Addiction is a broad term. It doesn’t always mean harmful substances — it can also be an excessive or unhealthy relationship with everyday things: food, alcohol, sex, shopping, social media, or even work. When these activities are no longer about their intended purpose, but instead become ways to numb or avoid emotions such as loneliness, shame, or boredom, they cross the line into addiction.

Some addictions involve clearly harmful choices, such as the use of mind-altering drugs, gambling, or compulsive pornography use. Others are less obvious but still deeply disruptive.

How Do You Know if It’s Addiction?

Clinically, addictions are identified by three key elements. All must be present for a true addiction to be defined:

1. Loss of control – The behaviour becomes compulsive. You may wish to stop but find yourself unable to do so, whether it’s drinking, eating, scrolling, or anything else.

2. Continuation despite consequences – Even when your behaviour leads to relationship conflict, job issues, health risks, or legal problems, you keep going.

3. Preoccupation or obsession – A large part of your time and energy is spent either engaging in the behaviour or thinking about when you’ll do it next.

The real distinction lies in control: Do you guide the behaviour, or does it guide you? When you feel as if your choices are no longer your own — when you say “no” but your actions betray you — the addiction has taken the reins.

Why Does Addiction Happen?

Why would someone give up their relationship, family, or career for a drug or destructive habit? The answer is both simple and complex: addiction offers escape. Addicts trade reality for the ability to change their mood at will.

At the root, addiction is rarely about the substance or behaviour itself. It’s about the underlying emotions and mental patterns that feel intolerable. Behaviours are fuelled by emotions, and emotions are often fed by unconscious beliefs or past experiences. Addictive patterns form as an attempt to avoid or escape emotional pain.

How Hypnosis Can Help

When you work with me in hypnosis, we can address the problem on two levels:

• Behavioural change – Helping you take back control over the specific addictive actions.

• Deeper transformation – Working with habitual thought patterns and unresolved emotions that fuel the addiction in the first place.

Hypnosis allows us to bypass the surface-level struggle and connect directly with the subconscious mind — where your beliefs, habits, and emotional responses are rooted. With the guidance of a compassionate therapist, the pain you’ve been avoiding may no longer feel overwhelming. Instead, you begin to reclaim your freedom, your choices, and your life.

Addiction doesn’t have to define you. With the right support and tools, you can move beyond the cycle of compulsion and rediscover a healthier, more authentic way of living.

Check out Other Resources on This Subject:

Stop Smoking

Compulsive Eating

Hypnosis Downloads for Addiction Help

 

For help with addiction to break free, please schedule your first session with Kemila in person below. If it’s online such as Google Meet or Skype, please go to the Online Session page. For returned clients, click here for scheduling a Regular Session. Or if you have questions, you can schedule a virtual

 

146 WAYS HYPNOTHERAPY MIGHT HELP YOU

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