OUTGROWING YOUR ADDICTION - 'The Little Boo k'

gettinbetter.com

OUTGROWING YOUR ADDICTION

'The Little Book'

By Shari Schreiber, M.A.

www.GettinBetter.com

When I first decided to write about addiction, I said t o myself; how the heck can I produce
an entire article, when a single par agraph is all that's needed? I've wrestled with this for
over three years, which (regrettably) has had me dr agging my feet about star ting. My
'writer's block' is a consequence of holding myself t o unreasonably high standards of
performance (an ADD thing). Essentially, I'm wanting to revolutionize how we think about
and go about ending addictions in a wa y that's congruent with unconventional and unique
healing work, which has alwa ys been at the heart of my practice.

So first, I've had to work really hard to get out of my own wa y and lower my self-
expectations, so I might adequately address this topic. I'm thinking it'll keep growing and
ripening like some of my other materials, but her e goes:

All addiction is caused b y suppression of feelings. If we could learn how t o Feel our
emotions rather than judging or fearing them, ALL addictions and r ecovery programs
would literally cease to exist.

What complicates this issue e ven further, is that letting go of a substance or behavior
that's helped us 'change the channel' when we 've had awkward or painful feelings, is like
saying goodbye to an old friend who's been the only truly r eliable source of connection or
comfort we've ever known. In shor t, it's always been there for us when we've had a need
for relief~ so even just the thought of letting go of that r elationship, can trigger
sensations of loss and anxiety.

Addiction is addiction, whether it's to alcohol/drugs, online social media, sex or porn,
gambling, exercise, eating, working, codependency or scholastic/athletic o ver-
achievement--and the same r oot causes and recovery principles always apply, no matter
what your drug of choice is~ e ven if it's needing to be in a relationship. Addiction's the ever-
present nagging you feel to avert feelings of depression, emptiness or deadness, and fill
that gigantic hole in your soul.
Contrary to popular belief, addiction is not about indulging in a substance or beha vior every
day. It's about staying dissociated or disconnected fr om feelings and sensations that help
you discern when you've worked-out, masturbated, dr ank or eaten enough, and st opping
before you get hurt, go numb or black-out.

If you're willing to keep an open mind, this text should mak e sense to the rational and
intuitive parts of your brain, so self-destructive compulsions can become a thing of the
past.

Conquering addiction is actually 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 journey 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, y ou beat yourself up for it.
This vicious cycle repeats over and over, until you're feeling paralyzed, hopeless and
ashamed~ and of course, needing (once mor e) to self-medicate those awful sensations!

Addicts are really hard on themselves, so there's always a need to self-medicate the pain
that's self-inflicted when we shame ourselv es, and that's the vicious cycle of addiction.
Addicts are always scanning their inner terrain and beating them selves up for something. If
you began whacking y ourself in the head with a baseball bat fr om the minute you got up in
the morning, how do y ou think you'd be feeling at the end of your day? Wouldn't you have to
alleviate that pain--and how would y ou go about that?? More importantly, who do you think
originally taught you how to criticize, shame and guilt yourself?? If you're thinking it was
your parents, you are absolutely right.

Your emotions represent facets of you. Running away from your difficult feelings, means
running away from yourself. You cannot form and maintain a solid r elationship bond with
another, until you learn how to have a healthy, nourishing, friendly bond with you.

Outgrowing any sort of addiction involves growing emotional muscles. When you first start
to feel the dark/difficult sensations you had to repress or kill-off during childhood in order
to survive around your parents, and start to trust that they can't annihilate you, emotional
development's the inevitable outcome. Addictions are eliminated when ther e's no longer a
need to numb-out, or run away from You. In short, feeling brings about wholeness and
Healing.

Conventional recovery programs such as 12-Steps, The Meadows, Betty F ord, 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 such agony, you periodically want to die? Why get sober, if all your relationship
attempts end up being disappointing and hur tful? Have you grown and healed, or have you
simply managed to stop using and self-medicating y our 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 type of treatment modality, if we don't first balance brain
chemistry, no client can make use of even the most solid and meaningful therapeutic
intervention.

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
working 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 the y read, or that some kind of 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 early psychic and emotional wound ing damages the physical body , but
Wellness has to be a conscious choice. Y our mind, body and spirit all work together in
concert. They must be on the same page and in harmony, or the symphony of your Life
goes awry.

