Breaking News: Free therapy 4 MISERY ADDICTS "Just say, NO declare N

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

It probably does appear to others, that the person is addicted to feeling bad...but if you think about it,they probably don't know anything else...it has been their source of survival for years, and therefore, they probably wouldn't know how to act any other way.

Your thoughts:
"I think sometimes sadness or misery becomes a habit. Its easier to feel constant disappointment than be happy for a while and then have something knock the wind out of your sails. I found that the misery that I submerged myself in and even created was because I was trying to manifest externally how I felt internally. I would create drama, choose bad boyfriends and friends etc. so that I could have the anger and upset that I felt inside."

Education & Knowledge on the subject:
http://www.hazelden.org/web/public/icc40223.page

According to Katherine, the author of "When Misery is Company" and several other groundbreaking books of popular psychology, "Misery addicts are addicted to avoidance, self-sabotage, and a system of survival that results in loss of joy, intimacy and potential. She says this is more complicated than other addictions. "With alcoholism, for example, you get abstinent first then change your lifestyle," she said. "With misery addicts, the lifestyle is the problem."  For people who are addicted to misery, happiness itself is threatening. These are people for whom Alfred Lord Tennyson's generally accepted adage of 1850 ("Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all") is just not true.

Anne Katherine is a psychotherapist and certified mental health counselor in the Seattle area, she is willing to bet that every family has at least one member about whom someone has said, "I don't know why they keep doing that." She is just as certain that most therapists have at least one "hard-to-help client"--someone who needs group therapy but keeps "forgetting" to sign up for it, for example, or someone who decides to go off his or her medications even though they're working well.

Their logic, Katherine explains in her new book, goes like this: "Something good happened to me. I was happy. Then this horrible thing followed, or came from the same place or person that made me happy. I was nearly crushed by my grief. This means that happiness leads to crushing grief. Therefore, if I avoid happiness. I'll protect myself from grief."

Sounds familiar, Emotions R Us, Holla' Back @ a Sista' 4 UPCOMING SHOW:  Addicted to Misery -  What happens when Love Hurts and Hurts and Hurts some more?

Radio Call-in Talk Show:
Date / Time: 8/3/2008 3:00 PM