transformed into a force operating beyond the reach of choice. When such a condition fully emerges it is called addiction.

As its insidious processes unfold, addiction can gradually, drastically reduce individuals’ options for feeling and thinking, while it steadily dictates and narrows their choice of behaviors. Ultimately, addiction’s remarkable, malign psychological power can and very often does dominate and define the course of an entire lifetime.

The Role of Compulsion

I regard the dynamics of compulsion as key to engaging our vulnerability at the onset of addiction, and in reinforcing its progression. Because rewarding or pleasurable experiences can simultaneously reduce emotional discomfort, some degree of psychological conditioning we recognize as compulsion is likely and predictable: From the moment the unconscious mind registers that a gratifying behavior or activity – even a pleasant sequence of thoughts or a fantasy – can simultaneously suppress uncomfortable feelings, an individual may be automatically and repeatedly drawn back to that behavior. This pattern may then be reinforced by repetition regardless of whether the initial pleasure or reward is still present. Thereby, under compulsion an individual is no longer primarily motivated by conscious volition and in pursuit of gratification; instead, he/she is more likely to respond to a deep, primal impulse to regulate and diminish uncomfortable or disturbing feelings – particularly the anxiety associated to situations of vulnerability and helplessness.

Compulsion thereby progresses as a pattern of behavior continuously reinforced in the unconscious mind, in which an individual repeatedly returns, as if in a “trance.” Within this dynamic any processes of thought and action capable of diminishing unwanted negative feelings – primarily those signaled by anxiety – are likely to establish and reinforce compulsion. Furthermore, even the anticipation of any oncoming negative feeling can “trigger” compulsive behaviors in the unconscious mind. This occurs as commonly with the slightest encroachment of uncomfortable feelings as it does with those experienced in the present moment. Compulsive behavior patterns can be further perpetuated by an underlying “separation anxiety” which can emerge whenever a habitual behavior associated with regulating and reducing internal discomfort may seem unavailable.

With such an array of unconscious forces at work together, the resulting compulsive behavior can gradually take on a life of its own, as full-blown addiction. At this end of the spectrum, addictive behaviors commonly persist despite the reduction or absence of the original pleasure or reward associated to them, often bypassing the afflicted individual’s capacity even to consider the punishing consequences to him/her and to others.

In my understanding and clinical approach to addiction, the dynamics of compulsion function in its very foundation and at its center. Within this framework, I observe that the more intense the emotional discomfort held within any particular individual (above all, feelings of vulnerability, shame, helplessness and anxiety), and the more unacknowledged and unexpressed such feelings remain – as often they do under a myriad of social and cultural pressures – then the more vulnerable is that individual to the onset of compulsive processes leading to stark addiction.

How We Relate To Compulsion And Addiction In Others And In Ourselves

I often affirm that all aspects of our inner and external life – including those psychological phenomena with severe personal and social consequences – are best understood and treated as fully integrated to the common ground of our human experience. However, such an inclusive perspective seems particularly challenged where our ability to recognize compulsion in ourselves and others is concerned. Though compulsion is to some degree an omnipresent psychological dynamic, it rarely becomes evident to us until it presents in the form of starkly dysfunctional or destructive addictive behaviors of others which directly or indirectly impact us, or via media accounts of individuals’ extreme, desperate or deadly actions. In one way or another we are thus frequently confronted by incidents of persons driven (compelled) to extreme and destructive behaviors which seem to have had a life force of their own. Typically, our society responds to this with degrees of shock and astonishment, often with deep, well-intended soul searching, while simultaneously, a cloud of perplexity, a confusion of explanations often settles over the events.

During such moments of intense collective reckoning a potentially clarifying, though discomforting further consideration is generally absent: It is that even the most troubling, perplexing and shocking occurrences that our society witnesses may mainly reflect critical tipping points in the lives of persons whose inner psychological experience is not entirely foreign to our own. Indeed, it remains truly challenging (though potentially illuminating and even transformative) for us to consider that those deeply troubled and troublesome lives that come into the public spotlight may have been driven by emotional forces not so very far removed – except by degrees of intensity – from the mainly benign operations of compulsion present within all of us.

