OUTGROWING
YOUR ADDICTION
'The Little Book'
By Shari Schreiber,
M.A.
www.GettinBetter.com
When
I first decided to write about addiction, I said to myself; how
the hell can I produce an entire article, when a single paragraph
is all that's needed? I've wrestled with this for over three years,
which (regrettably) has had me dragging my feet. My 'writer's block'
has undoubtedly involved holding myself to unreasonably high standards.
In short, I'm trying to revolutionize how we think about
and go about ending addictions (how utterly arrogant is
that?!).
So
first, I've had to work really hard to get out of my own way and
lower my self-expectations, so I might adequately address
this topic. I'm thinking it's gonna keep growing and ripening (like
my other materials) but here goes:
All
addiction is caused by suppression of feelings. If
we could learn how to Feel our emotions rather than fear
them, ALL addictions and recovery programs would literally cease
to exist.
Addiction
is addiction, whether it's to alcohol/drugs, sex, gambling, exercise,
eating, work, codependency or scholastic/athletic over-achievement--and
the same root causes and recovery principles always
apply, no matter what your drug of choice is--even if it's needing
to be in a relationship. Addiction's the ever-present nagging you
feel, to fill the hole in your soul.
Contrary
to popular belief, addiction is not about indulging in
a substance or behavior every day. It's about being
dissociated/disconnected from feelings and sensations that help
you discern when you've eaten, imbibed or worked- out enough,
and stopping before you get hurt, go numb or black-out.
If
you're willing to keep an open mind, this text should make sense
to the rational and intuitive parts of your brain, so self-destructive
compulsions can become a thing of the past.
Conquering
addiction is really a simple matter. Gaining self-acceptance, and
enough emotional growth to help you feel all your feelings
without censure, self-ridicule or self-judgment is where we must
begin. This isn't deprivation-based, because the
moment you're forbidden something, aren't you craving
it much more? Sure you are--it's only human! So once more,
you can't resist using--and once again, you beat yourself up for
it. This vicious cycle repeats over and over, until you're feeling
paralyzed, ashamed and hopeless.
Addicts
are tough on themselves. They're always
scanning their inner terrain and beating themselves up for something.
If you began whacking your head with a baseball bat from the minute
you got up in the morning, how do you think you'd be feeling
at the end of your day? Wouldn't you have to alleviate
that pain--and how would you do that?? More importantly,
who taught you how to criticize, and diminish yourself?
Outgrowing
any sort of addiction involves growing emotional muscles.
When you first start to feel the dark/difficult sensations
you had to repress/kill-off during your childhood (in order to survive)
and begin trusting that they won't annihilate you, emotional development
is the inevitable outcome. Addictions are terminated when there's
no longer a need to numb-out--or run from You.
In short, feeling brings about Healing.
Conventional
recovery programs such as 12-Steps, The Meadows, Betty Ford, etc.,
might scare you into getting sober, and help you gain some
insights as to how you got to this place--but they can't
help you get healthy, whole and well, to where
you're a fully functional, self-actualized, joyful and personally
successful being. No group endeavor can.
So
what's
really the point of sobriety, if you're still struggling to make
your life work, and you're in so much pain, you periodically want
to die? Why get sober, if your relationship attempts are
ending up disappointing and hurtful? Have you grown and healed--or
have you simply managed to stop using and self-medicating your anguish?
If it's the latter, you are not recovering.
A
lot of folks relapse after going the rehab clinic route,
because their psychic pain cannot be well attended to within standard
recovery models, and neuro-chemical imbalances due to Axis I (clinical)
issues like Bipolar
Disorder and ADD,
can easily go undiagnosed/untreated. Given any treatment
modality, if you don't balance brain chemistry, no
client can make use of the work.
YOU'RE
NOT JUST A BRAIN HOOKED-UP TO A LIFE-SUPPORT UNIT.
Given
you're
presently here, you've no doubt been thinking your
way through life, as opposed to feeling your way along.
That became your way to survive as a kid, but it's worked against
you as an adult.
I've
known some brilliant individuals who've continually thirsted for
insight, thinking this will somehow mitigate their inner
despair. They literally believe their 'recipe for happiness' is
buried within the chapters of the next self-help book they read--or
some new-fangled quick-fix venue they've tried will bring
relief from their pain. Happiness is incrementally
acquired. It's an inside
job that requires steady, diligent commitment to growth and
healing each day of your life--and baby steps are what get you there.
