Addictions – Take control

Loneliness, boredom, anxiety, trauma, meaninglessness, all make us vulnerable to addiction. They are not excuses; they are emotional signals that our emotional needs are not being met. Addictions served a purpose… the purpose of having some relief from pain. Something was missing and we thought this would be the answer.

There is a wound driving your addiction

Trauma is behind most addictions. Childhood adverse experiences change our bodies and brain, And we look for “self-medication” like alcohol or drugs or gambling, or work, or porn, or food, or shopping … anything that promises to smooth the emotional pain derived from the torments we have been through. It is an escapee from the horrors of reality.

And as an escape, we see it as a solution to a problem. Maybe we feel more freedom, more confidence, more self-esteem, … in the beginning, the addiction gave us something that was missing in our lives.

And we need to understand what is forcing us to “self-medicate”. We need to find ways to address the traumatic memories that lead us to the addiction. Addiction is just a temporary fix to a bigger problem.

If something is repeated enough times, our brain is going to turn it into a habit. After a certain time, we start to do it in “automatic pilot”. We don’t really need to think about it – we just do it – unconsciously.  

There is always an element of charm at first but then the “relationship” becomes abusive, taking more than what it gives. We trade our beauty, health, peace, and life in exchange for a small pleasure…sometimes it is not even a pleasure anymore.

And then we need more and more of whatever it is we are addicted to getting less and less reward. We engage with the addiction simply to function, to ‘feel normal’.

The habit has become part of our identity. We think, or our emotional brain thinks, we wouldn’t be ourselves without the addiction. But we were born free of addictions, weren’t we? There was a time when we could live without it and certainly, there is a time when we will no longer be controlled by it.

Abusers or con artists can really engage in the beginning and we get sucked in. But eventually, we start to see through them and realize they are in fact stealing from us. They’re stealing our self-esteem as they put us down and belittle us. They’re stealing our independence and our peace of mind. We feel trapped and want to walk away from them – but they convince us we can’t possibly live without them. Still, the more we see through them, the more out of love we become. The more we want to break away…

“Underneath this traumatized individual is the healthy person who has never found a way to express himself in this life because he was never given the space to express himself. He was never in relationships where his authentic humanity could be expressed”.

“Every human being has a genuine and authentic self. And that genuine and authentic self can ever be destroyed. The energy of trauma can be transformed into the energy of life”

Gabor Mate

Is your addiction getting in the way of more important things?

Are you putting in jeopardy things that are important to you because of your addiction?

You can take control of your life.

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