Is Your Need to Escape Leading You to Addiction?
“We are prone to escape when we feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious.”
By Audrey Hardin, MS LPC
By Audrey Hardin, LPC
Netflix, music, porn, online shopping, and social media—many of these platforms have exploded in the last ten years, but even more so since 2020. Porn sites, for example, receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined each month. And un-coincidentally, you can access most all of these mediums on your phone, giving you the ability to escape anytime and anywhere you want.
It’s just that simple. When your job, your relationships, the news, or your own mind start to overwhelm, just reach for your phone, put your headphones in, and check out.
Escapism isn’t new, though. It began in the 1930s during the Great Depression. People needed a way to escape their current reality into a world of fantasy, thus the movie industry began, which helped people forget their struggles for a few hours.
We may be farther from a nation-wide economic crisis, but our recent pandemic has left us in a very similar place. We are prone to escape when we feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and anxious.
With over a year and a half of uncertainty it is near impossible to feel settled and present to face the next challenge in front of us. We’ve all been surviving.
Our brains, though, were not designed to live in survival mode but in our prefrontal cortex (the higher center of our brains, which gives us the ability to self-regulate, to be connected to self and others, and to dream, plan, and execute).
However, whenever there is a threat to our safety or survival, our brains automatically downshift to the lower center of our brain to access our survival instincts, Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. We see this shift happen when there is an actual threat to our survival (someone entering our home to harm us) or when there is a perceived threat (hearing about the possibility of a virus harming our health). BOTH send us down into the lower center of our brain –leaving us exhausted, anxious, and reactive.
Trying to escape the pain
When we stay longer in our mid-brain than our upper brain, we crave RELIEF from the pain. So, we seek ways to escape it. This is natural and a needed function of our brain to “give itself a breather.”
However, if we don’t get back up into our higher center of the brain, we are at risk to live dissociated and addicted lives –forever disconnected and missing out on the life of freedom and relationship God created us for.
Escapism is the gateway to addiction.
Basically, what happens is that we become reliant on the dopamine hits from our escaping behaviors and become stuck in a loop that looks like: threat of pain (perceived or real) -> escape -> numb -> wake up and “do” until pain bubbles up again ->REPEAT.
Sadly, the majority of us never learned how to process pain and loss in a healthy way.
Since our life is FILLED with unmet needs, loss, and heartache, it’s necessary to learn a healthy strategy, because no-strategy leads us straight down the path to addiction.
Here are 3 solutions to keep you present to face it, instead of living to escape it:
1. GET SAFE
We cannot learn anything new unless we get out of survival mode by feeling safe again. Fun fact: You can’t calm the mind without first calming the body. Deep belly breaths is a great start (see resource here), but I also love a recent technique I learned. As you read this, try it now.
Take your right hand and place it under your left arm as to cup the top of your rib cage. With your other hand, cross it over and place on your right shoulder. It will appear you’re giving yourself a hug (with strategic hand placement). Hold until you feel your body release and relax. You will know your body feels safe when it releases an automatic calming “sigh” breath.
2. REST
Your brain needs a break from all of the painful hits its experienced. We need rest to restore energy to face what’s in front of us instead of giving into the urge to escape. Remember, rest is different than numbing or escaping. Real rest involves solitude –a break from the noise of podcasts, music, the news, tv, or your phone.
Try sitting for just 10 minutes in silence a day and increase the amount to be able to tolerate longer until you can spend a full day resting. Nature –earth, sun, and water all help the body to enter into rest mode. You’ll be amazed at how much better you sleep and become able to stay connected with God and others when you take this intentional time!
3. GRIEVE
I cannot emphasize this one enough. We cannot move forward to be free to tackle the next task, chapter, or phase of our life if we do not take time to grieve what we have lost along the way. When we don’t grieve our losses –i.e. relationships, hopes, dreams, nurture, safety, innocence, acceptance, health, youth, promises, etc., our brain stores the pain in our amygdala which can be triggered by anything in our present reality and shoot us down to our survival brain again (furthering the addiction cycle).
When we grieve what we lost, we give honor to ourselves and that thing or person we lost. Just like we do at funerals –we take time to honor the life and find closure.
Jesus is our model for grieving well in a world where loss is a part of everyday life.
“He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.” Isaiah 53:3
Take time to cry and get angry (righteous anger) over what you lost so you can gain closure and move forward instead of stuck and numb.
All of our workshops give you concrete and experiential ways to get back into your skin and break the cycle of escapism and live the life God created you for. Check them out here.
Take a step towards getting present today!
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Audrey Hardin is a Therapist, Speaker, and Workshop Leader at Hardin Life Resources in Dallas and McKinney, TX.
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