Escape Psychological Dependence on Pain - Addictive Psychology

Author: Zhang Ming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features:
Sticking to sleeping with the lights on is also a disease
The cause of the habit of sleeping with the lights on
The habit of sleeping with the lights on is a bad habit, and its pathological essence is a fear of the dark. This fear of the dark mostly begins in early childhood. During this period, children love to listen to stories about ghosts and gods. The background, content, and appearance of these stories are often set in the dark at night or in places invisible to ordinary people, to demonstrate vividness and mystery. Over time, they associate the fear of ghosts and monsters with darkness, forming a dependence on lights and making them reluctant to turn off the lights to sleep. This is one of the main reasons for sleeping with the lights on.
Secondly, encountering something frightening unexpectedly in a dark situation or having a nightmare at night, and not being able to process these terrifying experiences in time, may also cause a fear of the dark.
Treatment for the habit of sleeping with the lights on
Cognitive insight therapy: This approach provides patients with dialectical materialism and atheism education, explaining that ghosts and monsters do not exist in the world. The fear of the dark caused by such fears is an infantile emotional reflection from early childhood. For example, if a patient believes they have encountered a giant, the therapist should explain that what they encountered that night was not a giant but a real farmer. After the explanation, the therapist can recreate the scene from that night to help the patient overcome their fear cognitively and subconsciously.
Systematic desensitization therapy: Based on the severity of the patient's fear of the dark, a fear hierarchy is established. Then, systematic desensitization training is conducted in order from mild to severe, continuously reinforcing the process until the patient can sleep with the lights off. For example, for a patient, the process might start with several people turning off the lights and talking together, then moving to sitting together in the dark, then sleeping with two people, then sitting alone in the dark, and finally sleeping alone with the lights off.
Is excessive shopping a good thing?
Characteristics of female shopping addiction patients
Women generally have a shopping habit, and this habit can develop into an addiction, turning into a compulsive shopping behavior. Although people with shopping addiction know that the outcome of compulsive shopping is not pleasant—such as rooms filled with useless goods and lifelong debt—they still cannot resist the urge to shop wildly. A key feature of female compulsive shopping is that they engage in frenzied shopping when they are depressed, anxious, exhausted, or feel guilty. Research has found that shopping itself can produce a brief sense of pleasure or euphoria, making it an addiction similar to cocaine. Therefore, some professionals consider it a behavioral addiction. Sheff of Harvard University also believes that compulsive shoppers experience withdrawal symptoms similar to those of drug addicts, as they cannot control themselves. This behavior is essentially the same as gambling and compulsive stealing. However, since many women only develop frenzied compulsive shopping during periods of depression and anxiety, it is not always easy to distinguish whether the mental state affects the behavior or the behavior affects the mental state. Nevertheless, this also highlights the interaction and interdependence between the mind and behavior.
A survey by American scientists
A recent research report on "shopping addiction" published by American scientists shows