Healing from within: How to put an end to the denial, compartmentalising and disconnect that fuels your gambling addiction
Recovery from gambling is more difficult than most people realise. Contrary to what some people appear to believe, it is not something that you ‘accomplish’, check off and then it’s done. Rather, it is a process and a journey. One that comes with a fair share of ups and downs, but one that actually can lead to the greatest of fulfilment and a deep sense of gratitude and happiness for those who stick it out. Essentially, the growth of a human being is limitless and if you want to put a positive twist on your recovery – do know that it can be a catalyst for intense self-growth and learning.
The two sides of delusion and denial
Here is a pretty typical scenario for an addicted gambler who seek treatment because they have decided they are ‘definitely done’ with gambling…. :
They start up strong. Motivation is extremely high, almost a bit ‘too high’. What’s often many months, sometimes years, battle with their addiction is now about to end. To say that there seems to be a drive to quit would be an understatement. It is as though the denial of the gambling problem itself has been swapped for a brand new topic for denial– which is now concerning the level of hardships that recovery involves. No obstacle seems too big at this point. It will all be fine. Just trust them when they say that they have it all under control. The confidence during these times can be so overwhelmingly excessive that I sometimes have to question what the use of me would be on their journey forwards.
Just to be clear, I am not saying any of this with even a shred of smugness. It is so relatable to feel that excited, positive, and invincible in the pursuit of something that you really want. I find myself reasoning in similar ways with certain other things in life. This can unfortunately be a risky mindset to operate with. The ‘delusional optimism’ that up until now has concerned your chances of winning over the bookies and beating all odds (no matter the backlash you already faced) is now acting as a forceful momentum to push you forward in recovery. The only problem is, you are still blindfolded. Without the tools to get forwards and with too little contact with reality.
While this may feel like one of the best things you can feel when you start your recovery – believe in me when I say that without connecting with yourself, a firm foot in reality and also at least a bit of a plan- the road is about to get very bumpy!
Existing with a somewhat ‘delusional’ mindset may at times have its real advantages- particularly when such come with a positivity bias. I have discussed this in detail before here.
For better or for worse, it may well be that the mindset of denial is a well-rehearsed coping response to early painful experiences. One that allows the sufferer to sit on the proverbial bus as the wheels are coming off, humming to themselves in blissful denial of what’s going on.
When you get serious about recovery, it is time to recognise that the mindset of overconfidence and delusional optimism have a particular function. This function is to help you fuel energy into new projects, solutions, ideas and creativity. It may also help you stay optimistic within yourself. Enough so that you can ‘bounce back’ from the past defeats of your gambling and the many tough times you will have along the way. It is however not to be used for the purpose of getting creative about how to make recovery work -without having actually having to do any of the work that it involves!!
It should also not be used as a reason to not cut your losses and allow yourself to move on.
At this point in time, there is no longer any function in remaining optimistic about any future course of gambling! Instead- be optimistic about how great it will feel once you take the step to take your losses and allow yourself to move on! BUT…… Being optimistic when thinking forwards, does not take away the need for you to process painful memories, difficult feelings, fully feel the effects of what you have done- or anything else that an honest check-in with reality brings along.
These processes are extremely important as they help you re-align with your value system and put you in close contact with your emotional world again.
In summary; One thing is to maintain an optimistic and positive outlook even when things get tough and you are struggling in your recovery. Quite another is to tell yourself lies about your ability to approach recovery, without having to do any of the work that recovery actually involves.
Denial plays a role in protecting us from pain
Sometimes when something is too painful to take in or process, one of the defence mechanisms that the human mind often resorts to is the one of denial. By not completely taking onboard the emotional pain of a situation, it can for example enable us to continue to operate and function for example immediately after a tragic event. As such it is often one of the early responses you see in people following on a loss of a loved one.
Amongst clients with gambling addiction, the type of denial that I get presented with is often a bit ‘off and on’. Sometimes even those who have once entered treatment and are in complete agreement that change is required may still dip their toes back into a state of denial; during which you suddenly hear arguments such as ‘it’s OK if I want to gamble a little bit– I have done really well so I have control now…’.
The very fact that you have to keep telling yourself that you are ok and don’t have a problem – is symptomatic of the fact that you do have one!!
