# Presentation: 541274

## Compulsions: How and Why Our Lives Get “Taken Over”

- Jerome D. Levin, Ph.D.

- 131 West Main Street
- Riverhead, N.Y. 11901
- 631-369-0922

- 475 East Main
- Patchogue, N.Y.
- 631-369-0922

- © 2007 Jerome D. Levin

## Recognizing a Compulsion

- How does it effect you?
- Effect others?
- Does it narrow, diminish or constrict your life?
- Behavior can be so ingrained, so much part of who we are, that we don't “see” them, let alone see them an problems
- They are “ego-syntonic,” as psychologists say
- Raising awareness of negative consequences makes them “ego alien,” not an integral part of us, but a foreign invader

## Compulsions Give Pleasure And/Or Satisfy a Need

- The question is, do they cost too much?
- Is there a difference between a compulsion and an addiction?
- The danger of pathologizing or medicalizing human problems

## Crossing the Line

- It’s not fun anymore, but I “have” to do it
- It used to be a choice, now I feel like a slave

## Common Compulsions

- Internet
- Spending
- Gambling
- Sex
- Television

- Exercise, as in exercise anorexia
- Thrill seeking
- Food
- Work

## What Drives the Behavior?

- Pleasure
- Escape from self
- Pascal and “busyness”
- Self-punishment
- A place to hide
- A way of reducing tension and anxiety
- Self-medication, *i.e.*, depression
- All of the above

## Compulsions Are Biphasic

- Start as a means of adaptation and sources of satisfaction
- Serve as coping mechanisms
- Can, and frequently do, cease to be adaptive and satisfying and become a source of pain
- But the need remains, indeed intensifies, and we are trapped -- even enslaved

## Compulsions Are Self-Perpetuating

- The need they now satisfy is the compulsion itself, not the antecedent needs that initiated the behavior
- The negative consequences became so aversive that the compulsion is used to relieve the pain caused by the compulsion itself and we are caught in a not so merry merry-go-round

## A Changing Culture Communicates Differently

- An opportunity to make and maintain contact with a diverse range of people never possible before
- Danger is that so much is that so much is “communicated” that nothing is communicated
- Escaping the overload

## A Changing Culture Communicates Differently

- Loss of boundaries and intrusion into our lives causes so much anxiety that we turn to the very tool that causes the anxiety to alleviate it
- When new technology made long distance communication possible Carlyle asked, “What have we to say to India or India to us?” This is still a valid question

## More Malignant Compulsions

- Pornography
- Use of electronic communication to seduce and entice people into dangerous situations
- Role playing and deception

## Teenagers and Electronic Compulsions

- They grew up in the new world and it seems natural to them, yet it can take over their lives just as happens to adults
- Internet, e-bay, text messages, iPods
- Setting limits
- Warning of dangers
- “A common counseling situation:  Upset parent--kid “What’s with you Mom, I’m doing what all my friends do.” It’s not easy to sort out

## Getting Help

- Try to do something about the problem yourself
- If that doesn’t work, you **know** you are truly in the grip of a compulsion
- By now, you probably feel ashamed and guilty
- You have lots of company, these are very common contemporary issues
- How counseling or therapy can help
- Self-help groups
- There are even rehabs

## Stages of “Recovery”

- Confronting the compulsion
- Recognizing “triggers”
- Learning new coping mechanisms
- Working through underlying problems

## Jerome D. Levin, Ph.D.

- 131 West Main Street
- Riverhead, N.Y. 11901
- 631-369-0922

- 475 East Main
- Patchogue, N.Y.
- 631-3459-0922