A colleague and I were good pals for many y ears. She's slightly more than a year older than
I (and a Borderline with gobs of unhealed childhood tr auma). Each year, she'd exclaim that
her body was "falling apar t," and warn me that mine would betray me too; "Just wait till next
year" she'd always say, "you'll see that everything changes when you turn (fifty, sixty, etc.)!"
Well, I'm still fit as a fiddle, and happ y I worked hard on my inside stuff, so my outside's
holding up fine. It's not about vanity. It's about true inner harmony and peace.

You'll probably become awar e of some redundancies in this material. Y ou'll be absorbing
this information on diff erent 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' these concepts
repeated in slightly different ways, you can't absorb and integrate them--and that's what's
necessary for real change to occur. Some old 'files' inside you may get moved or
reorganized as you start to get the hang of this gr oundbreaking approach to addiction,
because long-standing (faulty) beliefs ar e being challenged and alter ed.
 ADDICTS CANNOT DISCERN THE DIFFEREN CE BETWEEN FEELINGS AND THOUGH TS.

Right about now, you could be thinking; I'v e 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
calm, serene and quiet times??

The 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 giv en 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 y ou adopted
around the age of two y ears old when you'd finally gained enough vocabulary to talk to
yourself about your pain, results in depression, fatigue and anxiety.

Busy-bodies (people who compulsiv ely run from their feelings) are addicted to staying in
motion by fixing, helping and r escuing others, because when they run out of obstacles 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 sur viving--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 star ts in infancy, and
it's associated with fear. How can you welcome an emotion like joy, love, tranquility, etc.,
that you've never even experienced? Anything that seems unfamiliar or for eign feels
intimidating--and it's natural to want to feel safe, especially when as a child, you frequently
needed to find a foxhole to hide-out in, to escape chaos, drama or conflict in your home, to
help you feel safer!

Most of my clients have a much easier time accommodating pain than pleasur e. It's the
more familiar sensation t o them, as they had to adapt and adjust to it from infancy onward.
Addicts tend to get triggered to use once more as their pain star ts to abate, because
feeling better produces anxiety.

The goal of psychotherapy is to help you feel better. The goal of healing work is to help you
learn to feel Everything--so you can become fully functional an d whole. You can't
accomplish this on your own~ even though you've probably grown up assuming you had to.
Real recovery means learning to trust somebody with y our well-being and growth, and
gradually acquiring a rock-solid sense of Self.
 THE ROOTS OF ADDICTION

First of all, addiction is not inherited. Depression, neurological and mood disor ders can be
passed along genetically, and your folks learned dreadful ways of parenting you from their
parents~ but addiction itself, is not "passed on" from one generation to the next. Buying
into this nonsense, has y ou continuing to make excuses for yourself and remaining
disempowered.

Your parents learned to self-medicate their anguish, and so did you--in fact, given that
children learn from example, your folks inadvertently taught you what methods or
substances to try first, to flee awkward or painful events and emotions.

Every child has fundamental needs. When those needs ar e not responded to, he/she
experiences sensations lik e frustration, shame, despair, sadness and rage. Since children
have a limited capacity for r easoning, they automatically assume it's their fault when
requirements for affection, soothing, comfor ting and support aren't being met--and they
grow skilled at shutting-down those important needs, because it feels uncomfor table/bad
to maintain them.

No small child has the ability t o recognize how messed-up his/her par ent is, and
understand why that adult isn 't capable of giving them loving attention, suppor t and praise.
He automatically presumes it's because he's not lovable, and spends the r est of his life
trying to convince himself it's not true, with various dysfunctional partners, who can initially
make him feel better about himsel f, but who ultimately echo the punishing, abusiv e traits of
his parent!

When painful feelings get repressed in childhood, our emotional gr owth is stunted. We
grow up trying to function with a very limited number of emotions, which hampers our
capacity to react appropriately to many life circumstances. That's when we turn to drugs,
booze, sex, food, etc., to cope with our difficult/awkwar d experiences, and the sensations
they trigger in us.

In the simplest terms, if y our parents held and soothed y ou, and helped you learn to accept
your feelings as a kid rather than escaping or shutting them down, y ou would never have
needed to numb-out your discomfor t with any substanc es or behaviors! Running from your
anguish was your only means of surviving life back then, and you've found stellar ways to
do that ever since. The trouble is, they have harmed and derailed you.

Think of it this way; your feelings are like a bunch of colors in a Cr ayola 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 (pu rple, blue,
magenta, dark green, etc.) are ignored. All these hues represent parts of your actual
emotional palette.
The outcome? If you're drawing exclusively with only warm colors, won't your pictures look
somewhat monochr omatic and uninteresting? Well, that's exactly what's happened to your
personality. It's become predictable, one-dimensional and flat or boring, lik e a cardboard
cut-out of someone 's image.

