Mindfulness Helps Reduce Cravings & Stress

Cravings are intense and irresistible desires to use substances or engage in addictive behaviour. Cravings are hard to deal with. It’s like a strong and high wave that comes and drowns you in the behaviour or addiction (but you can learn to surf the wave). The worst but crucial part of recovery from addiction is to fight cravings. The more an individual learns to deal with cravings, the easier it gets to deal with addiction and fight relapse.

Stress triggers carvings. In many cases, people use substances during a stressful time. Using substances or maladaptive behaviour acts as a coping mechanism when stress overwhelms people. Stress could be related:

–        Family: Dysfunctional families with enmeshed or rigid boundaries have abnormal family dynamics, resulting in frequent fights and issues.

–        Work/Studies: The world has become competitive, and everyone is competing with the best. The whole process is stressful, as individuals are on their toes. Long working hours add to the stress.

–        Mental illness: Dealing with poor mental health can be stressful and may act as a trigger for addiction.

–        Physical illness: Chronic physical illness is stressful and leads to dependency to escape the pain.

–        Financial: Everything requires money, and a financial crisis disrupts personal peace and leads to stress.

–        Grief: Loss of a loved one or grief is consuming. It is painful and disturbing and may lead to dependency.

–        Change: Expected or unexpected changes take a toll on mental health and could be overwhelming.

Stress is uncomfortable, and multiple contributing factors to stress make it intense and burdensome. Long-term stress can cause serious physical health concerns such as hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular and digestive issues. It can lead to anxiety, depression, and other serious mental illness. Since long-term stress can be painful, people develop unhealthy coping mechanisms. Addictions are one of the coping mechanisms.

People go for smoke or use alcohol or drugs to escape the discomfort. These behaviours act as a distraction and slowly develop into a habit.

Now let’s say a person is trying to stop smoking or consuming alcohol, but the level of stress is high or the person feels stressed often. The person will have an intense urge to go back to smoking or start consuming alcohol to deal with their current situation.

Stress and cravings are closely related because of habit formation. Cravings can be powerful enough to start addictive behaviour.

So, it is important to deal with stress.

Here comes the role of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a great tool to deal with stress. Mindfulness is the practice of being in the moment. Initially, it was associated with religion, but now people follow non-religious meditation. The main aim of mindfulness is to bring you to the present. The more you focus on the present, the more sense of control you can achieve. Your present involves what you feel right now and how you want to deal with it.

Let’s take another example: your phone is ringing; you don’t want to pick it up, but it has your attention as it is ringing loudly. You can control silencing the phone, letting it ring, or picking it up. It is similar to cravings. Mindfulness helps you to decide what you want to do with it, whether to acknowledge it and let it pass or to act on it.

Mindfulness has three components:

1. Attention: Being aware of yourself and your surroundings. Let’s start with mindfulness breathing. We will discuss more about it soon.
2. Non-judgement: When we try to bring attention to the moment, our minds tend to wander off to worries, anxieties, and negative thoughts about self.
3. Acceptance: Acceptance and non-judgement work together. Acceptance is an acknowledgement that this is how I feel, and that’s okay. It is a space to let yourself feel and let the feeling go.

Three mindfulness exercises to help you fight cravings:

1. Mindfulness breathing (square breathing method): Our experts at Veda, the top de-addiction centre in Delhi, describe mindfulness as a simple, powerful, and effective exercise.

• Start by sitting in a comfortable and relaxed position, free of distractions.
• Slowly but normally take deep breaths for four seconds or count to four.
• Hold your breath and count to four.
• Similarly, exhale for four seconds.
• Repeat the breathing 4-5 times or as much as needed.

2. Mindfulness walking: It is a simple exercise involving walking.

• Start by picking a spot where you can walk without being interrupted at least 10 steps long.
• Focus on every step you take. Feel the weight of the body while taking the next step.
• Focus on things and different colours around you. Focus and listen to any sound near your surroundings.
• Relax!

• Be aware of the craving; when the craving starts, focus on yourself.
• Close your eyes and imagine a strong wave or wind.
• As the intensity increases or decreases, imagine a strong or weak wave or wind.
• Relax and let it pass.
• When it goes, take some deep breaths.

These exercises help you to be mindful and fight the cravings. Although working on addiction can be difficult, it is not impossible. Focus on yourself and let the craving pass. If you wish to fight addiction and start your journey of mindfulness, Veda Private Rehab Centre in Delhi would be the best choice. Veda consists of experienced experts dedicated to guiding you on your mindfulness journey.