Every time we “go on a diet”, quit smoking, we promise ourselves that we will no longer fall under the influence of an addiction and will not buy another unnecessary trinket, will not throw ourselves into work, and will not allow ourselves to fall in love madly and without reciprocity, everything After some time, we step on the same rake or again fall into some kind of addiction. Why does this happen? Why diets and the belief: “That’s it. This was the last time!”? We understand how addiction is sometimes dangerous to our health and harmful to our happy life. Even realizing this does not help us change anything in our lives. But have you ever thought that addiction is our “lifeline”? And maybe this is the only thing that can somehow help us in “survival”? And it is then that when we refuse its influence, we encounter enormous resistance. I want to reveal the secret and tell you what, in general, forces us to enter a “dependent state.” In absolutely any addiction there is one pattern, and the same reason - this is the deep, difficult-to-realize attitude “I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH.” There can be many variations of this attitude. We acquired this attitude in childhood, when our parents criticized us, devalued us, intimidated us, compared us with others, and used physical force. Of course, some of their messages were conveyed to us in order to protect, warn, warn, but in fact, apart from harmful damage, we bring nothing into adult life. Sometimes, a client coming to therapy claims that he had a happy childhood and loving parents, but the request he came with is compulsive overeating, workaholism, emotional dependence, and so on. During therapy, it is discovered that the parent could often demonstratively tell a neighbor about the child’s failures, or the child was often criticized, ridiculed and even compared with the other parent. And what happens next? The person begins, literally, to work for this attitude, choosing certain strategies for this. .For example, the strategy of a perfectionist is “I must be perfect”, “everything I undertake must be done in the best possible way”, “I have no right to make mistakes”. Why do you think he needs to be like this? so as not to face criticism and devaluation, as I once faced with parental criticism. And yet, under the influence of this attitude, a person will never be satisfied with the result. When a person strives for ideality, there is one side effect - this is a huge emotional stress. This is where anxiety, fear, and panic attacks come from. After some time, the person cannot stand it, the thought appears: “to hell with all this!”, and then he chooses the opposite strategy to perfectionism - avoidance. The person chooses a simpler job, where there is no responsibility, goes to study again, procrastinates “on the couch”, does whatever he wants, but “does not go” to the desired goal. If this is a relationship, then he may decide that he doesn’t need a relationship at all, although he has desires to start a family. And so on, there are quite a lot of forms of avoidance. But even here, not everything is so simple. In the avoidance strategy, a person experiences all the same difficult, negative emotions that he experiences in the perfectionism strategy. A vicious circle occurs. The point is that a person chooses strategies to support his destructive attitude and, literally, “works” for the parental message. And now we come to addictions. Imagine, now, a person who is a perfectionist. He has ONE OF the attitudes, for example, “I AM BAD.” Usually a person has a whole arsenal of destructive attitudes, but we will analyze only this one. From here, in response to any complex, even banal, situation, unconscious automatic thoughts arise: “I may be judged,” “I may be criticized,” “I am afraid of being laughed at by others.” , “I’m scared that they will evaluate me,” etc. “And then everyone will see that I AM BAD.” “Therefore, I must do everything carefully, without mistakes,.