If you don't feel real good about yourself, then a casino is the perfect place for you. Whether you win or lose, it provides a perverse win-win situation: if you win your low self esteem is temporarily inflated, and if you lose, your can beat yourself up in fulfillment of your low self esteem.
People with low self esteem or poor self image have as much business being in a casino as a priest in a whorehouse. If you have a chink in your psychic armor, then gambling will exploit it. It is a trap that can only lead to compulsive behaviour. The boost of good feelings and the temporary state of well being that come from winning can be so reinforcing that the pursuit of it becomes addictive. Thus, the experience of losing only intensifies the compulsion to return to win, in an attempt to redeem the hurt ego.
This type of narrow, either/or thinking is compulsive, leading to a behavior "loop" where the mind is caught in a viscious cycle of "doing and undoing." Call it a rut; you can only go backward or forward, but never in another direction. Would you ever buy a car where you can only go in two directions? You can only revisit the same ground. There is nothing new. It is like a episode from an old "Twilight Zone." In short, you have lost your freedom, proving that gambling is probably the only contradiction to the adage, "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."
Gambling, as most addictions, narrows our choices in life. We are a rat in a maze chasing the cheese. It is difficult to get out of that rut. But it takes ceasing the behaviour, first. It takes stopping the two-directional car and stepping out of it to see the 360 degree horizon. Once you are out of the car, you can begin your new journey and try your hand at real life. You will get smacked down sometimes, but at least you will get up with something that was missing before, your pride.
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