Emotional agitation stimulates obsessive-compulsive behavior and/or addiction. The latter can be viewed as 'compensation' for the former. For example depression can stimulate manic behavior, or stated alternatively, manic behavior can be viewed as compensatory behavior designed to alleviate depression.
If you want to address the self-destructiveness of the 'compensatory' behavior -- the obsessive-compulsion/addiction, then you need to trace this behavior back to the source of the emotional agitation.
Explore the full nature of the emotional agitation, explore the negative self-talk that may be exasperating the emotional agitation, and look for some better way to reduce this emotional agitation through talking your way through it in a more positive, productive direction either alone or in the company of your spouse, a close friend, and/or a therapist trained to deal with these matters...
Until you find a better way of dealing with your emotional agitation, the obsessive-compulsive, addictive behavior is likely to continue as your compensatory measure of dealing with it...often with continuing self-destructive results...
When Apollo can't find a way to successfully deal with a problem, or resolve a conflict, Dionysus is quite likely to take over the reigns of control of the personality -- sometimes with satisfying results, sometimes with self-destructive results, depending on the extent and nature of the impulsive and/or obsessive-compulsive, addictive type of behavior...
-- dgb, April 10th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
