Addictive behavior is hard to stop because of the interaction of psychological factors, namely, denial and relativism,  and its impact on physical behavior. This is another reason why you may be experiencing cognitive dissonance. Dulling a discomforting feeling from the tension, stress or anxiety that is produced when you value one thing yet do another is a commonly used strategy for seeking relief, however it does not prove to be an effective, permanent solution. Instead, dulling the uncomfortable feeling with a substance or an activity is a short-term remedy. It may bring some temporary relief to your psyche but this does not identify nor treat the underlying reason that caused the problem in the first place. When this fact remains hidden in your subconscious, behavioral habits form that serves to only deepen your fall into denial.

​

Cloudy Judgement Skews Reality

Avoiding the pain of correctly identifying the root problem halts the healing/growth process. Misidentifying the root problem, on the other hand, can drive you to become a workaholic, an alcoholic, or a people pleaser in need of recognition and/or positive reinforcement and leads to being caught up in an endless race for power, fame or fortune leaving you restless and exhausted. This disconnection with cause and effect logic creates a dysfunctional outlook in your mind and leads to a cycle of unproductive behavioral habits. The root of the problem stems from wrong thinking. It could be that you are unaware of the connections because of lack of experience; it could be that you feel insecure because your opinion of yourself is not reinforced by a respected group of trusted friends or family members, or it could be you deny the reality of cause and effect. Whatever the reason, the end result of this thinking is wrong behavior that creates a negative cycle further altering your reality. Consider these examples of dysfunctional behavior:​  

• Someone periodically misses morning work meetings after drinking excessively the night before but insists there's no problem because the work is still getting done and so continues to miss meetings. Eventually this person is fired for this.

• A couple has accumulated so much credit card debt because they made an initial decision to only pay the minimum required on their monthly bill, instead of curbing their spending to reduce the future bill. They have developed a comfortable but unwise fiscal habit of continuing to spend but only look at the monthly minimum due for payment. When the couple looks to buy a house, their debt ratio is too high to get a reasonable loan so they settle on paying the high interest rate.

• The wife of an older man in the end stage of life, refuses to discuss health care directives and a final will with him, insisting instead that he's getting better so she continues to take no steps to plan for the inevitable. The man dies and the widow is unprepared for and overwhelmed by the slew of decisions she needs to make and becomes paralyzed (psychologically) by anxiety causing additional problems.

• A woman has lost herself in work because of the satisfaction she gleans from the accolades of her boss. Meanwhile, she hears complaints from her husband that her long hours of work are negatively affecting their personal life. She struggles with this conflict but finds herself working more and more hours because she gravitates to the place where she gets positive reinforcement. This is a short-term strategy because she is avoiding her priority of "family first", which she had committed to her husband prior to marriage. She is stuck in indecision so her habit of working long hours continues, bolstering her self-esteem. While action intensifies her work-a-holic behavior and provides her with temporary relief, the long-term consequences will intensify as well, likely i the form of a divorce. 

​​

Family socialization is another common reason for a lack of conscious awareness of how your own decisions are affecting your reality and how this shapes your subjectivity. In generational cases, for example, if unhealthy addictive behavior is modeled and remains uncorrected (a dysfunctional habit of impulse control and lack of consistent discipline applied in the home) a child will not develop the skill of self-control required to choose not to indulge in an unhealthy addiction (Pears, K., Capaldi, D. M., & Owen, L. D. (2007)). If excessive drinking is modeled in the home as a release for anxiety, and if not addressed and discussed openly, this modeled behavior will be incorporated into your own behavior and will become your way of easing your own tension or pain, even though you are aware that it is a dysfunctional coping mechanism that doesn’t work.

 

Sometimes generational addiction may develop because certain basic needs are inadequately met and this could be the reason for the anxiety you may feel but are unaware of its origin. For example, a person who has grown up in an environment where a virtue like love or trust was taught from a subjective perspective, will grow up with a misuse of and a dysfunctional view of these virtues. In other words, the person will not achieve the natural consequences of unadulterated love and so they discount the value they serve in their life which leads to more dysfunctional behavior. In situations like these, an unhealthy addiction develops partly because the addiction has blurred the correlation between how love and trust require vulnerability. Without this trait of vulnerability, a person will gravitate towards an environment without it, and where behavior is superficial, further reinforcing the wrong thinking. When love from others is lacking, your need doesn't go away. Instead, it becomes lost among other unfulfilled needs. To make up for it, you do everything you can to indulge yourself. An overload of self-love further reinforces a subjective reality and cements opinions. Partaking in an unhealthy behavior only delays the development of key virtue for mature, healthy living.

