The Insidious Ways Addiction Hijacks Your Coping Mechanisms
There are many different reasons people become addicted to substances, but one of the most common is that they are searching for a coping mechanism. Coping mechanisms are the habitual ways a person learns to deal with difficult situations and emotions. When someone does not develop healthy approaches, substances can be an alluring alternative.
Instead of drawing on effective strategies to get through the tough times, an addict reaches for alcohol or drugs. It seems to work in the moment, but any relief is brief and comes at a great cost. This is why it is considered maladaptive or unhealthy.
But the link between maladaptive coping and addiction is not only related to substance use itself. As you continue using substances, it hijacks your healthy defenses as well. This leads to a range of problematic behaviors that harm you and those around you.
Here is how addiction affects coping mechanisms.
Patterns of Emotional Avoidance
Substances are often used as a way to avoid emotions that feel overwhelming. However, emotional avoidance does not start and end at getting drunk or high. In fact, as avoidance becomes a pattern of behavior, a number of other activities maintain the illusion that emotions can be escaped.
Common examples of emotional avoidance include binge eating, scrolling social media, excessive sleeping, binge watching TV, and gaming. They provide temporary distractions that further suppress emotions. The person’s fear about facing their emotions grows and they rely on substances more and more.
Isolation and Withdrawal
People addicted to substances tend to isolate themselves or withdraw from the people they love. Instead, they spend time alone or with other substance users and enablers. Why is this such a common pattern?
Isolation and withdrawal are used by addicts as coping mechanisms to avoid judgment and accountability. They are also ways of avoiding relationships in which there is conflict and people with whom they have shared distressing experiences.
People with addiction struggle to find internal validation. They fear rejection since they feel the need for the validation of others. Withdrawing is a way of avoiding the possibility of rejection.
Anger and Control
When people struggling with addiction do engage with their loved ones, they may feel a lot of anger. This is another way of trying to deal with the possibility of rejection, as well as a means of exerting control. They hold the power to reject their loved one before being rejected themselves. They might also use their anger to strike fear into those around them, out of their own fear of having to face the consequences of their actions.
Lying, Manipulation, and Denial
Dishonesty is one of the hallmarks of addiction. It is expressed in frequent lying to loved ones, manipulating them by playing on their emotions, and denying they have a problem. These strategies begin as ways of ensuring they have continued access to substances.
However, dishonesty becomes habitual, and people with addiction start using it even when substances are not involved. They diffuse conflict with lies, get what they want through manipulation, and avoid accountability by denying they have acted in harmful ways.
As everyone can attest, dishonesty can provide fleeting relief but, over time, causes internal distress and further interpersonal difficulties.
An important caveat is that the strategy of denial is one that occurs internally. It helps the person avoid feeling distress caused by shame, loss, and fear. Often, it is expressed to others as much in order to prevent self-reflection as to avoid accountability.
The Shame Cycle
The above coping mechanisms may seem effective at times. When feeling great distress, for example, going back to sleep can provide relief. When struggling with the fear of rejection, isolation can lessen one’s anxiety.
But this relief does not last. The more a person employs these maladaptive coping mechanisms, the more severe the long-term consequences. Shame is often at the heart of this.
Avoidance, isolation, anger, and dishonesty all tend to cause self-judgment. The person knows that they have not resolved anything, only postponed the consequences, and they feel they have failed. The judgment they fear from others arises internally and is even stronger coming from oneself.
Shame very quickly becomes a spiral. In order to avoid feeling the shame, the person uses substances and the other unhealthy coping mechanisms. They feel more shame at having done so, and engage in those non-solutions yet again. The shame grows stronger and the use of substances more frequent.
Learning Healthy Coping Mechanisms
Addiction hijacks healthy coping mechanisms and replaces them with strategies that ultimately cause far more distress. In recovery, it is therefore necessary to not just stop using substances, but to learn healthy ways to cope as well. Without effective strategies, the first distressing incident will be an extremely strong trigger.
The good news is that learning healthy coping mechanisms is a foundational aspect of recovery. It is also a means to further growth in general. Since addiction often occurs due to the inadequacy of a person’s capability to cope with distressing emotions, recovery leads them to a healthier position than they were before they used substances.
The healthy coping mechanisms you will learn in recovery include positive self-talk, mindfulness, emotional regulation, journaling, and asking for help from loved ones.
Conclusion
Addiction itself can start as a maladaptive coping strategy. But its impact does not end there. It triggers a range of unhealthy mechanisms that take the place of positive strategies. The person comes to rely on avoidance, isolation, dishonesty, and anger, among other things.
Recovery is the perfect opportunity to learn healthy coping mechanisms. It is the start of your journey towards a life founded on good mental health and happiness.
Sources
PsychCentral: 7 Honest Reasons Why Addicts Lie
Frontiers in Psychology: Coping Strategies and Complicated Grief in a Substance Use Disorder Sample
BJP: Anger and substance abuse: a systematic review and meta-analysis