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How to Break an Emotional Addiction

We’re taught to feel and accept our emotions, but what about when your emotions actually become an addiction?

This concept is pretty foreign in the system of psychology which is based around the analyzation of emotions.

When I practiced traditional psychotherapy, I began to notice how many of my clients were feeling emotions repetitively. Most of them would subconsciously set up situations where they would experience them even though they were verbally telling me that they wanted to change.

Few people understand the chemical cocktail of human emotion.

Emotions begin with a thought. We have too many thoughts in a day to even count, but most of these thoughts are habitual. We have them day after day, and because we have not created a separation from thoughts, we assign a meaning to those thoughts assuming that they’re true.

It’s the assigned meaning of thoughts that form our emotions. When we feel this emotion, there’s a cellular change in the body. Neurotransmitters are released and the physiology of the body shifts. As our physiology shifts, the neural pathways in the brain fire and wire in response.

Feeling and reacting habitually strengthens neural pathways which will make us subconsciously seek the same emotion. An emotional addiction is when the body becomes dependent on our own chemical responses.

This cycle changes the reward center of the brain.

Even if the emotion makes us miserable, the rush of neurotransmitters are a reward.

Addiction usually means being addicted to an external substance or behavior (like food addition or sex addition) but its also possible to be addicted to our own internal chemical cocktails.

Most people who struggle with any kind of addiction are aware at least on some level of the issues their addiction is causing them. Emotional addiction is different because we’re living and breathing the emotional experience so closely it literally is beyond our scope of awareness.

In order to break emotional addiction you have to become conscious to your own patterns.

Become aware of your “hit” emotion

If a lightbulb has gone off and you realize you have an emotional addiction it will be easy for you to identify your “hit” emotion. If something has stirred inside of you but you can’t quite place which emotion you feel in cycles, some more work will need to be done to identify the “hit” emotion.

Here are some easy steps to start:

1. Observe set an intention to observe your emotions: While this sounds simple, it’s actually very difficult because we rarely observe our emotions before responding to them. You may think you don’t have an emotional addiction because it seems like it’s just part of “you.” Put reminders in your phone and journal this intention. Doing this will help you become conscious to the subconscious. Watch how you feel in daily situations while scrolling Instagram, at work, or when talking with friends. Notice any patterns and note them. These may give you clues to your hit emotion.

2. Ask for input from someone you trust: Through vulnerability we gain insight. If you have someone in your life who you trust and who’s willing to be open and honest with you, ask them if they would give you input. Tell them that you’re doing some personal development work and see if they find you in any particular emotion a lot of the time. Other people can see what we cannot see in ourselves.

3. Commit to a daily 5 minute meditation: For 30 days, commit to doing 5 minutes of meditation no matter what. Watch the feelings and emotions that come up while attempting to observe your thoughts. They will give you valuable feedback on the loops of your thoughts which trigger emotion.

As you can tell, this will take a lot of work and commitment. Emotional addictions take decades to develop and will require you to do ton of self-reflection. After you’ve identified the “hit” emotion you’re ready to move forward.

It’s worth noting that this is not a place to dwell in. When you find out what the emotion is, you will feel a lot of other emotions around this. A lot of shame can come up because you were unaware of your own behavior. Practice compassion and understand that any behavior can be changed with intention. Move forward and have gratitude for this awareness.

Re-wire the brains reward system

1. Focus on nutrition: The brain is a energy demanding organ that is constantly creating new pathways, regenerating cells, and is firing and wiring neurons countless time in a day. The brain is primarily fat and is in constant communication with the gut via the gut-brain axis. Since neurotransmitters like serotonin are primarily made in the gut, food becomes the greatest therapy for a healthy brain. When you’re working on a new habit, it’s important to give the brain proper nutrition to support the process. This means removing processed foods, sugar, gluten, and replacing them with nutrient dense ancestral foods like meats, veggies (especially fermented veggies), kefir, grass fed butter, eggs, and dairy if you tolerate them well.

2. Use affirmations: If you read my Instagram posts, you know that I focus a lot on affirmations as a way to re-program the subconscious. When you know your “hit” emotion you can use affirmations to change the neural pathways of the brain. Commit to doing daily affirmations and be patient. While this can be done, it does take time. Morning is the best time to do them because the mind is in a relaxed state. Before bed is another, so find the time that works best for you. Never attempt to do this in a period of stress. During the day when you feel your emotions rising use this mantra silently each time. As the mind adjusts you’ll see your “hit” emotion coming up less and less.

Lets say your emotional addiction is to anger. Peace is the emotion you want to use to break the cycle of anger. An affirmation for this would be “I am peace. I choose peace. I control my emotions in any given situation, and my baseline emotion is peace.” Deliberately feel peace throughout the body. Imagine how peace feels. This is the most important part. If you can think it and feel it in your body it’s as if it is already true. This is where affirmations gain their power to produce real change.