• Read more about the development of basic virtues by psychologist Erik Erikson in Appendix 1C. 

​

Another possibility for growing up with an altered reality has to do with your self-concept. Knowing you are loved for who you are instead of what you do, creates an internal confidence that results in internal peace. Cognitive dissonance is one reason why people who live in their own subjective reality, say “peace, peace when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). Denial, a defense mechanism, is a common way to protect your self-image from feeling uncomfortable truths that otherwise would have created anxiety because the picture you paint of yourself does not correspond to reality, Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., Rosenblatt, A., Burling, J., Lyon, D., ... & Pinel, E. (1992), Pearl, D. (1954), Alicke, M. D., & Sedikides, C. (2009)). Sassaroli, S., & Ruggiero, G. M. (2005) say that low self-esteem is a primary reason for mismanagement of stress (p 140).

 

Cloudy Judgement Leads to Relativism

Opinions can be based on what you think about certain issues from what you read, hear about, or what you saw others do, regardless of whether that experience was/is right and factual or not. For example, if your mother smoked and you never saw or heard about the negative consequences of smoking, you would grow up with an opinion of, instead of a truthful account of, the risk of smoking. Cigarettes have health warnings written on every package, but these are ignored because the mother's opinion is that the satisfaction from smoking outweighs any potential health risks, and so she continues smoking. This is an example of decision-making based on opinion and emotion. Smoking may or may not have been an intentional decision at the time she chose to do it but her sbehavior carries with it not only the risk of illness, but she has made a generational impact. Opinions can be harmful when not checked. To participate productively in society, each person must learn how to merge self-interest with societal interest, and avoid relativism.

 

Relativism infects decision-making, further skewing your perception. When talking about perception, think of a word that describes how you interpret words or scenes. Your view of the subject may follow the standard definition of it until you have a unexpected and/or unwanted experience with it. For example, how do you list the details describing the term “Tainted love”? Chances are your definition would not match the textbook's, if you have had first-hand experience with it. Some people say that personal perception adds color to a black and white picture while other people may see a completely separate picture. Take the word "addiction". Do you view it as a form of "tainted love"; Do you love the feeling you get when you drink, or have you moved past that stage and have been experiencing  negative consequences? What does your friends and family say about your addiction? Do some friends define drinking as fun and social, nothing that you can't quit if you wanted to bad enough? These people are likely social drinkers without an addiction problem. You may have had other friends in your old drinking crowd but that decided to give up drinking completely. These are people who discovered social drinking led them to an all consuming, toxic, almost obsessive,  addiction. 

 

The bottom line is that a relative reality is your own opinion applied to a standard definition, based on your personal experience. Some people may judge your opinion and label your behavior according to their own personal  experience/standard. This is their perception. What's yours? Have you formed a skewed perspective which contaminates your decision making, deepening your “relative reality”? This is one way to look at the formation of a psycho-social imbalance and if not corrected causes your dysfunction. 

 

A person is more likely to skew the textbook definition based on their own morality, and their unique knowledge and experience with the subject by judging information in relation to their own situations and beliefs rather than by defining them by the standard established by an objective absolute authority. Consider some simple examples:

• The overspending couple may take comfort in the statistic that shows the average credit card debt is over $5,000 and so accepts their debt amount as normal rather than deeming their behavior as unacceptable when compared to a cash system of payment.

• Instead of feeling hurt/disappointed by your partner and sabotaging your motivation to try to come up with a solution to refresh/restore the relationship, you decide to overindulge activities or substance abuse and just hope things will work out.

• Being anxious because you are worried about how to pay an outstanding bill and trying to resolve the feeling of anxiety by ignoring it, doesn’t change the reality that the bill will need to be paid.

 

A skewed definition forms from this relative reality and is considered subjective (from self-focus) and is faulty logic seen expressed in the form of repression, rationalization and justification which stalls healthy psycho-social development. The problem is that these defense mechanisms further skew your perception and form a blockage to change. Defense mechanisms were meant to keep your self esteem afloat so it denies or minimizes the problem from full blown addiction or too much social drinking. When you do not define your problem correctly, you will not be able to identify the proper solution. If you numb the pain you may be experiencing because you are finally starting to feel the negative consequences, your natural built in alarm system will not be heard going off and the result will be that you'll stay stuck in your relative reality, despite harmful consequences. As your numbing behavior continues, it becomes a your body response to addiction leading to creating cravings, and other internal triggers that collide to form habits that have biological, psychological, and social consequences (Philippians 2:3-6). ​