Say what? That’s right. If you’ve been suffering with substance abuse or any other addictive behavior, it’s not your problem. And if you’ve tried to quit or been to addiction treatment (particularly multiple times), it’s really not your primary problem.
Addiction is not the problem, it’s what we do about our problems. I know. Not dealing with my problems led me to addiction, and it tried to kill me. Almost succeeded, too. I was a person who carried the baggage of growing up in an alcoholic household, spare the rod-spoil-the-child discipline, church every Sunday, parochial school, one of 10 children kind of upbringing.
What we didn’t know then we now know for sure now. When we incur wounds, emotional wounds, we are going to find a way to adapt and work around them, protecting ourselves from further wounding, getting along, people pleasing, hiding in humor, in books, in gaming, in porn, whatever gets us some temporary relief from the pain of those wounds.
The dilemma is that we are always going to seek out that temporary relief unless we heal those wounds properly. The best way to do that is to engage in effective therapy. The challenge for those trying to overcome the wounds and burdens from the experiences of our lives, often our lives growing up, is first buying the fact that those things that happened so long ago could be impacting me today. Impacting my behavior, impacting my emotions, my decision making, how I make meaning, how I see the world. Setting old attitudes about therapy aside and becoming willing to look at those old wounds is the beginning of healing.
Effective therapy provides those battling addiction a way out of the baffling realities of addictive
behaviors, whatever they are. Once you heal your old wounds, the need for the addictive
behaviors can fade away. Once you are healed, you can more authentically decide what your
relationship with your behaviors is going to be. Then you can live the life were always meant to
live, end your suffering, and move to success.
