If you bring forth that which is within you,

then that which is within you will be your salvation.

If you do not bring forth that which is within you,

then that which is within you will destroy you.

The Gnostic Gospels

For example, take the parents’s need for respect, where the child learns not to say anything negative to the parent or assert their person and talk back to them, in order for their parent’s need for respect to be fulfilled.   Or when the parent needs the child to grow up too fast, and become adult like long before they are developmentally ready to do so.  This, so the parent can have their need to be cared for fulfilled.  In these ways the child begins to act in ways that are not authentic to themself, but rather in ways they sense on some level are expected by the parent.  They realize being loved for who they are just isn’t going to happen.  That in fact, according to Janov, “it is hopeless”.  As a result, the child turns to repeating back their words to the parent and acting in ways that are not authentic to themself, and therefore not aligned with the reality of their own needs and desires.  In time, not being aligned with their own needs and desires becomes the child’s normal way of being.

If love existed in the life of the child, they would be able to be themself, as love is about letting someone be who they are.  It’s the hopelessness of never being loved for who they are that causes the psychological split in the child, between the authentic and inauthentic selves.   The child denies the realization that his own needs will never be filled by being who they are, no matter what they do.  Substitute needs develop as a result.  These substitute needs turn up as symptoms like nervousness, worries, fears, issues with self-confidence, self-sabotaging thinking patterns, obsessions and compulsions.  All outward signs of burried pain.  As the pain accumulates within, repression builds in its own quiet way.   When the child is thoroughly repressed, they lose touch with who they are.  Humans, being the adaptive creatures that we are, find ways to adapt to the pain inside, and go on.  But the pain is still there, and it doesn’t go away as we grow up.  Do you see where this is heading?  The repressed pain that results from not being loved in a way that meets our needs growing up stays with us as an imprint that gets stored in the cells of the body.   In time, depending on circumstance, the child, or youth, or adult  find their own way(s) of coping with the pain, which can include one or more of the addictive behaviours.  In too many cases, making the choice to resolve an immediate condition like pain in the short-term, can lead to the development of a full blown illness in the long-term.  Over time, unmet needs and the pain inside that follows, can mark the birth of addiction.

Please note this post is not about blaming our parents for not giving us what we needed growing up.   Parenting philosophies and practices of their day were no doubt in the way of doing so, not to mention how well our grand parents raised our parents.   This post is more about continuing to cultivate an understanding of our psychological travels through life.  This, so we may recover and heal, and also, so love  may blossom in our hearts for ourselves, as well as for those we care about today.

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, but hope for the patience to win my freedom.”

Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Poet/Saint

Ever wondered if there is anything you can do to grow out of the psychological conditions labelled ‘addict’ and ‘trauma survivor’?  Well, there are.  Eventhough each carry the burden of feeling trapped in a world of unending pain and suffering, each also hold the potential for relief and transformational change.  The question is how ready and how willing are you to do what you can do for yourself, right now, to move out from where you are and into a new condition of mind and body?  It’s a big question.  And for some one that rouses a genuine fear of the unknown.

What would happen if you stepped out of the warm emotional nest of an old identity, one you’ve been tending for a very long time, even if it’s been a painful one, and into an identity you’ve never experienced before?  What would happen to the comfort of the familiar pain?  Where would it go?  More importantly, how would you feel without it?  Exposed?  Frightened?  Relieved?  How would you identify yourself when the words ‘addict’ or ‘trauma survivor’ no longer apply?  Then what?  Who would you be then?

The good news is the movement out of a comfortable emotional nest of an old identity and into a new one is a natural process.  It can be a process that unfolds at a pace that is comfortable for you, where you can do what you need to do to take care of yourself, in the now, while you grow steadily into a new you.

What would this process look like?