However, it is quite natural and likely that we will not make such a connection, as we opt instead to distance our own concept of our Self from any sense of our being potentially vulnerable to the dire consequences of extreme compulsion or addiction. However, should we venture to a level of deeper reflection we might all come to recognize – at least in a fleeting moment – some thread of commonality between our own ways of managing and extinguishing the most uncomfortable parts of our emotional experience – mainly those of shame, vulnerability, helplessness, and the anxiety that accompanies them – and those forces driving the protagonists of extreme acts and shocking headlines.

Instead, our natural tendency is to expend considerable creative energy toward maintaining within ourselves a generally positive, though carefully filtered and curated perspective on the whole of who we essentially are. Similarly, we tend to hold a positively-biased view of others closest to us, all of which leads us to assume that we and they alike operate primarily or exclusively in the exercise of free will toward positive ends. Thereby we easily ignore, particularly in ourselves, any present or future vulnerability whatsoever to the total surrender of our free will to compulsion, particularly to the most serious dilemmas and negative consequences of addiction. Even as some degree of compulsive energy is continuously present and engaged in motivating a range of our behaviors, we seem innately disinclined to identify its growing strength in ourselves, as well as in those closest to us.

Such an inherent perceptual “blind spot” may in large part account for how often within our families of origin and in the broad social milieu as well, we can sometimes adjust to and “normalize” the negative impact of intractable, repetitive behaviors which we confront in those among us who are in the firm grip of compulsions and addictions. It is often the case that those individuals afflicted with serious conditions such as compulsive overeating or food restriction, compulsive sexuality, hoarding, compulsive gambling, alcoholism and drug addiction can provoke a great deal of anxiety, obsessive thinking and persistent attempts at control on the part of friends, spouses and family – those who are the most collaterally impacted. Yet, an addicts’ labile emotional profile and erratic behaviors can and often do ultimately confound and paralyze even those best-informed and most well-meaning persons around them. It then follows that under the malign power of their conditions, compulsive/addicted persons can persist, unchallenged and untreated, even as they deeply, negatively impact all concerned.

The Consequences

The forces of compulsive/addictive conditions generally operate well-concealed within a broad “blind spot” in the consciousness of the afflicted – a phenomenon popularly labeled “denial.” This commonly occurs as much in afflicted persons as in those they most impact. The psychological processes of compulsion/addiction thereby proceed as if they were somehow capable of protecting and perpetuating themselves: They can propagate deep subjective distortions by empowering affected individuals’ capacity for idealized self-perception. Operating deep within the “self-concept” of the compulsive/addict, this dynamic continually reinforces the individual’s delusion of uniqueness, of invulnerability and impunity, permitting him/her to interpret even behaviors that carry dire, long-term consequences as lifestyle choices and expressions of free will.

Thus, addiction and the compulsive conditions form a deep psychological bond with the unconscious mind of those fully in their grip,  neutralizing a victim’s capacity to accurately gauge the threat and danger that they present. The habits and behaviors associated to compulsive/addictive conditions gradually, and with grim irony, can even come to seem indispensable to their victims’ regulation of internal discomfort, to their sense of safety, and even to their survival. Following this essentially tragic course, addiction can thereby establish absolute supremacy within the psyche of any human being – and stealthily take an entire life prisoner.

I know and understand compulsive behavior and the addictions;
I treat individuals at all levels of these most challenging and potentially tragic human conditions,
and help them to reclaim and renew their lives.

Among these persons are:

those who still struggle within lives driven by compulsion/addiction:
those often unable to acknowledge its presence and impact upon them;

those confronting persistent compulsions related to acknowledged addiction,
and those still dealing with addiction’s complex impact upon their lives;

those persons among the many who have been touched by living experience in recovery:
whose compulsions and addictions have been transformed within its unique and rewarding pathways,
and who seek to deepen and enrich their connection to themselves and others.

If you recognize any aspect of yourself among these persons, and you are seeking help, please consider contacting me.

Contact me.

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