Unresolved
psychic and emotional wounding damages the physical body--but Wellness
is a choice. Your mind, body and spirit all work together in concert.
They must be on the same page, or the symphony of your
Life goes awry.
A
colleague and I were good pals for many years. She's slightly more
than a year older than I (and a Borderline
with gobs of unhealed childhood trauma). Each year, she'd
remark how her body was "falling apart," and warn me that
mine would betray me too; "Just wait till next
year" she always said, "you'll see that everything
changes when you turn (fifty, sixty, etc.)!" Well, I'm still
fit as a fiddle, and happy I worked hard on the inside stuff,
so the outside's holding up fine. It's not about vanity. It's about
inner harmony and peace.
You'll
probably become aware of some redundancies in this material. You'll
be absorbing this information on different levels of your consciousness,
and repetition helps with that. No book editor would let me get
away with this, but if you can't 'hear' this stuff in slightly different
ways, you can't take it in and integrate it--and that's
what's necessary. Some old files inside you may get moved/reorganized,
as you start to get the hang of this.
ADDICTS
CAN'T DISCERN BETWEEN FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS.
Right
about now, you may be thinking; I've wrestled with really bad feelings
my whole life, and I've learned that they do me no good.
So now I just stay really busy, and I feel just fine! Wrong.
You are simply addicted to staying
"really busy" . . . but how are you tolerating the quiet
times??
Truth
is, you haven't felt those bad feelings--because you couldn't!
What's happened instead, is you've rushed up into your head, analyzed
those awful emotions and given them reasons to be there!
Before long, you were beating yourself up for crimes you probably
hadn't committed, and (surprise) you felt a lot worse!
Emotions reflexively became thoughts, and you've never
learned how to separate them. This (bad habit) results in depression
and anxiety.
Busy-bodies
(people who compulsively run from their feelings) are addicted
to fixing, helping and rescuing others, because when they run out
of issues in their own life to keep them busy, they look
for victim-types who'll happily supply drama and chaos to fill-up
their intolerable
emptiness.
I
am not interested in hearing about the decades of "therapy"
you've had--or whether you've seen one clinician or twenty. If you're
reading this right now, it hasn't worked for you the way it should
have.
Ask
yourself this; am I surviving--or am I thriving?
The two can't coexist, so if you haven't gotten beyond personal
or professional survival, there's some work to be done
here. Self-sabotage is inherent among addicts. The core
of this issue typically starts in infancy, and it's associated with
fear. How can you welcome something (joy,
love, success, etc.) you've never experienced? Anything that's unfamiliar/foreign
feels intimidating--and it's natural to want to feel safe,
especially if (as a child) you frequently needed to find a foxhole
to hide-out in, to escape chaos, drama or conflict at home.
A
goal
of 'psychotherapy' is to help you feel better. The goal of healing
work is to help you feel Everything--so you can become fully functional
and whole. You cannot manage this on your own (even though
you've probably grown up assuming you had to). Real
recovery means learning to trust somebody with your well-being
and growth, and acquiring a rock-solid sense of Self.
THE
ROOTS OF ADDICTION
First
of all, addiction is not
inherited. Depression and mood disorders can be passed along genetically
(and your folks learned dreadful ways of parenting you, from their
parents) but addiction itself, is not
"passed on!" Buying into this notion simply lets you keep
making excuses for yourself, and remaining disempowered.
Your
parents learned to self-medicate their anguish, and so
did you--in fact, since children learn from example, your folks
inadvertently taught you about what to try first,
to flee awkward or painful events and emotions.
Every
child has fundamental needs. When those needs are not responded
to, he/she experiences sensations like frustration, shame, despair,
sadness and rage. Since children have a limited capacity for reasoning,
they automatically assume it's their fault when requirements
for affection, soothing, comforting and support aren't being met--and
they grow skilled at shutting-down those needs, because
it feels uncomfortable/bad to maintain them.
No
small child has the ability to recognize how messed-up his/her parent
is, and understand why that adult isn't capable of giving
them loving attention, support and praise. He automatically presumes
it's because he's not lovable, and spends the rest of his
life trying to convince himself it's not true!