There is no doubt that things feel a little easier as long as we keep a traumatic event at some distance by choosing (consciously or subconsciously) not to accept facts as they are. Despite having a short-term numbing effect on emotion, it rarely works for very long. All along, there is a fear of feelings ‘catching up’ and the need for bigger walls to be built to protect from the immense pressure that is building up inside. At some stage, something will happen that causes self-regulation to break down. This can result in a truly stressful as feelings of being ‘out of control’ tend to dominate.
It is always better to be one step ahead. In the context of gambling, this means to identify the layers of ‘cover up’ that has been going on, tuning into what is actually happening – and committing to do some required healing. Increasing self-awareness and deliberately committing to embrace what is going makes for good starting points, and will be truly valuable (and necessary) strategies for the recovery steps that lie ahead.
So how can you start taking steps to break out of your denial and start your healing….. ?
# Stop inflating good bits of your gambling past….and make sure you take an honest look at where the gambling has ended you up
Nobody has disputed that you won a little money here and there. However; If gambling had worked well for you and your life- there is an overwhelming likelihood you would not be reading this post or finding yourself on this site.
Gambling works on the psychology of ‘intermittent reinforcement’. Getting a reward ‘now and then’ , at a frequency that you have no control over whatsoever, is going to play some huge tricks on your mind.
When you do get a win, it reinforces the idea that you can ‘win in the end’ if only you keep trying. This is despite losing all along leading up to this point.
Additionally, you will find that get disproportionately excited about a win- not due to the fact that this necessarily should be exciting (considering your losses to date) but rather, because you waited for so long and was starting to doubt… Please know that your level of excitement at that point is NOT a reflection of how great the win was- but a reflection of how desperate and ‘deprived’ you felt you were for such a long time leading up to it. There is only one way to stop this madness- stop gambling!! Soon enough you will realise that the net is going to be a guaranteed state of winning as long as you don’t gamble. Surely that is better than a chance of a win at a time when hardly any win can make up for all the losses you had anyway..
One of the common traps is to use emotion to assess where you are with the gambling and whether or not you should persist in treatment. On a day where you are flooded with memories of the good times of gambling, a very inaccurate decision could then be made regarding your ongoing recovery. How you feel in general about your gambling is in some ways irrelevant at the point where you have once and for all declared yourself addicted to it. Accept instead that motivation will come and go, but the bottom line is that recovery and abstinence must continue for you to be well.
# When you notice your mind starting to run wild with reasons to have a bet, know it is time to slow down a bit…then go inwards….
Try and identify where what it is that is paining you, instead of repeatedly running from it and avoiding it. If you are having a craving or an urge, try to remind yourself that this experience is temporary? Yes, it will come back again and again- but even more so if you reinforce it by acting on it. At the time when your mind is firing away with rationalisations for why you should have another bet, please do know that it is high time to take yourself into safety. Generally, even being near any opportunities or openings makes the chances of success very slim that you will indeed stay away. Rather than allowing yourself to get ‘tangled up’ in arguments inside your head- do yourself the favour of taking yourself away.
One thing that perhaps is less evident, is that the urges will often arise because there is another greater emotional pain, or in some instances other practical actions, that you should be dealing with. The mind will reach for a quick fix in order to avoid the initial pain, but instead, you run the risk of adding plenty to it. Once you are in a safe place (away from money and gambling opportunities) try and be still for a moment and connect with what’s underneath the craving. Even if you do this in small bits at the time, you are starting to change yourself and your automated habit. By becoming aware of what is going on inside, you can begin to figure out how your mind operates. Try and breathe and connect with the present moment as you notice the sometimes very overwhelming sensations in your body and mind. Give them your complete presence. Unbelievable as it may sound, if you can do this- it will be the start of your healing. No more running from your feelings or needs, no more covering up with gambling, drama and no more going around in circles. Commit to healing your wounds and your chances of long term recovery will be far greater!
# Stop minimising and blocking out what you have done; Whilst you should not punish or berate yourself further, it is important to compassionately accept that it has caused a lot of pain to yourself and others and take it from there
When you are busy rushing around and attending to situations and other peoples’ needs or trying to ‘fight the fires’ that have been lit up by your gambling- you are unlikely to have any time left to attend to your own emotional needs. This constant ‘running around’ makes it unlikely that you will connect ‘inwards’, which is often (on a subconscious level) the exact point of not allowing oneself to slow down. Whilst it acts as a secondary gain, be aware that the gains are purely in the form of short-term relief and avoidance. In the long term, there is nothing at all to gain from not listening to yourself. By compartmentalising, blocking out and avoiding the reality of what you have been doing, you are definitely not helping yourself. Nor are you likely to look to others as if you are sincere in your recovery efforts.
