I may feel, for example, that I must leave off whatever I’m doing right now and go to the classical music store. The feeling takes on the quality of a need, of an imperative that must immediately be satisfied. Another person will say that she needs to have a chocolate bar immediately or needs to do this or that, depending on the object of the addiction. When we relabel, we give up the language of need. I say to myself, “I don’t need to purchase anything now or to eat anything now; I’m only having an obsessive thought that I have such a need. It’s not a real, objective need but a false belief.
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