A lot of us spend a huge amount of time and energy trying to control what happens in our life. We may attempt to control what our partner and children do, what happens at work, how we look at all times, how our friends and family behave, and what other people think of us. Ultimately all of this is wasted time and energy because we can’t control these things. Worrying about them certainly doesn’t help, it just drains us.
All we can control and change is our self – our thoughts, beliefs, behaviours – how we react to people and situations. Once we realise this we can use our time and energy more wisely, focusing on improving our self and doing what we want with our life. This is a big key to freedom and happiness. It’s like the serenity prayer:
God help me to recognise the things I can control and the things I can’t
Things I can change / control
Things I can’t change / control
What I think about myself
What other people think of me
My beliefs, opinions & expectations. How I react to & judge other people
My feelings
Speak honestly about my feelings & what I want. What I do to & for other people
Other people’s feelings
What I swallow today. What I do for exercise today
My weight today
Make amends for past actions. What I will do now & in the future
What I did in the past
The pain I feel from the past. What I say to people
What others did in the past
My level of independence. My ability to cope with what others do.How I behave.
What other people do now & in future
The people I spend my time with
Who my family members are
What I do to earn money
Time wasted in a job I don’t like
My activity & stress levels now & in the future. My diet
Being sick today
The present & what I do that may assist in a positive future
The future
Accept myself & take action to accomplish what I want
What other people accomplish
My level of gratitude for what I do have. How much I enjoy my life as it is.
What other people have or do that I can’t do
My attitude towards aging. Staying young at heart, fit & healthy
Getting older
Make the most of every day. My beliefs about what death means
Dying
More detailed explanations of some of the above:
Your feelings – When a feeling has been triggered such as anger or grief, you have that feeling – you can’t wish or ignore it away. It’s there. You need to work through those feelings, allow yourself to feel them and release them in a healthy way. Once the feeling has passed you can then train yourself not to react that same way in the future, you can change your beliefs and thinking so that you don’t get angry or hurt by what someone else does or says.
Your partner’s behaviour – When your partner does something that you don’t like, you can try to ignore it and say nothing. You can waste energy wishing they wouldn’t do whatever it was that upset you. You can waste energy trying to control them by telling them off and telling them what you think they should do. Or you can try to manipulate them so that they feel guilty or ashamed to behave the way they did. Ultimately all of these techniques will not work and will only cause larger problems. You can’t control anyone else’s behaviour, so you’re wasting your time. You’re better of to stop, look and listen to yourself. What has upset or annoyed you? Why? What do you assume your partner’s behaviour means? What has it triggered in you from the past? Is your judgment about the way it should be done reasonable? Learn from it. Then honestly discuss your feelings and your response to what they did with them. That way you can both learn about each other and resolve the issue.
Expectations – Let go of conditional thinking – if I do ……….. then ………….. will happen. Life is not that simple and having expectations just sets yourself up for disappointment. Let it go and flow with life.
Prepared by: Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, 2006, Letting go of control and worry, adapted from: Hendricks G & Johncock P, 2005, The book of life – the master key to inner peace and relationship harmony, The Transformational Book Circle, Ojal, California.
Connecting to your heart is the greatest gift you can give yourself and the greatest challenge, for to feel the joy of the heart you first have to feel all its pain and burden buried from the past. Peeling these layers off leads you back to joy, happiness, peace and love – eternal love, feelings of aliveness and contentment – the ability to just BE.
Accessing the heart is easy when we feel courageous enough to go there. Just tune in to it, set your focus, your intention on your heart, close your eyes and imagine entering inside your heart space. Here you will be met by whatever you most need to feel and release. It may be sadness, grief, anger or rage. It may be a feeling of numbness, loneliness and isolation. It may be fear or terror. Breathe through it all.
Your heart space may appear dark – turn on a light, open the curtains, strike a match – whatever feels right to you and see what you can see. Set about cleaning the space, removing clutter, dust and cobwebs and decorating it into a cosy, warm, inviting space. This is how you start to re-enliven your heart space. It tells your heart you are willing to listen, to see and feel what needs to be felt. You are willing to connect and come home to your true self.
Often when I do this exercise, I find younger versions of myself hidden away in caves or corners, in the dark, cold and wet. These parts split off when I was younger due to their being too much emotional pain, fear or loss. When I find these parts I automatically start crying tears of relief. I scoop the younger me up and bring them into my heart space. I hug them, tell them they are loved and safe now, that they never have to be alone again. I become the loving parent to that part of myself. After they have been bathed, fed and clothed we sit in my heart space and talk and play, then they rest knowing they are finally home. It is a beautiful feeling.
While this appears symbolic to the mind, it is real to the body. The body stored the pain, the terror and loss. It is locked away in our cells as cellular memory and it needs to be released for us to be fully healthy and vital. So each time you do this process and you free another part of your self you truly are healing and coming back to a state of fullness, innocence and peace. Well worth the effort!
Let your imagination guide you and take you where you need to go. You may see bats fly out of a hidden space or ice melting symbolically showing frozen emotions are thawing. It all has meaning! If you are strongly mind-oriented you may find this difficult to do. Keep doing it and you will open up more and more. Even if all you see / feel is darkness and silence sit with it, breathe and see what happens, what you feel. If your mind comes in saying this is pointless or stupid, just thank it for trying to protect you. Your mind has helped you avoid the pain for many years, it becomes automatic and so it will feel uncomfortable changing that pattern and choosing to feel. Persevere and one day you may find rainbows and treasure in your heart space, joy and celebration as you settle in to your true home.
