Escapism and I met about a month ago, or so I thought. It turned out that we met long before, years before, and we’ve been dating ever since. I also found out that he’s been cheating on me…with you. Escapism is the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or in an imaginative situation, activity, etc. Think back to those occasions where you were just too stressed to continue and had to take a break, maybe just 15 minutes to relax and watch some TV. Unfortunately, like the old saying goes “time flies when you’re having fun”, thus those minutes quickly become hours. Though you enjoyed the movie, reality gruffly slaps you in the face and you realize that not only is the problem still there, but now you have less time to solve the problem. This leads to you either being more stressed or giving up completely, either way…you lose.

Still like most modern problems, escapism isn’t new at all. And fortunately for all of us who’s been dating this “playa”, there are ways to get rid of him/her. The first and most important step is to pray about it, bad habits die hard and it’s something you can’t do on your own or would want to.

Additionally there are two categories of escapism, healthy and unhealthy. The healthy escapism is when you relax/escape by doing something productive, like read a book or go for a walk. Healthy escapism allows us to take mental breaks that reduce your stress. On the other hand, there are three stages of unhealthy escapism: avoidance (which is what the example above is), neglect and obsession. We’ll be focusing on replacing the unhealthy escapism with the healthy, how difficult this will be depends on what stage you are.

The approach taken to overcome escapism is to attack it at its source…the mind. The fact is unhealthy escapism, stems from a sense of hopelessness or fear. Therefore, remove the fear and replace it with faith, I mean the great book itself tells us “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”. None the less it’s not easy to start thinking positively, but practice makes improvement (yes improvement, no matter how good we get at something, there will always be room for growth), you just have to stick to it.

With this new state of mind the urge to escape will be less frequent, however when you do need a break, even if it’s watching TV, it’ll be just that, a break, and not something you get lost in. Even so, healthy escapism is like nutrients for our body, we need them, but too much or too little of them is detrimental. In that case, you have to find the right balance for you, and don’t be afraid to fail, in the scientific field the rule of thumb is ‘Trial and Error’, so just keep getting it wrong until you get it right.