Examples of taking ownership would be:
accepting that you have a problem
accepting that you must start changing - and that it will be difficult at times
being respectful and understanding to other peoples’ reactions as well as your own
being willing to be vulnerable and honest, even when the truth is painful to own
Even if you do not return to gambling, but continue to pretend as if the past did not happen; the inability to align yourself with your past tends to catch up sooner or later. The damage did occur and it is healthier and more constructive to begin to accept that it will be part of your experience, although you will go through great efforts to ensure that the history does not repeat itself.
# Get honest with yourself about your needs and stop denying yourself the experience of having your feelings (even those that hurt)
You might be someone who has a hard time acknowledging and getting in touch with the more vulnerable parts of yourself. If so, you might notice that it gets difficult to even notice when things are not feeling good, or when you are not getting your needs met in life. It takes some practice to learn to identify what it is that your body and mind are asking for. That job can however start right now. Common negative feelings are anxiety, fear, sadness, loneliness and boredom. If any of these (or other ones) arise, try and register and take note where in the body they are arising, how they feel and what your mind is trying to get you to do. Remain aware and do not take any action at all as you will find that the ‘commentary’ of the mind at this time is often highly unreliable. The feelings, however, are what they are. Those will need to be felt, attended to and processed appropriately and the only person who can do this is you. Sometimes it helps to journal about the experience as well. Meditating, mindfulness and other forms of mind-body awareness will help you develop this skill. It may help to see it as ‘muscle work’. It requires persistence and training to get good at this, but please do know that it is something we can all get good at with training! If you stumble upon some unmet needs (which you will quite likely do) it is helpful to write these needs done so that over time you can start working on alternative and healthy ways of getting such needs met.
# When you are hurting, it is time to process. You need to prioritise feeling good later instead of feeling good just for the moment
It is hard to be in emotional pain. Nobody disputes this. Without tools and techniques, many people find the prospect of feeling the pain so difficult that they will do practically anything to have to avoid the feeling. This may well result in successfully numbing the pain in the short term. The issue is that avoidance never works for long, and the more it gets used as a way of coping- the more aware you are going to get that fact that its ‘powers’ are slowly failing you. Not only is your tolerance creeping up, (meaning you need more and more distractions to numb yourself out) but the pain is also getting more pronounced. Remember that as long as you are not healing your pain- you are quite likely mounting on to it.
This is not something you need to be doing (bearing in mind the pain burden that is already in place). On the contrary, thinking persistently of the sheer amount of pain that you are in can also be unnecessary and make any forward momentum very difficult. If we think of the pain as a mountain, the way we would choose to climb it would be with a trekking guide as well as taking it piece by piece. Not by ditching the guide and heading for the peak on the first day. This is the kind of thinking that got you into gambling badly and will be guaranteed to cause problems when you are trying to heal properly.
# Drop your masks and disguises
Think about yourself as a master of disguises. You have been taking on one outfit after another- but lately, the outfits don’t seem to fit you anymore. Instead of feeling like the hotshot gambler, the ‘winner’, ‘the one that can sort recovery’, the ‘survivor’ or any other slightly imbalanced and overly pretentious roles you found yourself in as of late- try and recognise that you will now need to leave your home without any of those outfits on. You are you. You are great and you will need to get used to doing this. In the beginning, the feeling will be raw, vulnerable and very likely uncomfortable. You might at the same time notice a little slimmer of something else though….the feeling of peace and freedom. You are not in the grips of something else anymore. When you get comfortable at being just you, the need to ‘run from life’ and its difficult parts is much reduced. You will be able to identify yourself through your great values, your qualities and your purpose in life as opposed to feeling that you are chasing an image that you cannot live up to ever - when gambling or otherwise. True power has nothing to do with external accomplishments or what other people think of you. True power is something we feel when we are not owned by our compulsions and bad habits, and we reach a level of comfort with all our inner states without any need to act on any of them unless it is favourable to do so. We feel powerful when we know we are operating as the best versions of who we are and what we stand for - and feel comfortable in our own skin.
Wishing you all the best on your recovery journey!
Annika X