When
feelings get suppressed in childhood, our emotional growth is stunted.
We grow up trying to function with a very limited number of emotions,
which hampers our ability to react appropriately to many life circumstances.
That's when we turn to drugs, booze, sex or food to cope
with our difficult/awkward experiences, and the sensations
they trigger in us.
In
the simplest terms, if your parents soothed you, and helped you
learn to accept your feelings as a kid rather than escaping/shutting
them down, you would never have needed to numb-out your discomfort
with any substances or behaviors! Running from your anguish was
your only means of surviving it back then, and you've found
stellar ways to do that ever since. The trouble is, it's harmed
you in adulthood.
Think
of it this way; your feelings are like a bunch of colors in a Crayola
box. If you've decided to draw with only a third
of those crayons, the rest remain unused. So even though they're
waiting in that box, you've treated them like they don't exist.
Maybe you've favored only the warmer, brighter tones (red, yellow,
orange), while the cooler colors (purple, blue, magenta, dark green,
etc.) are ignored. All these hues represent your actual
emotional palette.
The
outcome? If you're drawing exclusively with only warm colors--won't
your pictures seem monochromatic and uninteresting? Well, that's
exactly what's happened to your personality. It's become
predictable, one-dimensional and flat or boring, like a cardboard
cut-out of somebody famous.
THE
DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL, AND OTHER BEASTIES
Your
survival instincts have kept you alive and on this planet, but they
were learned throughout childhood--and they became reflexive/automatic.
When children experience psychic and emotional pain, they try hard
to understand and make sense of it. They'll ask themselves; why
am I feeling lonely, sad, empty, frustrated, etc.? Their siblings
might not be echoing those feelings, and neither are their
parents. Thus, this kid feels isolated/alone with these sensations,
and thinks something's wrong with him/her for feeling that
way! If this child tries to tell someone in his home about the feelings,
he's often made to feel wrong or bad for having them. His sadness
could be ridiculed or made fun of, or it's summarily dismissed by
the other family members--and toxic shame results.
Very
quickly, this kid learns that difficult sensations are dangerous
and bad, and begins suppressing them--because when he doesn't,
he feels worse!
The
first time you try sitting with your murky, terrifying, ugly feelings,
you'll think you're gonna die, and you're afraid you won't--'cause
it's excruciating. Years ago, I named mine "The Dark
Nights of the Soul." Don't worry--I've got techniques that'll
help you get through these, but you won't like being there.
The most critical information you'll gain, is that you will
emerge alive! That's right, those feelings won't actually kill
you--in fact, they're here to help you grow stronger, healthier
and whole. Now, you'll be learning to trust that.
DENIAL
IS NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT.
Years
ago, I loved a man who'd always told me, "if my past
girlfriends had only been this supportive and loving, I could have
accomplished anything!" In hindsight, I'm sure his 'picker'
was broken, and most of those women had been Borderlines. Distinct
patterns emerged during our relationship; I was all the things he
said he wanted, yet he suffered terribly from depression.
I later came to realize that without someone to demonize, he had
to confront his own demons. The lack of conflict
in our relationship brought him face to face with his self-loathing
and dissatisfaction, and he could no longer blame his feelings (and
failings) on his partner. That reality spiraled him into the depths
of a full-blown mid-life crisis--and no amount of shopping for stuff
he couldn't afford (a transferred addiction from alcohol 'sobriety'),
fixed it.
Addiction
is the core of every person's attraction to a personality
disordered individual. Addicts have a desperate need to run from
inner emptiness, pain and dissatisfaction. Borderlines give 'em
stellar opportunities to do that; all the drama and strife distracts
them from their very own personal discontent.
Is
full recovery painful and scary? Yes, which is why you'll need a
little hand-holding and guidance along the way. You're accustomed
to restrictions which can be imprisoning--but they also
provide a sense of safety. Certain breeds of dogs
have to be 'crated' when you first bring them home. This helps them
feel safer, as they adjust to their new environment. Getting healthier
means departing your comfort zone, which (at first) feels a bit
unwieldy/unsafe.
