The “What am I doing this for?” app aims to fa­cil­i­tate re­flec­tion about using be­hav­iors and sub­stances.

Ad­dic­tions are a very sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem for in­di­vid­u­als, a night­mare for fam­i­lies, and the source of many se­ri­ous so­ci­etal chal­lenges. They are com­mon de­spite the huge amount of suf­fer­ing they cause, and the amount of at­ten­tion and re­sources de­voted to treat­ing and pre­vent­ing them.

Im­por­tant ex­pe­ri­ences

Peo­ple lay them­selves on the line in their search for ex­pe­ri­ences and feel­ings that are im­por­tant to them, but, for var­i­ous rea­sons, in­ac­ces­si­ble to them. Some only dream about them se­cretly, or re­mem­ber parts of night­time dreams in which they fea­ture. A per­son may be drawn to a feel­ing of deep, re­fresh­ing re­lax­ation and peace, for ex­am­ple, or the op­po­site – con­cen­tra­tion, pro­duc­tiv­ity and pre­ci­sion.

Sub­stances (e.g. cof­fee) and be­hav­ior (e.g. sex) af­fect peo­ples’ moods and ex­pe­ri­ences. If they ap­pear to be the only way to at­tain the states of mind peo­ple de­sire, it is likely that they will be used more and more.
This is a uni­ver­sal pat­tern, which may lead to ad­dic­tion. Every­body is af­fected by it to some de­gree. You can read more about this here.

Know­ing one’s own needs

Even be­fore a full-blown ad­dic­tion de­vel­ops, one can 1) un­der­stand its mean­ing in one’s own life more fully and 2) be­come more con­scious around this prob­lem.

The knowl­edge gained through using “What am I doing this for?” helps the user to un­der­stand his or her own needs and dif­fi­cul­ties. Treat­ing ad­dic­tive be­hav­iors as sig­nif­i­cant and as some­thing that can be de­cided upon fa­cil­i­tates a health­ier and more proac­tive ap­proach to cop­ing with them.

Ther­a­peu­tic prac­tice and process psy­chol­ogy the­ory in­di­cate that the use of sub­stances and be­hav­ior will not fully pro­vide the ex­pe­ri­ences that the user ex­pects. Sub­stances pro­duce ef­fects which only par­tially ful­fill the hopes that are placed in them.

“What am I doing this for?”

The aims of this pro­ject are pre­ven­tion and in­creas­ing un­der­stand­ing of ad­dic­tion-re­lated phe­nom­ena. At the same time, it forms part of a re­search pro­ject.

Re­search re­sults

The use of a con­tem­po­rary for­mat al­lows users to ac­cess the ques­tions with­out em­bar­rass­ment (through a smart­phone, for ex­am­ple) and sup­ports their ques­tion­ing process – wher­ever they are.

The ap­pli­ca­tion is not a re­place­ment for ad­dic­tion treat­ment.

I would like to thank Michał Duda and Ag­nieszka Ser­afin for their help with this pro­ject.