3. Expect Resistance: The brain is neuroplastic meaning it can create new pathways based on conscious behavior at any time during life. While this is fascinating and gives hope, it’s important to be realistic that it takes a lot of work. The mind always favors familiarity and will protest when you try to change neural connectivity. For this reason, it’s important to take small blocks of time to do this work. If you do too much at once the brain will become fatigued quickly Subconscious re-programming will only work when the brain is in a rested and relaxed state. When you feel overwhelm, take a break. Slowly over time the brain will gain tolerance to these new activities if you do not go into stimulus overload.

Freedom from the chains of emotional addiction will not only create happiness, it also creates bodily health. Allowing your body to rest from these chemical “fixes” will allow its physiological processes of natural healing, or homeostasis, to take place. You will start to see not only emotional benefits but also physical ones as it regains it natural balances.

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Privacy Policy

Effective Date: October, 2020

The following Privacy Policy governs the online information collection practices of Juniortine Productions, LLC d/b/a The Holistic Psychologist (“Company,” “we” or “us”). Specifically, it outlines the types of information that we gather about you while you are using the yourholisticpsychologist.com (the “Site”), and the ways in which we use this information. This Privacy Policy applies primarily to information which we collect online.

We have created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy and security. This Privacy Policy describes how our Company collects information from all end users of our Internet services (the “Services”), including those who access some of our Services but do not have accounts (“Visitors”) and those who may purchase Products and/or pay a service fee to subscribe to the Service (“Members”).

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By visiting and using the Site, you agree that your use of our Site, and any dispute over privacy, is governed by this Privacy Policy. In an effort to comply with changes in technology, and the adoption of new regulations and laws, we may need to change our Policy at some point in the future, in which case we’ll post the changes to this Privacy Policy on this website and update the Effective Date of the policy to reflect the date of the changes. By continuing to use the Site after we post any such changes, you accept the Privacy Policy as modified.

Introduction

We may collect and store personal or other information that you voluntarily supply to us online while using the Site (e.g., while on the Site or in responding via email to a feature provided on the Site). The Site only contacts individuals who specifically request that we do so or in the event that they have signed up to receive our messaging, or have purchased one of our products or services. The Site collects personally identifying information from our users during online registration and online purchasing. Generally, this information includes name and e-mail address for registration or opt-in purposes and name, email address, and credit card information when purchasing our products or services. All of this information is provided to us by you.

We also collect and store information that is generated automatically as you navigate online through the Site. For example, we may collect information about your computer’s connection to the Internet, which allows us, among other things, to improve the delivery of our web pages to you and to measure traffic on the Site. We also may use a standard feature found in browser software called a “cookie” to enhance your experience with the Site, and web beacons, to access cookies, count users who visit the Site, the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent on our site, websites visited before and after our site, IP addresses, or open HTML-formatted email messages.

We use the information we collect from you while you are using the Site in a variety of ways, including using the information to customize features; advertising that appear on the Site; and, making other offers available to you via email, direct mail or otherwise.

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily make your personal information available for viewing by third parties online – for example on message boards, web logs, through email, or in chat areas – that information can be seen, collected and used by others besides us. We cannot be responsible for any unauthorized third-party use of such information.

Some of our third-party advertisers and ad servers that place and present advertising on the Site also may collect information from you via cookies, web beacons or similar technologies. These third-party advertisers and ad servers may use the information they collect to help present their advertisements, to help measure and research the advertisements’ effectiveness, or for other purposes. The use and collection of your information by these third-party advertisers and ad servers is governed by the relevant third-party’s privacy policy and is not covered by our Privacy Policy. Indeed, the privacy policies of these third-party advertisers and ad servers may be different from ours. If you have any concerns about a third party’s use of cookies or web beacons or use of your information, you should visit that party’s website and review its privacy policy.

The Site also includes links to other websites and provides access to products and services offered by third parties, whose privacy policies we do not control. When you access another website or purchase third-party products or services through the Site, use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site you are visiting or the provider of such products or services.

Please also note that as our business grows, we may buy or sell various assets. In the unlikely event that we sell some or all of our assets, or one or more of our websites is acquired by another company, information about our users may be among the transferred assets.

Personal Information Our Company Collects And How It Is Used

Introduction

Members may be asked to provide certain personal information when they sign up for our Products or Services including name, email address, and billing information (such as a credit card number). The personal information collected from Members during the registration process (or at any other time) is used primarily to provide a customized experience while using our Products and Services. Your information will never be disclosed, traded, licensed or sold to any third party. However, we may make limited disclosure of personal information under the specific circumstances described below.