You
may feel miserable, but it's familiar and therefore, more
comforting than leaving that crate! This is why discharged inmates
frequently go back to jail. It's easier getting 'three squares'
a day, than getting out into the world. You might talk
endlessly about what you really "want"--but look
around at what you have, because this reality is reflecting
your true desires, and Fear keeps you stuck here. Everyone's afraid
of something, but have you ever been able to trust someone
to help you navigate the scary parts of your life?
With
reference to core work and Self retrieval, here's the bottom
line: If you aren't willing to let yourself hurt, you won't tolerate
being helped.
Integrated
Recovery is sort of like remodeling your kitchen--it always seems
worse, before it gets better. This stage doesn't last too long,
but it can feel challenging. The good news is, you are supported
every step of the way. The next tangible sign
of your recovery, is noticing the absence of pain.
THE
BIRTH OF CODEPENDENCY
Codependency
is an addiction. It's driven by the need to be needed, because our
self-worth depends on it. This involves constantly trying
to give what we desperately need to get for ourselves--but
don't feel worthy of receiving. We learned this mechanism in childhood,
but it's left us with serious deficits and obstacles that interfere
with loving and being loved.
The
non-needing child has adapted, to make difficult feelings not
matter. He adopts coping mechanisms that help him put those
emotions away, or numb them out. He might go into his head to fantasize
about how it'll be different when he's grown,
and can exert more control over life's circumstances. Other times,
he'll look around for a child who has it a lot
worse than he does, so he's able to feel
better by contrast, about his immediate frustration or
pain. It's like the compulsion people have to gawk at a
freeway accident. It helps them feel thankful for
their loveless, passionless lives--but even that could
invoke survivor's guilt--which later on, feels shameful.
Addicts
learn to feel grateful for their pain, because there's always
a sibling, friend or parent who's had "a rougher time."
The problem with this ideation, is one builds up an incredibly high
threshold for anguish! Discomfort has to be excruciating
to gain their attention--but it still may not register, because
compassion is reserved exclusively for others, and never
given to oneself.
Difficult
sensations of emptiness are experienced when we've discarded dark
or "unacceptable" feelings from our personality since
early childhood. When those sensations were treated as bad or
wrong by our parents, we regarded them precisely the same,
as we matured! In short, we harshly judged them (and ourselves)
as "bad" whenever they started to surface.
Each
time these "bad" sensations (hate, anger, envy, frustration,
etc.) came up, we tried to make them go away, and called ourselves
on the carpet for having 'em. Life throws us curve balls, and our
feelings and moods can shift accordingly. If at anytime, you're
unable to feel nice, light, loving emotions, and all the darker
ones have been banished from your emotional repertoire, what the
heck is left inside to feel?? Only Nothingness or Emptiness!
My
addicted clients (recovering and otherwise) have described a dangerous,
nebulous sensation they could not identify--but have needed to escape
their entire lives. It's a sense of 'deadness' that threatens to
engulf them, if they don't get busy and run from it--or numb it
out with a substance or behavior.
Misery
comes easy. Happiness takes diligent work. You've always
been your worst enemy--but with whom do you spend the most time?
Recovery means learning how to be your best friend.
SHOW
ME WHERE YOU ARE, AND I'LL KNOW WHERE YOU'VE BEEN.
From
the onset of my private practice internship many years ago, suicidally
depressed people were finding their way to my office. I was working
toward a Marriage & Family Therapist license (MFT) back then,
and couldn't fathom why or how these people found me. After
all, I was only an intern.
As
this type of client kept showing up, I began trusting that a higher
power (God, The Universe, etc.) was funneling these folks my way,
because maybe I was equipped to help them. It truly seemed
the only way to make sense of this odd phenomenon. I should mention
here, that I'd reluctantly returned to academia at forty-one
with no sense whatsoever, that I'd stay long enough to get a degree
(much less, two). I'd always hated school, and still do.
It
turns
out, my life experience had prepared me to assist these people in
a way that helped them--so I was flying by the seat of
my pants, and going mostly with intuition. Not all of them were
committed to recovering, but the ones who were, went on to build
productive, gratifying lives. In retrospect, beneath their addictions,
all these clients had a common denominator; they were core trauma
survivors--and to fill inner emptiness/deadness, each was
addicted to one thing or another. I never chose to work
with addiction, and I certainly didn't choose 'core trauma' as a
specialization - it chose me.
