Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob Dyle and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode.

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Today we're going to be talking about addictions we're going to be talking about numbing and I'm going to be telling you and hopefully you're going to understand this that majority of the people that are out there in the world myself probably yourself included is addicted to something.

And when we think about addictions we usually think about drugs we usually think about alcohol we usually think about those and those are easy to look at and a lot of people are are are very quick to place judgment and blame on those people.

And I have a lot more experience with addiction because I grew up with a father who is addicted to alcohol so I was able to see what that was like in that side of it and you know my father never over came his addiction and he ended up asking away when I was 15 from that addiction.

But I understand why he had that addiction and I understand where it came from it was a form of numbing because he had never overcome his father's suicide from when he was 12 years old.

So it was a form of numbing his feelings and running away from his feelings and that's what a lot of people are doing as well we're going to talk about it through the eyes of addiction we're going to talk about through the eyes of numbing but we're also going to talk about it to make sense through the actual lens of your nervous system right through the lens of your nervous system because your nervous system basically has two states there's the sympathetic nervous system and there's the parasympathetic nervous system.

Now I don't want to go too too deep into him so I'll give you like a 10,000 foot overview so it makes sense. Now before I dive into it you're going to think that one of them is good and one of them is bad neither one is good neither one is bad both of them are necessary for humans for our survival and at one point in time we are usually in one of the other one like one more than the other ones you might be like 90% in sympathetic and 10% parasympathetic.

Now the two different states let me talk about them and then I'll explain to you how addiction and how numbing tends to work a lot of times.

Okay there is the sympathetic nervous system now sympathetic seems like it would be like the good one because sympathetic to be a sympathetic person you know is a good thing but sympathetic is alertness it is high energy and it is fight or flight when you are in parasympathetic I'm sorry when you are in sympathetic you have increased heart rate you have increased rate of breathing

in your pupils dialect so basically if you can think fight or flight there might be a threat that is sympathetic usually what it does is it takes a lot of blood away from your internal organs because when you're in fight or flight what you really need is blood in your muscle so that you can run or that you can fight.

Okay so that is sympathetic parasympathetic is considered conserve and restore right conserve and restore it is decreased heart rate and it is decreased rate of breathing as well so let me say one more time sympathetic fight or flight increased heart rate and increased rate of breathing parasympathetic is conserving restore decrease heart rate decrease rate of breathing so why does somebody numb a lot of the time is a little bit more.

A lot of times the reason why someone numbs or runs away from something is because there is something that they don't want to look at something that might be for instance a trauma that is still in there you know that happened in their past and they're still bringing up or it is something that is currently in their circumstances right now and instead of actually dealing with that thing they would rather numb because numbing tends to send somebody into parasympathetic and so a lot of times

the numbing is to calm the nervous system to go from sympathetic to parasympathetic and the reason why people tend to numb or to go towards addictions is because a lot of people lack the tools to mentally and physically be able to do that.

We're not taught in school we're taught trigonometry when I don't know what the last fucking time I used trigonometry was but I was not taught how to breathe and how to actually get myself from sympathetic to parasympathetic that would have been a really good thing for us to learn when we were in school what is that in me learning trigonometry and for me to use you know I don't know the last time I use the pathagogy pathagorean theorem of an out of pronouncing pathagorean theorem and so you know a lot of people lack the tools to mentally and physically be able to do that.

So I'm just going to take a look at the first one of the first things I'm going to do is to mentally and physically be able to take themselves from sympathetic fight or flight down to parasympathetic which is conserve and restore and more of a chill.

So which is the parasympathetic.

Let me kind of now that I've given you this and we can look at this let me actually tell you through the lens of something else and so it'll make sense to you let's take this and let's put it into a real life circumstance right.

And often overlooked addictions is food food can be an addiction and can be used for numbing the thing that makes it harder to for a lot of people to actually say that out loud is because food is necessary for your survival.

And so we trick ourselves by thinking well I'm just doing this for my survival or what you know people won't say that you know that person has this issue right here because it might be some issue with their trauma or whatever it might be so it's not necessarily the most.

You know politically correct things sometimes but I'm just going to tell you most of the time one of the most overlooked things that people numb with is food and that's one of the biggest addictions that people have in this world if you have a problem with food this the next five minutes might make a ton of understood you might have a ton of understandings and light bulbs that pop up with you OK.

I'll give you an idea of my friend that I have OK he has a problem with his weight and he's about 40 pounds overweight and he works and he works and he works works works as asked off all day long eats a little bit of food snacks all of that stuff and then doesn't eat much throughout the day but then when he's done with working he eats a ton of food that he knows that he shouldn't.

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