As a counselor, I see clients coping with drug, alcohol, internet addiction, and eating disorders. The successful people I find are honest with themselves and bring out their difficult feelings during session time. It is as easy to continue manipulating the Counselling for Addiction sessions as it is to manipulate other situations to keep the addiction intact.
What helps a lot is seeing if repeating addictive behaviors really leads to happiness. Buddhism speaks of analyzing your mind to see if what you are doing is a true source of happiness. These are useful questions to ask throughout the day. Do behavioral patterns lead to temporary gratification, or are they long-term? Pause before drinking, taking drugs, or repeating an action that was a major part of your daily routine. See if it will give you what you really want.
Use a counseling session to investigate the underlying causes of your addiction. Be a detective and try to actually see what comes to mind right before you feel the urge to drink alcohol or consume a substance that you know is a way to ultimately numb your emotional pain. It’s not easy to look back at past events in your life, your anger at your family, or your anxiety at work. Counseling is not a judgmental situation, but an exploration of the causes that led to the current situation.
What can be liberating is seeing that years of guilt, anxiety or depressed moods can be lifted when certain insights or realizations occur. One can realize that he always thought he would fail because his father said so every day. Through therapy, they can learn that the grandfather told the father and that it is an unconscious family pattern. Insights like these can help alleviate pain, and from there you can question addictive behaviors.