I
believe each of us comes into this life with special talents and
abilities. If we're lucky, these innate gifts are recognized, encouraged
and mirrored for us when we're young, so we can begin to
learn who we actually are. I was a late bloomer--but one of my
talents was understanding human nature, which got to advance and
grow, thanks to some challenging detours that forced me to get intimately
acquainted with myself.
Addiction
is not the cause of your pain, or why life isn't working
as it should. Addiction is only a symptom of needing to
escape difficult feelings that have been too dangerous or scary
to accommodate--whether they're bad, or good.
A
remarkable thing happens when I'm working with new clients. They
begin to see that it's not just 'negative' feelings that are hard
to feel--it's positive ones as well. When you've lacked
a frame of reference for feeling good, it's gonna
feel foreign/uncomfortable for you the moment you start to get there,
and you'll have a reflexive need to sabotage the gains
you've made.
For
decades, clients have asked me why healing doesn't come more quickly.
I've always responded by saying that if it did, it'd feel like they
were living inside somebody else's body. They would literally feel
so destabilized, they couldn't tolerate it! Change happens gradually,
so that we can adjust to it.
Change
involves growth. As a little girl I had horrible 'leg-aches' every
night in bed, presumably because my body couldn't keep up with the
rapid growth I was undergoing. It hurt me like crazy--but I'm tall
and lanky. Growth must occur slowly, or it's hard to handle
(even when the payoffs are outstanding).
TWISTS OF FATE, SERENDIPITY AND DIVINE INTERVENTION
I've
known for quite some time, that I'm only a conduit for healing,
and that far greater powers are guiding me in this work. Make no
mistake; I'm not a religious person by any stretch of the
imagination--but my spiritual bond is vibrant and unshakable. At
this point, a little background seems fitting.
At
twenty years of age, I wanted to kill myself. I was suffering an
emotional breakdown, and was in so much psychic pain, I just wanted
out. The details leading up to this aren't as salient
as the catalysts that led to my total loss of Self. My teenage years
were about having to be the perfect daughter for my dad
and his new third wife, with whom I'd had to live at age fourteen.
The newlyweds were good people, but they knew nothing about
adolescent development--and for them, harsh discipline was their
recipe for keeping me 'in-line,' and helping me become a "responsible"
young woman.
So,
during a time when I was supposed to be forming an independent
Self, I was forced to surrender my burgeoning little autonomy, totally
to their will. If I behaved imperfectly, I'd be punished. Punishment
usually involved loss of freedom (already in short supply),
or docking my very meager allowance. I wasn't allowed to reveal/express
any disparate feelings during those times, or dire consequences
surely awaited. In short, I couldn't have any emotions that ran
contrary to what my parents wanted to observe, or there
was hell to pay. I quickly learned to bury my frustration, sadness
and rage.
Perhaps
like you, I'd had uncertain, unstable beginnings. Life never felt
safe, normal or good--and when it did, the rug was yanked out from
under me. I needed to sense that I belonged, but now I'd
gotten thrown into a home life that was impossibly rigid/strict,
and my feelings about it weren't permitted. The upshot was, I suppressed
a whole lot of my emotions, because it wasn't safe for
them to be experienced or expressed. As a direct result, I developed
an eating disorder.
How else could I keep denying/shoving-down my feelings
and find any sense of solace, selfhood or control within that environment?
Most
of the people I've worked with, were born
into these types of homes. They've had absolutely
no frame of reference for what it means to trust their instincts,
feelings and intuitions, having had to abandon them since
infancy. I wanted to die, after only six
years in that environment! I've known your pain, and
the horrific emptiness you've lived with for years, which
has driven your addictions to drugs/alcohol, fixing/rescuing compulsions,
obsessive gym workouts, eating, gambling, fighting--or even fucking
your way through inner deadness and despair.
By
the grace of God, I was able to find the help I needed when
I needed it, which launched my recovery and growth, and gave
me a template for helping others. This didn't happen immediately.
I spent many, many years plugging-up the holes in my boat, and that
brought me to where I am today. If you're still breathing, it's
not too late to start healing.