THE DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL, AND OTHER BEASTIES

Your survival instincts have kept you alive and on this planet, but the y were learned
throughout childhood--and the y became reflexive/automatic. When children experience
psychic and emotional pain, the y try hard to understand and mak e 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 ar e 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 f eelings, 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 b y the other family members, and toxic shame results~ but in truth,
the family member who is cast as 'the black sheep ' is usually the healthiest and most sane
of them all.

Very quickly, this ostracized kid learns that difficult sensations ar e 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 may 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 easier than I did, but y ou won't like being there.

I've realized many years later, that what 'died' in me when I'd worked up the courage to
navigate my own dark tunnels was my long-held compulsion to shove food in my mouth
whenever I felt bad, empty, sad, bored, frustrated, etc., ~and it radically altered my life.

The most critical information y ou'll gain as you learn how to tolerate these sensations, 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 can finally star t learning to
trust that.

DENIAL IS NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT.

Years ago, I loved a 'recovering addict' who'd always told me, "if my past girlfriends had only
been this suppor tive and loving, I could have accomplished anything!" In hindsight, I' m sure
his 'picker' was broken, and many of those women wer e Borderline Personality Disordered.
Distinct patterns emer ged during our relationship~ for one, I was all the things he said he
wanted, yet he suffered terribly from depression. I later came t o realize that without
someone to demonize for his pain, he had t o confront his own demons. The lack of conflict
in our relationship brought him face to face with his own anguish, dissatisfaction and self-
loathing, and he could no longer blame his feelings (and failings) on his pa rtner! That
reality spiraled him into the depths of a full-blown mid-lif e crisis, and no amount of
shopping for things he couldn 't afford (a transferred addiction from alcohol 'sobriety'),
could fix it.

Addiction is at the core of every person's attraction to a personality disordered individual.

Addicts feel a desperate need to run from inner emptiness, self-loathing, depr ession and
dissatisfaction. Borderlines give 'em stellar oppor tunities to do that, as all the drama, chaos
and strife in that relationship distracts them from their very own discontent and anguish,
which is central to why far too many individuals r emain with impaired or toxic partners.

Is full recovery painful and scar y? Yes, which is why you'll need a little hand-holding and
supportive guidance along the wa y. You're used to restrictions in standard recovery models
which can feel imprisoning--but the y also provide a sense of safety. Certain breeds of dogs
have to be 'crated' when you first bring them home. This helps them f eel safer, as they
adjust to their new surroundings. Getting healthier means gr adually stepping outside your
comfort zone, which initially feels a bit unwieldy and unsaf e.

You may feel miserable, but it's familiar and therefore, more comfortable than leaving that
crate! This is why dischar ged inmates frequently go back to jail. It's much easier getting
'three squares' a day, than getting out int o the world, and tr ying to support and make a life
for themselves.

You might talk endlessly about what y ou 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 ha ve 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, and you'll never be able to experience real
joy.

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 destabilizing. T he good news
is, you are supported every step of the way. The next tangible sign of your recovery is
noticing the absence of pain~ which I guarantee, will feel pretty uncomfor table at first.

THE BIRTH OF CODEPENDENCY

Codependency is an addiction. It's driven by the need to be needed, because our sense of
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 inhibit our capacity t o love and be
loved.

The non-needing child has adapted, t o make difficult feelings not matter. He adopts coping
mechanisms that help him put those emotions away, or numb them out. He might go int o
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 pain or
frustration. It's like the compulsion people have to gawk at a freeway accident. It helps
them feel thankful for their loveless, passionless liv es--but even that could invoke survivor's
guilt, which later on, can f eel shameful.

Addicts learn to feel grateful for their anguish, because ther e'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 pain! Discomfor t 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 ar e 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 t o
make them go away, and called ourselves on the carpet for ha ving 'em. Life throws us
curve balls, and our feelings and moods can shift acco rdingly. If at anytime, you're unable
to feel nice, light, loving emotions, and all the dark er 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 danger ous, nebulous
sensation they could not identify--b ut 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 fr om it--or numb it
out with a substance or beha vior.

Misery comes easy. Happiness takes diligent work. You've always been your worst enemy--
but with whom do y ou spend the most time? Recovery means learning how t o be your best
friend.

SHOW ME WHERE YOU ARE, AND I'LL KN OW WHERE YOU'VE BEEN.

From the onset of my priv ate practice internship many y ears ago, suicidally depressed
people were finding their way to my office. I was working toward a Marriage & Family
Therapist (MFT) license 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 the
discipline that schooling required of me, and still do.