• Creating safety and preventing relaspe, and getting clean time under your belt.  This lays the foundation for the emotional work you may know you need to do.
• Learning to regulate your emotional experience in order to be in control of it once again.  This will help you to feel safe through the healing process, and to prepare yourself for future emotional work.
• Creating a container for your felt experience through your body to learn to be in the present moment as it is, unfettered by wishful thinking about the past or future.  The present moment is your point of power for healing and forward movement.
• Enlisting the support of compassionate others who are both walking the same path as you, and who have walked this path before and  know the way through.

Together, this approach will meet  you where you’re at to enhance your power to change by working with, and not against, your natural healing instincts.  It will help you to grow into the person you already know you are deep inside.  Stay tuned for details about an innovative new program being designed to support you through this life enhancing process.

How does this translate into the ‘real world’?  Well, take drinking for example:  What if you’ve been conditioned to want a drink whenever you feel stressed?  And what if there was a moment when you’re desiring the drink when you could allow the desire for the drink to be okay?  To see desire for what it is . . .  just another desire . . . and to feel desire in the body . . . to name what it feels like in the body . . . and then within the privacy of your own mind, lean back from desire and simply be there with the perception of it, without taking any action (yet).  What would happen then?  Well, it would give you the ability to . . . pause . . . to consider the ways in which you could respond to desire, before you actually did anything about it.  Rather than being pulled back into a tour of duty with the addictive behaviour.

How can you let desire for something be okay?  You do it by learning to hear the Witness.

In Steven Cope’s masterful work ‘Yoga and the Quest for the True Self’ he talks about how the Yogis discovered that if we can work with our awareness in a way where we acknowledge sensations as they arise in the body, experience these sensations fully, and perhaps most importantly, bear them, we can find freedom and no longer be bound to the world of duality.  We would no longer have to feel compelled to react to sensations as they arise.  In bearing them, we let them be.   In letting them be, we can see them for what they are.   In Yogic practice this is called the Witness conciousness.  It holds the power to free us from our own conditioned responses and to the play of opposites in the world of duality.  In learning to work skillfully with the Witness, psychological healing will flower.   This is awareness in action.

“If you want to intercept the secondary waves rising, you need speed and clarity of perception, an acute self-awareness.  If your lake is muddy and impure, if there are lots of toxins in your system clouding your vision, clarity of vision is impossible. . .  Someone who is clouded, toxic, sluggish, discontented (blaming others is a prime cause of discontent), and restive in mind is never going to catch a secondary wave coming to the surface.  It will have expressed itself in action before they even notice it.  It is through the acute awareness and speed of action that we cultivate in asana (postures) and pranayama (breathing practices) that we can reform ourselves.  In addition, by breathing before acting, we are able to slow down our responses, inhale divinity, and surrender ego in our exhalation.  This momentary pause allows us the time for cognitive reflection, corrective reaction, and reappraisal.  It is the momentary pause in the process of cause and effect that allows us to begin the process of freedom.

The endless process is breath, cognitive reflection, corrective reaction, reappraisal, and action.  Eventually this process blends into the present moment, no past, no future, but action and right perception soldered together in a peerless moment, and then another moment and another.  Eventually, we are no longer caught up in the movement of time as a sequence or current sweeping us along, but we experience it as a series of discrete and present moments.  No rising thought wave can escape the sharpness of such vision.  It is what we call presence of mind.”

How present are you to the activity going on in your own mind?

“If consciousness is like a lake, there are primary waves or fluctuations of consciousness on the surface of the lake. These are easily discernible. An example is that if you are invited to dinner by dear friends and, at the last minute, they ring to cancel, then you’re very disappointed, you’re unhappy, you feel let down, and you deal with that on the surface. You have to calm yourself down, get over your disappointment. This is a challenge, an external challenge as it were, that causes a ripple on the surface.”

“The secondary fluctuations or waves are different. Those are the ones that rise up from the bottom of the lake. The bottom of a lake is covered in sand and so, if in life you experience a sufficient number of disappointments, the ripple on the surface creates a wave that goes down to the bottom, and imperceptibly that ripple creates a little bank in the sand, so there is a little mound of disapointment. As a result you will find yourself frequently disappointed or sad at this mound at the bottom sends off secondary fluctuations or waves.”