Healing
work always seems counterintuitive to clients, because it
challenges everything they grew up learning about how to survive--but
if their methods worked for them, they wouldn't be in this
pickle! This is transformative work, which (initially)
feels like 'boot camp' for the soul.
TWELVE
STEPS, THE DEVIL AND THE HOLY GRAIL
Don't
let anyone tell you, that you're "powerless"
against addiction! You can completely eliminate it--and
I've written this to show you how. This material is intended to
rattle a bunch of cages. If it doesn't, I've failed in my mission
to illuminate a path toward full recovery, where your addictive
impulses no longer exist.
There's
a saying; The Devil you know, is better than the Devil
you don't. It's fear that keeps us circling the drain,
rather than trying something new that'll help us climb out of the
sink. Predictability is comforting somehow, even if it doesn't serve
us. That's just plain ol' human nature.
Various
modalities having to do with 'sobriety' want you to surrender darker
emotions--but if you've been harshly judging those feelings since
childhood, and you're now told they're 'bad' and you shouldn't be
having 'em, aren't you needing to keep escaping
them somehow? You bet! So you just get yourself to another
meeting--and once again, you've run away from your feelings.
Alcoholics
Anonymous is extremely helpful, but I think their greatest
benefit is providing a safe, welcoming environment, within which
you begin to forge trusted alliances, and can gain a sense of family
with kindred spirits. I think it's what keeps people going back
for years, decades or a lifetime. We seek what we never received--even
if it's just acceptance.
Some
twelve-step sponsors urge you to "let go of your anger."
Apparently, they need you to magically dispose
of this normal, natural emotion which is inside
to activate you, ease depression, and help you feel vibrant and
alive. It's not that asking God to help you with various challenges
is wrong--but it can have you passing the buck, and side-stepping
your healing and growth.
God
may have a hand in the outcome, but we're responsible for
the action. If you've persistently given painful or difficult concerns
over to your deity to manage, you're not outgrowing
your addiction, you're out-sourcing it!
That's like expecting your parents keep supporting you financially,
and refusing to get a job. You'll likely remain a disempowered adult
who never feels safe or secure in your world--and you'll have to
numb those feelings out too!
If
suppression of feelings means denying or numbing them out, doesn't
this mean that fighting your addictive impulses will remain
a continuous battle, once you get sober? And what about all those
good folks who've transferred their alcohol addiction to
pastry, cigarettes--and
God knows what else, when they've given up the booze?!
GOT
RAGE? BRING IT HERE!
I
love working with angry people! The reason is,
their emotions are closer to the surface--and they don't judge their
rage. When someone can feel their emotions--even if it's
only anger, we're considerably ahead, in terms of their ability
to make faster progress and heal. For an addict, that's good news!
Emotions
trigger chemical changes in our physiology. When we're depressed,
we'll lack energy and impetus/motivation. When we're angry or enraged,
our body gets a big hit of adrenalin, which is activating and energizing.
We need these emotions to surmount dangerous/harmful situations,
and react to any emergency that comes our way. This is our fight
or flight mechanism, but for many of us, it was dismantled
and rendered useless in childhood.
People
who've amputated darker emotions out of their personality structure,
function as only half-people. Ever heard the phrase, "nice
guys finish last"?? Well, if at any given time, you can't
access emotions that are loving, bright, generous and spiritual,
and you've judged/discarded the other ones as bad or wrong--what's
left inside to feel? Again, nothingness!
Welcome to your core void. Core emptiness exists
inside you, because there are hundreds of important emotions that
you haven't allowed yourself to experience.
I've
done extensive work with panic
& anxiety disorders. Given that anxiety and panic are nothing
more than powerful sensations that can break through all emotional
controls we've put in place since we were kids, does it
make healthy, rational sense to "get rid" of anger--or
any feelings for that matter?
The
truth is, when we start learning how to experience our emotions,
we no longer have to escape them--and voila! Our need for
the addictive substance or behavior automatically vanishes. Your
'core void' shrinks too--which has driven your addictions in the
first place! When feelings begin to replace the awful emptiness
we've lived with inside, there's a marvelous sense of ease, aliveness
and wholeness that comes with being human and healthy.
