Using riveting and inspiring case examples, the authors illustrate how a childhood confusion of unhappiness with happiness often persists into adulthood and leads to a variety of self-sabotaging behaviors, including eating disorders, overspending, compulsive gambling, fear of change, painful moods, disastrous romantic choices, substance abuse, stalled careers, and more.
Drawing upon their years of experience in counseling children and adults, the authors explain the origin of self-caused unhappiness as a product of parenting styles based on discipline and excessive expectations that cause children (and the adults they become) to equate unhappiness with love.
"If you have an addiction to unhappiness then, at least occasionally, you need to cause yourself some type of discomfort in order to maintain your inner equilibrium. Whether the need for unhappiness causes you serious problems or only manifests itself in subtle ways, whether it affects you most of the time or only once in a while, nonetheless it is probably the reason you are not getting the pleasure out of life you were born to know," says Martha Pieper.
You Are ADDICTED TO UNHAPPINESS If:
· You make resolutions but then have trouble keeping them.
· You find it difficult to bounce back when things go badly.
· You work hard for success, but then you let it slip from your grasp or you can't enjoy it.
· You find it hard to form or maintain close, meaningful relationships.
· You can't get your work done well or on time.
· You struggle to regulate your appetites (for food, sex, alcohol, etc.).
· You can't call it a day and stop working.
· You have trouble staying healthy and fit.
· You sometimes suffer from painful moods that have no obvious cause.
· Even though life is good, you often feel dissatisfied and wonder, "What's it all about?"
ADDICTED TO UNHAPPINESS is unique in that it is both optimistic and realistic. It focuses equally on effective strategies for positive change and on combating the forces that oppose self-improvement. It will make it possible for you to:
· Understand the source of your addiction to unhappiness and the many ways it can affect you.
· Gain the power to begin improving the most meaningful aspects of your life, even when you don't feel like getting started, and to cope with episodes of backsliding.
· Free yourself from painful emotions that occur without an obvious cause or persist long after the upsetting event that triggers them.
· Overcome the resistance to achieving physical well-being.
· Build relationships based on closeness, not conflict or insecurity.
· Make your work experience a source of pleasure rather than pain
ADDICTED TO UNHAPPINESS supplies readers with an array of powerful, proven tools, including self-assessments, checklists, simple diaries, and exercises, for recognizing and overcoming their learned need to be unhappy. Most important, readers who get stuck or backslide will be able to use these strategies to regroup and move forward. This motivational guide gives readers everything they need to improve each and every part of their lives.
