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One of the concomitant tendencies I find when people have a lack of meaning in or

fulfillment or balance in life is that there's almost always a compulsive tendency involved, a endeavor,

almost all of our energies flow into at the expense of having a balanced life.

So we'll be addressing a balanced life in terms of also addressing the compulsive behaviors that preoccupies and tend to distract so much of our attention.

And it comes at the expense of a balanced life many of us will rely on

abstinence or cutting out the addiction itself so for example if people find that they're being overly consumed by attention to social media,

consumed by eating the sugar or watching TV or smoking pot or whatever, they will then rely on cutting out or going kind of cold turkey.

Unfortunately, abstinence-based approaches,

while sometimes can be effective, very often they aren't,

and they don't really address the

underlying issue so we're going to be talking about at first what is the cause

of these compulsions and addictions that come at the expense of having a well-rounded, fulfilled life.

So the underlying roots of addiction of course stem from early relational events in life.

If a child is scared of his or her caregiver, they freeze.

Their sense of sadness, anger are not integrated into their self-structure because they associate

...