The Types of Information We Collect and Store

Some of the information we may collect about you and store in connection with the provision and fulfillment of our services to you may include:

  • Name
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  • Email Address
  • Mailing Address
  • Telephone Number
  • Masked Credit Card Information in the form of a token
  • Traffic source
  • Any notes or testimonials that you provide

How We Use Your Personal Information

The above personal information may be used for the following purposes:

  • To operate, improve, or promote our Service
  • To provide customer service or support
  • To process payments
  • To contact you
    • When you have opted in to receive email messaging
    • To respond to your email inquiries. Specifically, when Visitors or Members send email inquiries to us, the return email address is used to answer the email inquiry we receive. We do not use the return email address for any other purpose, or share it with third parties.
  • To monitor and analyze trends such as:
    • Purchase history
    • Sales reports
    • Behavior on the Site
    • Email clicks and opens
  • To market our products and services through:
    • Email marketing
    • Advertising, including retargeting via Google and Facebook
    • Notifications
  • Perform accounting, administrative and legal tasks

Who Has Access to Your Data Within Our Organization

Within our organization, access to your data is limited to those persons who require access in order to provide you with the Products and Services you purchase from us, to contact you, and to respond to your inquiries, including requests for refund. Employees only have access to data on a “need to know” basis.

Who We Share Your Data With Outside of Our Organization, and Why

Unaffiliated Third Parties.
We will not share or transfer your data to unaffiliated third parties without your consent. We may use service providers in connection with operating and improving the Site, to assist with certain functions, such as payment processing, email transmission, data hosting, managing our ads, fulfilling product sales, and some aspects of our technical and customer support. We will take measures to ensure that these service providers access, process, and store information about you only for the purposes we authorize, subject to confidentiality obligations, including through the execution of GDPR and CCPA-compliant Data Privacy Agreements or Addenda, as applicable.

Authorities.
We may access, preserve, and disclose information about you to third parties, including the content of messages, if we believe disclosure is in accordance with, or required by, applicable law, regulation, legal process, or audits. We may also disclose information about you if we believe that your actions are inconsistent with our Terms of Service or related guidelines and policies, or if necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of, or prevent fraud or abuse of, Company or others.

Why We Store Information We Collect From You

We retain certain information that we collect from you while you are a member on the Site, and in certain cases where you have deleted your account, for the following reasons:

  • So you can use our Site;
  • To ensure that we do not communicate with you if you have asked us not to;
  • To provide you with a refund, if entitled;
  • To better understand the traffic to our Site so that we can provide all members with the best possible experience;
  • To detect and prevent abuse of our Site, illegal activities and breaches of our Terms of Service; and
  • To comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your information, we will either delete or anonymize it.

Cookies and Tracking Tools

We use cookies to help you make using our website easier, such as:

  • To remember your country and language preferences
  • To deliver information that matches your interests
  • To help us understand our audience and traffic patterns
  • To let you automatically log into programs and parts of our site that require membership
  • To manage and present site info displayed on our website that will be specific to you

We also use Web Beacons to collect non-personal data on how you use our site, such as how long did you visit our page, what web browser you’re using, what’s your operating system, and who’s your Internet service provider. In addition we also use Google Analytics data and the DoubleClick cookie to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website. This data is collected from thousands of site visits and analyzed as a whole. This helps us build a better website to match our visitors’ needs.

We also use Web Beacons to collect non-personal data on how you use our site, such as how long did you visit our page, what web browser you’re using, what’s your operating system, and who’s your Internet service provider. In addition we also use Google Analytics data and the DoubleClick cookie to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to our website. This data is collected from thousands of site visits and analyzed as a whole. This helps us build a better website to match our visitors’ needs.

Advertiser Disclosures

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics Advertiser Features to optimize our business. Advertiser features include:

  • Remarketing with Google Analytics
  • Google Display Network Impression Reporting
  • DoubleClick Platform integrations
  • Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting

By enabling these Google Analytics Display features, we are required to notify our visitors by disclosing the use of these features and that we and third-party vendors use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) or other first-party identifiers, and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) or other third-party identifiers together to gather data about your activities on our Site. Among other uses, this allows us to contact you if you begin to fill out our check-out form but abandon it before completion with an email reminding you to complete your order. The “Remarketing” feature allows us to reach people who previously visited our Site, and match the right audience with the right advertising message.

You can opt out of Google’s use of cookies by visiting Google’s ad settings and/or you may opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

Facebook

As advertisers on Facebook and through our Facebook page, we, (not Facebook) may collect content or information from a Facebook user and such information may be used in the same manner specified in this Privacy Policy. You consent to our collection of such information.

We abide by Facebook’s Data Use Restrictions.

