The Depth of Denial in a Sober Addict
Is it easier to claim a life-long genetic disease than to admit core issues and work on them to heal and move on. Generational curses can be lifted and addictions can be cured. It happens. But not while we sit redundant meetings never addressing the real reason we drank and drugged in the first place.
You cannot save your face and save your ass at the same time. If we want to really heal, really overcome addiction we must go to the places where we feel
most vulnerable. Or label yourself “diseased” for all of your life and settle in with the reality that it’s much more kool to have a disease than an emotional dysfunction. Is it so shameful to admit core issues and address them that one would rather be a genetic misfit and un-fixable than to have a childhood trauma that can be healed. And when that trauma is healed there is no longer an intense reason to fataly numb ourselves.
Change can come to any of us if we do the work to get the results. When it comes to addictions, if we simply write off our issues as hereditary and non-environment connected then we have little chance of changing. We may stand firm in our denial and take no responsibility what-so-ever for our addictive tenancies. We simply blame our emotional condition on an obscure gene pool. Most addicts find for themselves it’s easier to blame our behaviors on a genetic twist of events rather than emotionally traumatic circumstances. Simply put, it takes too much work we think to delve into the origin of past hurts and pains. Not to mention our primal natures bent on protecting the pack (mom, dad, brother, sister, uncle, etc) are so strong protective ideologies step in where enlightenment is scratching and clawing to get out and our true hearts are desperately yearning to be heard. And then there’s the false pride screaming at the door of truth shaming us into submission. “Don’t share that truth!” our false pride screams. “If you share that truth no one will Love you. For sure, everyone will make fun of you if you express any kind of hurt or need.” So says our false pride. Yes our own intellectual false pride is at war with our true and feeling heart.
Our own intellect condemns what our heart wants to speak. Our intellect calls our heart “weak” and “needy” because it wants its truth to be heard and it needs to be loved for who it is.
We have learned through conditioning as adolescents that our truth is wrong and bad. That even we ourselves are wrong and bad. So we continue to stifle and repress every authentic truth that springs from our heart.
We submerge ourselves into our left brain where we don’t have to fear feelings like hurt and neglect. We go to the place which we know is safe from prying eyes that would tell us we are wrong. In our left brain exercises we are safe.
And be sure…our left brain artistic activities do soothe us and protect us from the pains of rejection and inferiority. However our activities are but a band-aid for the original wound that begs to be expressed so it can finally heal. Until we go back into the past and become a vulnerable child. A child who DOES care what other people thinks of her. A child who is allowed to say she is hurt and cries. A child who looks at her friends and says “I want you to like me” a child who wants to be thought of as good and is GOOD. Yes until we allow that child who craves mommies love and daddies attention to have her voice. Until we let our heart have it’s voice all our efforts of distraction are merely a band-aid on a wound forever seeping. Our emotional pain without a voice will stay infected. And many times the infection will come out sideways onto those we love the most, those we have no intention of hurting.