Why our negative emotions and thoughts are addictive

Just as our body becomes accustomed to the taste and flavour of certain foods and craves more of the same, our body also becomes accustomed to the “taste” and “flavour” of certain thoughts, feelings and moods – even those that we view as being negative.

The body/mind complex can become addicted to certain feelings - pleasurable or painful - and then the cells of the body cry out to be fed with more of that emotion and, more often than not, the mind will oblige.

This is how we can become addicted to thinking worrying thoughts, angry thoughts or anxious thoughts which can present as long-term anxiety or depression.

When we think, it triggers our emotions and then chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) carry these messages to every cell in our body. The cells can become addicted to these chemical messages (generated by worry thoughts, angry thoughts, shame thoughts etc.) and want to be constantly fed with them.

The Pain Body

Spiritual teacher and writer, Eckhart Tolle often talks about what he calls the pain body.

The pain body holds all our pain, hurt, hate, anger and also collective human pain. The pain body needs to be fed with emotions such as hurt, anger or hate. So, in order for it to be fed, more emotions like that have to be generated. So, we end up looking for narratives, stories, justifications, reasons to create these emotions to feed the pain body.

He describes thoughts as life forms that we identify with. When we identify strongly with certain thoughts, they create certain emotions that feed the Pain Body.

The pain body is formed of grievances and holding grievances nourishes the pain body.

When we become aware of or our habitual thoughts, when we are not embodying or identifying with them or seeing them as our identity but merely observing them, we manage to separate ourselves from our thoughts. And that is the first step towards releasing our grievances and our addiction to painful thoughts and emotions - the realisation that although you have certain thoughts and emotions, those thoughts and emotions are not you. They are something you have. They are not who you are.

Our Internal Antidote to Stress

We all have an antidote to our feelings of anxiety, stress and worry. It is a source of wisdom, guidance, comfort, strength and power that resides within us.

Unfortunately, the catch is the more worried and stressed out, anxious and overwhelmed we are, the more we feel disconnected to this source of power, wisdom and guidance. It’s a real catch 22, a vicious circle. The thing we need most is the thing we feel most disconnected from. And we feel disconnected it from this source even though it’s right there within us. For most of us, this source of wisdom lies dormant waiting to be activated.

This source within us is an instinctive intelligence, a sort of internal guidance system. It’s the same sort of intelligence that helps us to breathe or our hearts beat without us consciously having to think about it. It’s the same intelligence that makes the flowers grow and the same instinctive intelligence that animals have.

When we’re relaxed and we’re not even thinking about an issue, problem or situation that’s been causing us stress and overwhelm or overburdening us, sometimes we are blessed with ah-ha moments and lightbulb moments of inspiration. This is this source of instinctive intelligence at work.

When we’re not directly thinking about a troublesome situation or using our intellect and our problem-solving faculties to work it out, sometimes a potential solution pops into our mind. This instinctive wisdom is different from intellectual knowledge. Sometimes we can just keep going around in mental circles when we try to troubleshoot using logic and intellect alone.

This is why when we’re engaged in something mundane or everyday such as doing the washing up, walking the dog, an idea or solution can emerge in our minds. This is our source of wisdom, our internal power source at work.

When we use the intellect, often we always fall back on what we always have done. We use a past perspective to try and solve current problems. We looked at what has worked before. We don’t look at a new problem with fresh eyes. Whereas this source of intelligence usually gives us a fresh new perspective, an outside of the box solution and sometimes a “counterintuitive” way of solving the issue or the problem or the situation.

The more relaxed we feel, the more connected we can become to this source of wisdom.

The other important factor is trust. Because listening to this source guidance is about learning to trust this innate intelligence within us.

There are 12 stages in the Serene Empowerment process. Stage 1 is:  We accept that there is a powerful source within us that can provide us with guidance, wisdom, comfort and peace in our daily lives.

Read more about the 12 Stages of Serene Empowerment.