– Any ad data collected, received or derived from our Facebook ad (“Facebook advertising data”) is only shared with someone acting on our behalf, such as our service provider. We are responsible for ensuring that our service providers protect any Facebook advertising data or any other information obtained from us, limit our use of all of that information, and keep it confidential and secure.

– We do not use Facebook advertising data for any purpose (including retargeting, commingling data across multiple advertisers’ campaigns, or allowing piggybacking or redirecting with tags), except on an aggregate and anonymous basis (unless authorized by Facebook) and only to assess the performance and effectiveness of our Facebook advertising campaigns.

– We do not use Facebook advertising data, including the targeting criteria for a Facebook ad, to build, append to, edit, influence, or augment user profiles, including profiles associated with any mobile device identifier or other unique identifier that identifies any particular user, browser, computer or device.

– We do not transfer any Facebook advertising data (including anonymous, aggregate, or derived data) to any ad network, ad exchange, data broker or other advertising or monetization related service.

Data Security and Data Privacy Regulation

Our company’s commitment to data security

We implement a variety of administrative, managerial, and technical security measures to help protect your personal information. Our Company has various internal control standards which relate specifically to the handling of personal information. These include certain controls to help safeguard the information we collect online. Our employees are trained to understand and comply with these controls and we communicate our Privacy Policy, practices and guidelines to our employees. However, while we strive to protect your personal information, you must also take steps to protect your information. We urge you to take every precaution to protect your personal information while you are on the Internet.

Additionally, while we make every effort to ensure the integrity and security of our network and systems, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third-party “hackers” from illegally obtaining this information. If we do discover a security breach affecting your data, every effort will be made to provide a notification within 72 hours of our team learning of the occurrence.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The GDPR took effect on May 25, 2018, and is intended to protect the data of European Union (EU) citizens.

As a company that markets its site, content, products and/or services online we do not specifically target our marketing to the EU or conduct business in or to the EU in any meaningful way. If the data that you provide to us in the course of your use of our site, content, products and/or services is governed by GDPR, we will abide by the relevant portions of the Regulation.

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), or are accessing this site from within the EEA, you may have the right to request: access to, correction of, deletion of; portability of; and restriction or objection to processing, of your personal data, from us. This includes the “right to be forgotten.”

To make any of these requests, please contact our GDPR contact at [email protected].

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

The CCPA took effect on January 1, 2020, and is intended to protect the data of California residents.

If you are a resident of California, you have certain rights with respect to your data. We respond to all requests that we receive from individuals who wish to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws. You can contact us by sending an email to [email protected].

Rights that you may have, include:

  • Requesting deletion of your information.
    • If you request that your account be deleted, you will lose access to all of our programs in which you are actively registered.
  • Opting out from the sale of your information to third parties.
  • Requesting disclosure of the personal information we have collected about you and the types of third parties with whom it has been shared.
  • Requesting the portability of your information.
  • Opting out from receiving marketing communications that we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by selecting the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing emails we send you. Additionally, you may update your email preferences by changing the settings in your account.
  • Every effort will be made to respond to a verified request within a reasonable time, or the time-frame required by law.

Children’s Privacy Statement

This children’s privacy statement explains our practices with respect to the online collection and use of personal information from children under the age of thirteen, and provides important information regarding their rights under federal law with respect to such information.

  • This Site is not directed to children under the age of thirteen and we do NOT knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site. We screen users who wish to provide personal information in order to prevent users under the age of thirteen from providing such information. If we become aware that we have inadvertently received personally identifiable information from a user under the age of thirteen as part of the Site, we will delete such information from our records. If we change our practices in the future, we will obtain prior, verifiable parental consent before collecting any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site.
  • Because we do not collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site, we also do NOT knowingly distribute such information to third parties.
  • We do NOT knowingly allow children under the age of thirteen to publicly post or otherwise distribute personally identifiable contact information through the Site.
  • Because we do not collect any personally identifiable information from children under the age of thirteen as part of the Site, we do NOT condition the participation of a child under thirteen in the Site’s online activities on providing personally identifiable information.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

  • We striclty abide by our obligations to comply with anti-SPAM laws.
  • All emails that are sent to you by Juniortine Productions, Inc. include an unsubscribe link in them.
  • You can remove yourself at any time from our mailing list by clicking on the unsubscribe link that can be found in every communicaiton that we send you.
  • We will remove you from our mailing list immediately.
  • Additionally, all emails from us will have a clear “From” field that identifies us as the sender and will contain our address for contact purposes.

Revisions to this policy

Our Company reserves the right to revise, amend, or modify this policy, our Terms of Service, and our other policies and agreements at any time and in any manner, by updating this posting.

Where to direct questions about our privacy policy

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the practices described herein, you may contact us through the contact information provided on this website.
[email protected]