“Let us look at another common example. If you constantly find yourself being irritable, annoyed by something – your wife, your children, your parents, or anything at all – a sufficient number of irritable reactions will create, imperceptibly, not in one time only, a little mound of irritability at the bottom of the lake of consciosness, and that will eventually make you what we call an irritable person, an angry person. If you have smoked since you were sixteen, every time you pick up a cigarette in the day you are also brainwashing yourself. “In this situation I pick up a cigarette” mound. That’s why cigarettes are more difficult than almost anything else to give up. Aside from their physical cravings, we create mental cravings because the habit is very repetitive. The habit of smoking puts itself into every situation. The triggers to that situation are so many that many smokers still sometimes want to smoke even years afer they have stopped because the mound is still there . . .”

“The practice of yoga is about reducing the size of the subliminal mounds and setting us free from these and other fluctuations or waves in our consciousness. Everybody aspires to be free. No one wants to be manipulated by unseen forces, but effectively, the banks of samskara* in the dark depths of the unconscious do just that. As stimuli from the conscious surface travel rapidly down through the levels of the lake, the encounter uncharted banks of sediment that cause secondary waves of thought. These in turn stimulate, in a way that is beyond our comprehension or control, behavior that is both reactive an inappropriate. Our reactions are preconditioned and therefore unfree. We cannot break out of the old pattern of behavior, however much we long to. In the end, we may accept the situation and just say, “It’s the way I am,” “Life always lets me down,” “Things just make me so angry,” or “I have an addictive personality.” But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a way out.

In the next post, we’ll look at the nature of Yoga and how it can help us to effectively overcome our negative habits.

* subliminal mound; mental impression

What is recovery all about anyway?  What does it mean to recover?  What was lost in the first place that needs recovering?  Webster’s online dictionary defines the word recover as to regain, as in, ‘to bring back to a normal position or condition’.   This implies a movement back to a place of origin.  What would this place of origin be for the person in recovery?

In a previous post, addiction was defined in part as a condition surviving in a space of separateness through which the individual has lost a sense of connection to self.  (’What is Addiction?  March 21st, 2009)  It is a dissociated state of being that exists suspended from the experience of being itself.

To be, means to exist.  To exist, means to be present.  What’s missing in the life of the person in active addiction is their undoctored present moment experience.  How do we gain entry to our present moment experience?  By paying attention to our experience in the here and now.

The Yoga tradition teaches through the vehicles of the breath and the body that we can become attuned to paying attention to our experience in the here and now.  By watching, sensing, and feeling what is happening in the body, and by following the rhythm of the breath, we can leave the experience of separateness in a bygone moment.  In so doing, we become better able to re-connect with our authentic experience in the present, no matter what it may contain.  For the person in recovery, coming back to our place of origin implies coming back into our authentic experience in the here and now.    

• Tolerance:  Either taking more to achieve the same effect, or taking the same amount that has less effect.
• Withdrawal:  Either experiencing characteristic withdrawal symptoms for a substance, or doing something to avoid or relieve withdrawal symptoms.
• Usage:  Either the amount used or duration of use, is more than what was intended.
• Control:  Either trying repeatedly to control usage or reduce usage.
• Time:  Either using, recovering from use, or trying to get the substance to use, is how a considerable amount of time gets spent.
• Blinkers On:  Either reducing or abandoning important work, social activities and/or leisure activities to focus on using.
• Negative Consequences:  Continuing to use in spite of being aware of developing physical or psychological problems.

So . . . having said that, if it’s addiction you’re dealing with, and you know in your heart you want to stop, here are a number of things you can do about it right now.