It turns out, my life experiences had pr epared me to assist these people in a way that
helped them--so I was flying b y the seat of my pants, and going mostly with intuition. Not
all of them were committed to recovering, but the ones who wer e, went on to build
productive, gratifying lives. In retrospect, beneath their addictions, all these clients had a
common denominat or; they were core trauma survivors--and to fill inner emptiness or
deadness, each was addicted to one thing or another. I never chose to work with addiction,
and I certainly didn't choose 'core trauma' work as my area of specialization - it chose me.

I believe each of us comes int o this life with unique talents and abilities. If we're lucky,
these innate gifts ar e recognized, encouraged and mirrored for us when we're young, so we
can begin to learn who we actually ar e. I was a late bloomer--but one of my talents was
understanding human natur e, which got to advance and grow, thanks to some challenging
setbacks 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, painful f eelings that have been too
dangerous or scary to accommodate--whethe r they're bad, or good.

A remarkable thing happens when I' m working with new clients. The y begin to see that it's
not just 'negative' feelings that are scary to feel--it's positive ones as well. When y ou've
lacked a frame of reference for feeling good, it's gonna feel foreign and uncomfor table 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 someone else 's body.
They would literally feel so destabilized by totally new and foreign feelings, there's no way
they could tolerate it! Change happens gradually, so we've got some time to adjust to it.

Change involves growth. As a little girl I had horrible 'leg-aches' e very night in bed,
presumably because my ner ve structures couldn't keep up with the rapid growth my bones
were undergoing. It hurt 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. Mak e no mistake; I'm not a religious person by any
stretch of the imagination--but my spiritual bond is vibr ant and unshakable. A t this point, a
little background seems fitting.

At twenty years of age, I wanted t o kill myself. I was suffering an emotional breakdown, and
was in so much psy chic pain, I just wanted out. The details leading up t o this aren't as
salient as the catalysts that led t o my total loss of Self. My teenage y ears 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 weren't bad 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 "r esponsible" young woman.

So, during a time when I was supposed t o be forming an independent Self, I was forced to
surrender my burgeoning little autonomy, totally to their will. If I beha ved 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 dir e consequences surely awaited. In shor t, 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 y anked out from under me. I needed t o 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 suppr essed a whole lot of my
emotions, because it wasn't safe for them to be experienced or expr essed. 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 contr ol within that environment?

Most of the people I've worked with, were born into these types of homes. The y've had
absolutely no frame of reference for what it means t o 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 addiction to drugs/alcohol, eating, fixing/r escuing
compulsions, obsessiv e gym workouts, gambling, fighting--or e ven fucking your way
through inner deadness and despair .

By the grace of God, I was able t o 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 occur
immediately. I've spent 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 counterintuitiv e to clients, because it challenges everything
they grew up learning about how t o 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 t o 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 cease to exist.

There's a saying; The Devil you know, is better than the De vil 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 comfor ting 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 f eelings 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 AA meeting--and once again, y ou're running away
from your very own 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 alliance s, and can
gain a sense of family with kindred spirits. I think it's what keeps people going back for
years, decades or a lif etime. We seek what we never received in childhood--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 t o 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, b ut we're responsible for the action. If you've
persistently given painful or difficu lt 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, while refusing to get a job. You'll likely remain a disempower ed
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 den ying or numbing them out, doesn 't this mean that
fighting your addictive impulses will remain a continuous battle, once y ou get sober? And
what about all those good folks who've transferred their alcohol addiction t o relationships,
pastry, cigarettes--and God knows what else, when the y've given up the booze?!

GOT RAGE? BRING IT HERE!

I love working with angr y 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 very good news!

Emotions trigger chemical changes in our physiology . When we're depressed, we'll lack
energy and impetus/motiv ation. When we're angry or enraged, our body gets a big hit of
adrenalin, which is activ ating and energizing. We need these emotions to surmount
dangerous/harmful situations, and react to any emergency that comes our wa y. This is our
fight or flight mechanism, but for many of us, it was dismantled and rendered useless
during childhood.

People who've amputated darker emotions out of their personality structur e, 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 ar e 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 issues. Given that anxiety and panic ar e
nothing more than powerful feelings that can break through all emotional controls we've
put in place since we wer e kids, does it make healthy, rational sense to "get rid" of anger--or
any feelings for that matter??

The truth is, when we star t learning how to experience our emotions, we no longer have to
escape them--and v oila! Our need for the addictive substance or beha vior 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, aliv eness 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 new
strength growing 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.

