This morning I’m thinking about addiction and how it eats everything in it’s path.
I’m thinking about my own propensities towards it, and the differences between those with the actual gene and me. The ones I believe to be true anyway. I’m not sure if I have it too and I’m just committed or if I truly don’t understand the disease.
Well that’s not entirely true as I work myself through. We still have the power of choice and no one said those are easy. Not easy but still a choice to get help and stay a course that leads to feeling better in the bigger picture versus the moment. God it takes a lot of work.
I watched 28 Days last night. They do such a good job portraying the blur and how easy it is to not care about those around you while in the throes. God it’s painful. For the person struggling and their loved ones.
Today in therapy I will be working on some of my own triggers around addiction, and I’ll go see Julie after my traditional therapy to bolster that work. My energy healer. I don’t know what I would do without both, all of my therapies. I’d be lost. I’ve been lost. It isn’t pleasant.
My triggers. The sights, smells, sounds, the tiniest Indication of addiction in so many capacities. Even the attitude an addict has. I have no patience or compassion in this area. I know I’d be told by loved ones that I’m being hard on myself.
Let’s see if I can walk myself gently into my own truth. A favorite form of healing. By being able and courageous enough to write out my truths, even if they could hurt someone else.
Addiction has affected my life so profoundly and from a young age. I’m not alone in this. In fact it probably has most people in one way or another.
I’m honestly not sure how mine compares, but I am sure the comparing doesn’t matter. So let’s find the facts if I give myself permission. My predatory father got my younger mother into cocaine. I know that. I was born a product of that. An unhealthy unbalanced relationship between an older married man (as I have been told) and a teenage woman raised Footloose religious style.
What I remember of this was the powder on the mirrors with the razor blade. A blur of drugs and alcohol and bad men, and my mother being wildly unpredictable emotionally. The scars are immense. The triggers that I don’t even know when they happen. They take me over emotionally. It feels embarrassing and shameful to have things inside that can be activated without your consent and make you react so intensely and then be ashamed about it.
Shame is the ultimate addiction isn’t it? Along with co dependency. The attempt to distract from all of this by focusing on what other people should do to get better, to the exclusion of the self.
Sigh. How does anyone figure this out.
I get easily addicted to comfort, after having gone without so long. And sometimes it blinds me to my own higher truths and I have to force myself outside it so I can balance my reality and get a clear look.
Clarity is something I often focus on in my energy healings. My lens is often dirty with the carnage that the triggers leave. It’s so desperately painful to live like this. It’s also infinitely beautiful, the awareness and gratitude it creates. That alone leaves reasons for living when so many from my background succumb to addiction or take their own lives eventually.
They remain haunted and often don’t find ways to cope that are sustaining or healthy.
God I hope my nearest and dearest find their way through the dark wood. I don’t want to have to do life without their smiles and hearts warming the way. I don’t know what I would do.
I am in many ways finding mine, but I am committed to awareness and not repeating my mistakes. That I will say. When there’s always so many new ones to make it would be boring to run on an infinite loop. But patterns themselves are heavily woven into the dynamic.
Anything can be addicting. Grief. Pancakes. Dogs. Sweaters. Books 😉 I mean I could go on forever. It’s harder to see where we don’t need more of a good thing. Notice I did not list cats 😉 a trauma trigger in and of itself.
The only thing you can do with someone struggling with it is love them, never withdraw love, but have radical boundaries so you don’t explode with anger and resentment daily. That is what I’ve learned most recently about the beast.
To take care of yourself even better, battle your own demons with even more passion, so you can show the way. Showing the way is much more productive than telling it I have found. Practice more, preach less, and just be in your own integrity. And to do that you can’t get caught up in the emotional traps the dynamic sets up. Anger, resentment, rage, futility, draining of energy.
All of that merely feeds the disease.
I am learning…..
The first rule of addiction is don’t lie, to yourself or anyone else. Don’t lie about anything ever. Lying lowers your vibration and takes you out of your integrity. I would say lying is the hallmark of addiction. Withholding, shaping the truth to try and reduce shame.
I can feel a lie immediately. I feel it in my bones, and even when I believe the best in things the truth eventually accumulates and rises to the surface.
I can’t think of anything more painful than a lie. It causes so much destruction in its wake for so many. Lies are felt whether they are discovered or not. I cannot abide a lie. There are some special rules for the people who have been neglected and abused in childhood. You cannot lie to one of them. They had their soul stolen at a young age, they cannot tolerate anything else. They should not have to.
I should not have to. I cannot.
If you break my trust you break my soul. If someone I love breaks my soul, that is the one thing that can lead to giving up on myself, which is addiction. Depression. Giving up.
My heart can handle breaking. It’s not ideal, but I can understand the natural changes of life and human nature. It’s understandable. Someone that says they love you lying to you, that isn’t.
I’m not interested in excuses. Mine or anyone else’s. I’ve been accused of being hard on people, but I do not believe this is too much to ask. To choose to be surrounded by people who show up for themselves and live in integrity.
That is my expectation for my one precious life and I won’t back down from that.
Onward …..