Common Symptoms of Misery Addiction

• having a pattern of self-sabotage
• being avoidant
• losing track of the main objective
• injecting negatives into positive situations
• leaving or stopping a positive chain of events
• having a fear of well-being, happiness, or success
• not acting when action is required
• being indecisive
• being ambivalent
• longing for a certain experience but insisting that it take a form that can’t or doesn’t work
• insisting that the first steps toward a goal take a certain form
• wanting something you’ll never get if you keep doing what you’re doing
• feeling that your life is jinxed
• feeling that you’re incompetent or unworthy
• not changing your behavior even after it repeatedly causes problems
• after discovering a pattern, not adjusting to deal with it
• acting on assumptions without checking them out first
• being resistant
• always having an excuse (yes, but)
• splitting hairs
• refusing helpful medication
• isolating
• resist asking for or receiving help
• alienating the people who can offer the most help or do the most good

All of us do some of these things from time to time, and not every misery addict will do everything on the list. What differentiates a misery addict is that they are locked into a pattern of many of these attitudes and actions. As a result, progress toward realizing their goals is blocked, and a significant portion of their daily experience is unsatisfying. A misery addict is rarely content—numbed, maybe, through the use of a tool addiction, but not content, rarely or never resting in moments of quietude and serenity.

This is your decision now. Is it worth it to you to work hard—sometimes very hard—for a few years so that you can feel joy as joy and so that happiness makes you happy? Would you like to have a real say in the course your life takes? If your answer is yes but you feel scared, that’s okay. It’s okay to be scared at the prospect of happiness. Everyone gets scared at first by the prospect of big change, even if it’s positive.

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The above are excerpts, used by permission, of the book:

When Misery is Company by Anne Katherine, M.A

Hazelden Publishing