Does
this mean you'll never have a rotten, painful day? No. It means
you'll feel a strength inside your core, which helps you trust that
you'll get through it, and this feels pretty darned okay.
Tomorrow, you'll probably feel lighter.
HEAR
NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL.
As
a child, you had to figure out ways to put your sad/empty feelings
aside, to survive in your home environment. It was either that--or
take a dive off a tall building, or throw yourself in front of a
speeding auto. Far more children than you might imagine, commit
suicide! They can't understand their painful, darker feelings, and
there's nobody (safe) around to tell about 'em. Much of
the time, difficult emotions were treated as wrong by parents
who've found it inconvenient to have a frustrated, unhappy
child nearby, and made the kid "bad" just for having emotions.
Thus, the die was cast.
People
who dissociate from painful feelings in childhood, frequently become
People Pleasers,
and develop all sorts of ailments, such as cancers, migraine headaches,
anxiety disorders, stomach or colon disorders, eating disorders,
obsessive-compulsive traits--and even, personality disorders.
If
you were intended to only have nice, light, generous and
cheerful feelings, wouldn't you have been created
without the ability to feel anything else? I guess you
haven't gotten around to asking God about that one, have
you?
Judeo-Christian
teachings want us to "turn the other cheek" when somebody
harms us, or violates our freedoms. They teach us to be passive
little lambs, even if that means being led to slaughter.
I say, horseshit!
What
type of organization would encourage you to passively stand by,
and idly observe your partner or child being hurt? Are you kidding??
But if you've been taught that anger is a bad feeling,
how can you muster any outrage if your loved one
is attacked? If someone threatened your kid, wouldn't you be doing
whatever it took, to protect him or her? Well, wouldn't
you?
I'm
amazed, that most species of animals will fight to
the death to protect their young--yet this isn't always true
for humans! In fact, during the course of my career, I've become
convinced that many of us would have been much better off, had we
been raised by wolves in the forest.
SELF-MEDICATION
AND THE BORDERLINE PERSONALITY
Since
we've unquestionably loved our parents--even if they were the source
of our pain, we have learned to accept that 'loving' comes with
anguish--and that became the relational blueprint, from which all
our adult attachments have been built. In short, love equals
pain--and this pain must be mollified,
or how can we maintain our love affair? We have to escape the
bad parts, to hold onto the good ones--which drives overwork, substance
abuse, and/or a litany of acting-out behaviors, including
passive aggression.
A
Borderline splits-off their darker facets from their lighter
ones, but this is not a characteristic that's exclusive to someone
personality disordered. The codependent rescuer/fixer
personality has acquired
this trait as well.
Many
of us
adopted this reflex in early childhood, when we had to separate,
compartmentalize or box-up the rageful, crazy, injurious parts of
our parent from their more normal/nourishing facets,
so we could stay attached to him or her. Every time that
box toppled off its shelf, banged us on the head and split open,
we scooped-up those nasty, hurtful contents that spilled out, and
stuffed them back in their box so we could feel closer again--until
the next time it happened. This is precisely
what we do with a BPD partner.
We
want to overlook, excuse, forgive and forget every assault, indiscretion
and betrayal they've perpetrated on us, yet we don't cut ourselves
any slack. (Surely, we must have done something to provoke
them--hadn't we already learned that we were insignificant, unworthy
and unlovable from our folks??)
Our
need for relief from self-flagellation
makes us return to the Borderline's poisonous well for another drink--no
matter how hurtful they are to us. Their abuse is easier
to take than ours when we're alone, for when we're beating-up
on ourselves, we can't defend against our attacker! Getting
sober means we must unlearn self-destructive
habits we formed as little kids.
Given
your Borderline has split him/herself into black and white
all-good/all-bad, they do the same with you. As they cannot tolerate
'imperfect' traits in themselves, and have excised them from their
personality structure, how can they accommodate any of yours? Still,
you "love" them anyhow--even if it's spawned by a sense
of obligation (a moldy leftover from your childhood).
Each
time their more favorable/desirable aspects show up, you think they're
here to stay--and determine that you must be the
insane one. This became your survival
strategy as a child, or you would have packed a knap-sack and taken
off on your own, at three or four! Sticking around despite
the pain, has been practical/logical from a youngster's standpoint--but
you're still doing it.
