Have you ever had such a long day that all you want is a glass of wine, a cigarette or a spoonful of ice cream in front of the TV? If yes, you are not alone. More and more professionals, executives and entrepreneurs are coming to terms with what I call functional daily addictions: small, automatic gestures that seem harmless but become recurring mechanisms for regulating stress. The problem? They don’t resolve. They calm in the immediate term, but they feed a cycle.
La mente cerca sollievo. Il corpo reagisce.
I am a clinical psychologist and founder of the Bloome method, and I work every day with people who have made performance their religion. What I see, everywhere from New York to London to Milan, is the same pattern: you grit your teeth all day, then look for an outlet in the evening. A cigarette to disconnect, a dessert to reward oneself, an endless scroll to “turn off the brain.”
All these behaviors have a common denominator: dopamine, the neurotransmitter of pleasure and anticipation. In the brain, the nucleus accumbens, a central part of the reward system, is activated when we expect gratification. Under chronic stress, this circuit gets out of balance, and we start looking for easy, immediate stimuli. But the relief is short-lived. And the fatigue — it remains.
La soluzione? Una nuova alleanza mente-corpo
Through my method, Post-Workout Therapy (PWT), I have found that the most powerful time to access the mind … is after activating the body. Workout and therapy, one after the other, in the same session. Why? Because after exercise, dopamine levels, attention and receptivity increase. The limbic system is more open, the inner narrative more flexible. It’s like opening a window: air comes in, vision expands.
Cinque strumenti pratici per riprendere il controllo
As in my events, here I want to leave you with five simple but powerful tools to break the cycle of daily addictions:
1. H.A.L.T.Method.Before opening the refrigerator or lighting a cigarette, ask yourself:Am I Hungry? Angry (angry)? Lonely (lonely)? Tired (tired)?Often we are not hungry. We need connection, respite, comfort.
2. Post-activation activityAfter a workout, devote even 15 minutes to a reflective practice: journaling, meditation, visualization.That moment of physiological openness is gold for transformation.
3. Break the automatismChange the context in which you enact your “addiction”.If you always eat on the couch in front of Netflix, try the same action with full attention, sitting at the table.You will discover much more about your emotions.
4. Change DJImagine that in your mind there is a DJ who always puts on the same playlist-the one of judgment, of “I’m not enough”.Change track.Change voice.Start talking to yourself the way you would talk to someone you really love.
5. Rewrite the scriptEvery night, ask yourself, “If I were watching a movie about my day–would I be proud of the main character? “If the answer is no, don’t judge yourself. But rewrite.Because you are not only the actor.You are also the director.And you can change the story.
Daily addictions are not solved by willpower.They are transformed when we reconnect the body to the mind.That is where the seed of change is planted.And it is there, in that small space between a stimulus and a response, that a revolution can really begin.
And you, are you ready to rewrite the script?
The article When the glass of wine is no longer enough comes from TheNewyorker.