• Detox:   If it’s an addiction involving alcohol or drugs, consider going to a medical detoxification facility in your area, to safely withdraw your body and mind from the substance. You will be supervised by a doctor and/or nurse and other support staff while you transition into a clean and sober life.  If there is no such facility in your area, consider consulting with your physician, or a doctor in a local walk-in clinic or hospital emergency ward, or with a counsellor in an addiction focused outpatient clinic, for information and support about the withdrawal process.
• Safety: This is a critical issue in early recovery:  creating a safe world around you to abstain from the addictive behaviour.  This is where a 12 Step meeting like Alcoholics Anonymous or Overeaters Anonymous can be very very helpful.  You will find other people there who also want to stop.  Gathering together with like-minded people is not to be underestimated as a potent medicine for recovery.  It is.  Addiction grows in isolation.  You begin to turn things around when you give yourself permission to come out of isolation, that sense of feeling separate from yourself, the human community, and the natural world.  Moving out of isolation can occur through the synergy created from the process of sharing your experiences with others, and listening to them while they share theirs with you.  When done in a safe environment, it’s one way to begin healing the effects of addiction.  If there is no 12 Step meeting in your area, or you’d just rather not go there, ask yourself this:  Who in your life is on your side? Who can you call when you feel like using, and don’t want to?  Who can you call when you need to talk your way through a difficult or triggering moment? Who can you call when you just need to talk?

• Start Developing a Plan.  Think of it as a map you could use to help get you to your desired destination.  Here are a few things to consider as you begin developing your map to prevent the return to an addictive behaviour.  Is where you spend your time free of the behaviour you’re trying to stop?  Are you taking care of your body with good nutrition, healthy fluids, and regular exercise your body enjoys?  Are you being kind to yourself?  Do you commit acts of violence against yourself?  Do you know how to relax?  Is there a hobby or talent you enjoy that you could bring back into your life?  Can you identify people, places or things that could trigger the addictive behaviour?  Do you know why you started the behaviour in the first place?  Do you know who you are?

Stopping an addictive behaviour is no small feat.  It’s something few people can do alone. Most people benefit from meaningful support to launch them into recovery and a self-affirming way of living. Needing or wanting support is not about being weak. In fact our brains are hardwired for relationships.  That’s how we’re built.  Needing or wanting support is about being human.  Personal isolation is one of the hallmarks of addiction. Allow yourself come out of that frightening, lonely place. You’ll be so glad you did.

If you know you’re dealing with addiction and you’re not sure you want to stop, talking to someone you can trust can be enormously helpful while you come to the very best decision for yourself.  Take the time to talk it out.  You’re worth it. 

Where can you turn?  To a local addiction clinic, a compassionate doctor or nurse, a good friend or trusted relative, a professional in a mental health office who understands addiction, a non-judgmental minister or priest in your community, a person at a local Alcoholics Anonymous (or other 12 Step) meeting, an online forum or service, just to name a few.  Take the time to talk it out.  Having a future depends on it.

Dr. Gabor Mate, a physician working with people struggling to live with and overcome alcohol and drug addiction on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area in the poorest postal code in Canada, writes in his very very good book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts:  Close Encounters with Addiction”, that ‘Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious.  They are emotional anesthetics.’  He goes on to say ’Not all addictions are rooted in trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience.  A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours.’

Through chronic addictive behaviour, over time the unhealed hurt can lead to things like arrested emotional development, arrested vocational development and its tethering to underachievement and  underearning, fragmented relationships, impaired health and well-being, spiritual disconnection from self and the world around them.  It can lead to acting out the unhealed hurt through violence toward self, other, or community property, which  can lead to jail time and loss of freedom.  It can lead to the loss of time, and with it the loss of opportunities to cultivate a life worth living.  Addiction devastates and destroys life in those who seek it, and in those who love the ones that do.  How many of us are not touched by the life of someone who is engaged in addictive behaviour?  Has such a behaviour taken hold in yours?

In our next post we’ll take a look at what can be done to heal the hurt that leads to the development of addiction.  In the meantime, take care and stay safe.  As always, we welcome your thoughts below.