Learned
helplessness is a remnant from your painful childhood drama,
which is perpetually re-enacted, until you make up your mind to
get Well.
KARMA,
AND OTHER DOGMAS THAT CAN BITE YOU ON THE FANNY.
While Buddhism promotes the
belief that 'chanting' will bring us everything we want, it takes
a dim view of emotions and actions that aren't considered congruent
with 'being in service' to another--once again, de-prioritizing
our feelings and needs, and putting them on the
back-burner to simmer, and rob energy from more productive pursuits!
This nonsense is underscored by fears of karmic retribution, if
we entertain a retaliatory or vengeful thought toward somebody who's
intentionally done us wrong--and suggests that we surely must have
done something despicable in a past life to have
deserved these parents, siblings or friends who've treated
us abominably. Christ, no
wonder Buddha was fat! If our core belief
is that we can't have prosperity and love, chanting
won't work, because shame and guilt from childhood block us from
receiving! That's not Karma--it's just simple, metaphysical
law.
A
gal-pal always tells me how "Buddhistic" I am, and I think
that's probably true. I fully believe in the karmic boomerang. In
truth, I've likely had a hand in speeding it up a bit. I'm uniquely
comfortable with my dark side--in fact, I celebrate it. Does that
mean I'm a bad person?? Hell no - and if it did, I'm sure I'd have
been struck down by lightning decades ago. What it means
is, when somebody's intentionally crossed or undermined me, I haven't
lifted a finger--but they've always paid a price, and I've
heard about it later.
When
you eradicate "negative" feelings from your personality,
positive ones can't remain alive and vibrant. Therefore, shutting
down/discarding your rage or envy for instance, flatlines
your glee and happiness. That's how feelings work, and there's just
no way around it. If you won't feel pain, you can't feel pleasure--or
it takes tremendous intensity to capture and hold your interest,
which is a key factor in sex
addiction (my sub-specialty).
There's
a humongous difference between sitting on your feelings--and
sitting with them. Feelings are just parts of You
that you've crucified and discarded a long time ago, and they're
wanting to find their home again, inside you.
Being
a healthy, whole person, means being able to experience and operate
from a full repertoire of different types of emotions,
without self-judgment. This is what's required, to be a
multi-dimentional, fully-integrated being. It's easy for half-personalities
to commit suicide, but whole personalities
do not contemplate killing themselves. Ever.
CORE
TRAUMA, AND YOUR ADDICTION AFFLICTION
I've
worked with core trauma/narcissistic injury during my entire career,
and addiction has always been part of that picture, because people
learn how to self-medicate their pain from a very early
age. Numbing-out or running away from our anguish is natural, because
who in the hell wants to feel that?! We begin to regard
darker emotions as monsters who mean to overtake
and kill us, and fear makes us run from them! But these
monsters aren't living under our bed or in our closet--they're living
inside us, and as much as we've tried to drown them, outrun
them or shop them away, we can't. Retail therapy can only
leave you broke. It cannot help you repair what's broken.
Who
you are today, was established by the time you reached five
years old. These were your formative years, and
they powerfully influence your beliefs, your principles, and your
sense of Self. True healing means challenging some long-standing
ideations, superstitions and rules you've lived by, which have trapped
you in self-loathing and toxic shame. Getting well entails unlearning
erroneous beliefs and faulty paradigms that haven't served you.
This can be a formidable transition--particularly if you've spent
many years in traditional recovery programs. 12-steps may
keep you from using--but we'll be resolving the underlying
pain, that's made you want or need to
use.
Emotional
wholeness means that your addictions evaporate. Getting sober
is easy--but shifting how you think you'll have to do that isn't,
because it's an entirely different paradigm than you've tried before.
There's a learning curve; it's like switching to a Macintosh, when
you've solely used a Windows PC.
I'm
always telling my clients: If I could wave my Fairy Godmother Wand
and make you whole and happy tomorrow, I would
(and I honestly mean it)! This is a process. It doesn't
take decades or even years, but I firmly believe in it, or I'd be
hunting for a different vocation that feels as gratifying.
If
you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod this app will let you hear
this material;
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/web-reader-text-to-speech/id320808874?mt=8
Worthy
article: Can
you outgrow your 12-step sponsor?
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