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Regardless of what kind of addiction you may have in your life, you have probably heard at least once that self hypnosis can help you to recover from it. You have probably even heard some miraculous stories about people who have used self hypnosis to defeat addiction. Then again, what about all the people who have used it and have not overcome their addiction? Not to mention that there are a lot of people who have managed to defeat addiction who have never applied self hypnosis. Is it possible that there is some other dynamic at play which self hypnosis does not address?

If you are wondering about this, you have good reason to. While self hypnosis is a powerful tool for training the subconscious mind, addiction goes much deeper and requires something which addresses the core motivation of addiction and which can move one to ACTION in overcoming addiction. When it comes to self hypnosis, NLP training and many of the other mind training techniques each of them require the element of action in order to complete their effects. But don’t our thoughts govern our actions?

Far from it. Anyone who has ever procrastinated knows that, in fact procrastination is defined by the fact that you are thinking about something but not taking action. The practice of self hypnosis is a powerful tool for changing your thinking and while it is true that it can also change your behaviors, there are still many times when it does not. This is when the rubber meets the road: thoughts do not attract results into your life, actions do. So what is the key to changing actions when it comes to addictions?

Well, it begins with understanding that all actions are driven by the motivation to have some kind of a need met. Go through your entire day and ask yourself what kind of a need you are meeting by each of your actions, you should be able to narrow it down to either a physical need or an emotional need. The basic physical needs are obvious: food, water, shelter and clothing. However, addictions are driven by distorted means of fulfilling the basic emotional needs:

• Validation
• Security
• Excitement

Every emotional need can be traced back to one of these three. In the case of love, it is the culmination of these three which we are seeking. Everyone needs to feel secure, everyone needs some degree of excitement in their life and everyone needs to be valued. Things like self hypnosis may address the behavior or the thinking patterns of an addiction, but at the core there is still a need which the addiction is fulfilling.Unless this need is addressed by some positive action based alternative to the addictive behavior, the addict will fall right back into relapse. However, if the need is uncovered and if the addiction is replaced by a positive new behavior in order to fulfill the need, then self hypnosis can become a powerful tool for taking care of the grunt work involved in overcoming addiction.