If childhood was characterized by stressful and distressing dramas, the well-known stress addiction will most likely be experienced in adulthood.
Last update: July 26, 2022
Do you feel boredom in your relationship? Even if everything is fine, do you do the impossible to self-sabotage it? If the answer to these questions is "yes", you probably suffer from a stress addiction. To confirm this, however, one must examine one's family history.
Many people tend to choose partners who hurt them and when they find someone who is exactly the opposite, they end up getting bored. This dichotomy is by no means absurd. It finds explanation in childhood, where the first example of a relationship - that of the parents - was characterized by betrayals, screams, stress and many dramas.
The model taken as an example e childhood experiences explain why one is attracted to some people rather than others. What kind of partner do we tend to choose if we suffer from a stress addiction?
Stress addiction: the pursuit of drama
If we suffer from stress addiction, it means that our parents had a rather stormy relationship, or at least we lived it that way. Certainly she was characterized by drama.
Generally, these are emotionally immature people who do not understand how stress and anxiety permeate their children's living space. Were we afraid they would fight? Did they poke us against the other parent? Did they have passive-aggressive attitudes?
Despite all this, we loved our parents. It is also possible that only one parent was behaving badly, while the other was repeating phrases like "you have to love dad / mom, after all he is a good person". This is the love we knew in childhood, that's why when we meet a person who makes us relive a similar dynamic, we fall in love with him.
Any kind of addiction is bad.
-Carl Gustav Jung-
The reinforcement-reward mechanism
When you are born into a family like the one described, a reinforcement-reward mechanism is activated so anxiety, stress and adrenaline appear when parents argue, scream or create situations of abuse.
The counterpart, on the other hand, lies in the tranquility and well-being experienced when all is well. This results in the secretion of serotonin and dopamine, which lead to the development of stress addiction.
Addiction to stress and boredom
If you suffer from a stress addiction, you get bored when you find a person who loves and treats well. We therefore tend to think that we do not really love that person, ending up leaving or betraying them.
But this can be a mistake; don't we love her? Most of the time this is not the case. We love it, but because we equate love with something else, we mistake boredom as a sign of disinterest.
This happens when love is associated with constant adrenaline surges, not tranquility or even monotony. For this reason, we often get angry without reason, betray ourselves or invent any excuse for the relationship to reach that peak of adrenaline to which we have been exposed since childhood.
This is certainly a problem that prevents us from creating healthy and peaceful relationships. Although it seems difficult to get out of a stress addiction, with the right help it is possible.
Stress addiction can lead us to end potentially positive relationships to look for others that make us experience a whirlwind of emotions.
Awareness
Stress addiction is just that, an addiction. Becoming aware of it, looking at the situation from other perspectives and asking for help from a psychologist can help us notice when we fall into our own traps.
When we are with a person and we begin to feel bored, knowing that it is a trap, we will not make hasty decisions, such as ending the relationship, running away or leaving it for someone who guarantees us the adrenaline, stress and discomfort we are holding on to. .
It is difficult to get out of an addiction, but it is by no means impossible. There are many people who have tragic relationships and which make them unhappy. Relationships in which lies, infidelity and manipulation are always present, leaving no room for tranquility and calm.
If our childhood was characterized by a similar environment, it is natural to develop such addiction. However, it is always possible to reprogram that harmful idea of ​​love. Of course, always with the help of a professional.