"Children should be seen, and not hear d" sends the message t o a kid that he's no more
important than a piece of furnitur e or a lawn ornament. His feelings and needs don't matter
 to anyone, so he's just an object to be looked at~ not related to. This kind of upbringing
spawns sensations of shame and unwor thiness, which the child pr esumes he is at fault for
experiencing.

In childhood, you had to figure out ways to put your sad/empty feelings aside, to survive in
your home environment. It was eith er that--or take a dive off a tall building, or thr ow
yourself in front of a speeding auto. Far more children than you might imagine, commit
suicide! They can't understand their painful, dark er feelings, and there's nobody (safe)
around to tell about 'em. Much of the time, difficult emotions wer e treated as wrong by
parents who've found it inconvenient to have a frustrated, unhappy child nearby, and made
the kid "bad" just for ha ving 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, migr aine headaches, anxiety
disorders, heart problems, stomach or colon disor ders, 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 y ou 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 encour age you to passively stand by, and idly observe
your partner or child being hur t? 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 in danger? 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 car eer, I've become
convinced that many of us would ha ve been much better off had we been raised by wolves
in the forest, rather than our parental units.

SELF-MEDICATION AND THE BORDERLINE PERSON ALITY

Since we've unquestionably lo ved 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 r elational
blueprint from which all our adult attachments ha ve been built. In shor t, love equals pain--
and this pain must be mollified, or how can we maintain our lo ve affair? We have to escape
the bad parts, to hold onto the good ones--which driv es 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 who's 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 t o 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 bo x so we could feel close
again--until the next time it happened. This is precisely what we do with a BPD par tner.

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, unwor thy
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, the y 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 y ours?
Still, you "love" them anyhow--even if it's spawned by a sense of obligation (a moldy left over
from your childhood).

Each time their more favorable/desirable aspects show up, y ou think they're here to stay--
and determine that you must be the insane one. This became y our survival strategy as a
child, or you would have packed a knap-sack and taken off on your own to survive on the
streets at three or four! Sticking around despite the pain, has been practical/logical from a
youngster's standpoint--but you're still doing it, and periodically escaping inner pain, with
your addiction of choice.

Learned helplessness is a remnant from your painful childhood dr ama, 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 e verything we want, it
takes a dim view of emotions and actions that ar en't considered congruent with 'being in
service' to another--once again, de-prioritizing our feelings and needs, and putting th em 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 wr ong--and suggests that we sur ely 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 gu ilt
from childhood block us fr om receiving! That's not Karma--it's just simple, metaphysical
law.

A gal-pal always tells me how "Buddh istic" I am, and I think that's probably true. I fully
believe in the karmic boomer ang. In truth, I've likely had a hand in speed ing it up a bit. I'm
uniquely comfortable with my dark side--in fact, I celebr ate it. Does that mean I'm a bad
person?? Hell no - and if it did, I' m sure I'd have been struck down b y lightning decades ago.
What it means is, when somebody 's intentionally crossed or undermined me, I ha ven't lifted
a finger--but they've always paid a price, and I'v e 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 ther e's just no way around
it. If you won't feel pain, you can't feel pleasure--or it takes tremendous intensity t o 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 discar ded a long time ago, and
they're wanting to find their home again, inside y ou.

Being a healthy, whole person, means be ing able to experience and oper ate from a full
repertoire of different types of emotions, without self-judgment. This is what' s required, to
be a multi-dimentional, fully-integr ated being. It's easy for half-personalities to commit
suicide, but whole personalities do not contemplate killing themselv es. Ever.

CORE TRAUMA, AND YOUR ADDICTION AFFLICTION

I've seen where core trauma/narcissistic injury spawns addiction because people learn
how to self-medicate their pain fr om a very early age. Numbing-out or running awa y from
our anguish is natural, because who in the hell wants t o 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 ar en't living under our bed or in our closet--the y'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 b y the time you reached five years old. These were
your formative years, and they powerfully influence your beliefs, your principles, and y our
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 t oxic shame. Getting
well entails unlearning erroneous beliefs and faulty par adigms that haven't served you. This
can be a formidable tr ansition, particularly if you've spent many years in traditional recovery
programs. 12-steps may keep you from using--but here, we will be resolving the underlying
pain, that's made you want or need to use.

Emotional wholeness means 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 clients: If I could wa ve 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 wholeheartedly believe in it, or I'd be hunting for a diff erent
vocation that feels as gratifying.

If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod this app will let y ou hear this material;
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/w eb-reader-text-to-speech/id320808 874?mt=8

Worthy article: Can you outgrow your 12-step sponsor?

OWNING HAPPINESS~ THE PATH TO FULL RECOVERY AND JOY