This post contains information I prepared as a course handout on addiction several years ago. I share it in the hope that it assists someone to gain clarity and insight into how best to help themselves or a loved one suffering from addiction. Love, Jodi-Anne.
Addiction types and why used
There are many types of addictions. They vary greatly from substances relied on to help us get through the day (coffee, tea, sugar, fat) to those stronger drugs used to escape our feelings and reality (alcohol, smoking, cannabis, LSD, coacaine, heroin, etc). There are also addictions that are action based (work-a-holism, shopping, gambling, lying, stealing, sexual addiction). There are many types of addiction. Some society condones – study, working, shopping. Some society fears and shames those involved – illicit drugs and alcoholism.
All of these addictions are used as a way to cope, to attempt to feel better, to enjoy life, however the high is only temporary, requiring the addict to use again / to repeat the activity over again. Sometimes at higher doses or risk. Until ultimately there is a crash – a near death experience – over dose, car crash, blood poisoning; a terrifying experience – waking up in an unknown place or with an injury or person you don’t remember connecting with. It may be a loss of a job, home or family when they can take it no more. Some tragedy has to happen for the addict who is truly afflicted and caught in the co-dependent cycle to wake up and want to change. Without that crash the addict may not be ready to make the effort to heal. No-one will be able to force them to. Healing is an inner process that must unfold at a rate the addict can handle. It must be done in a supportive environment where the addict feels safe, accepted and encouraged. Any guilt, shame, pressure or judgement will just drive them further into addiction.
An addict may seem to improve temporarily but if you watch closely you may notice that they have simply swapped one source of addiction for another – changed substances or fixes. To really heal you have to go within, deal with the source of the unrest, of the need to medicate, numb out, find a high. You need to heal the pain, release the shame, guilt, feelings of loss, abandonment, not being good enough, not being loved and accepted as you were by your parents and any others through your life that have caused you trauma or a low sense of self-esteem and self-acceptance. You have to learn to love and honour yourself and treat yourself well – to become your own happy, loving parent.
Addiction sources and healing process
Some addicts do come from what appear to be happy homes, but somehow they developed an angst that needed to be filled by an addiction of some sort. Perhaps they felt stifled as a child, given too much attention, felt a need to achieve or be perfect. They may have felt trapped in a box of expectations and felt they couldn’t live up to it, so they gave up.
They may indeed have had a happy home (this is extremely rare due to the way the conditioning process works – the psychology of child development and the most common child rearing practices and disciplines). But let’s say they did have a happy home. They were totally loved, accepted, held regularly, fed when they were hungry, comforted, had all their needs met. They weren’t yelled at, disciplined through harshness but through kindness. They escaped unharmed from their early years. Then they went to school! For many people school is a nightmare – from bullying, to challenges with subject material that they can’t grasp or feeling they don’t fit in, or can’t do what others can – sport, academic, dance – whatever it may be. Some very rare individuals may escape school unscathed. Then comes relationships and work where further potential loss, hurt, betrayal, feeling not good enough, rejected, etc can come.
Somewhere along the line life provided a knockout blow that the person couldn’t cope with and they turned to an addiction to cope, to numb the pain, to feel free of their inner pain. They may be able to cope when the specific events occurred but they are cumulative all adding together until one day the foundation crumbles and addiction commences.
Even those who start young experimenting with drugs and alcohol do so because they are unhappy in some way. This is not to say their parents did anything wrong. They probably did the best they could. But their child has grown vulnerable to addiction due to some experience. The way society operates today encourages this. We are all so busy rushing around that we don’t get to love and cherish our children as we should. Working parents, divorces, step-parent issues, poverty, stress, use of TV and computer games as ways to escape and entertain children. All diminish the quality time connecting – talking, sharing, encouraging / accepting, honouring, loving each other, sitting quietly together or in nature playing non-competitive games or art or dance or many other ways that we can interact in positive relationship building and affirming ways that let our children know they are loved, accepted, okay. They are safe. The world is a good place that will provide their needs. They can follow their hearts and achieve their dreams. Few children get such a positive foundation to life, a foundation of self-acceptance and self-esteem to live from.
Most get fear and self-judgement, a need to impress or achieve or hide to keep safe. These are the underlying sources of addiction and it is these issues that need to be healed so the addict stops self-medicating or moving from one form of addiction to another. When they heal they find inner peace, love and eventually even joy and happiness. It can be done. It takes a lot of effort and willingness to face your past, feel and release the emotions buried within, face the fears and risk showing who you really are, risking rejection and ridicule to follow your heart, speak your truth, even if it is very different to other people. You become your authentic self, the person you were born to be, that has been hiding behind addiction and a raft of defense mechanisms acting as a protective mask. Keeping the vulnerable true self hidden away safely inside.
Addiction is very challenging to overcome as using is so quick and easy compared to the healing work. This is why for most people it takes some kind of disaster – trauma and crisis – to get them ready to make the effort, to face their demons and break free. Without that it is just too easy to keep escaping. But when you’ve truly lost something you love, then that shock, that pain may be enough to tip the scales. That is why you should not ‘enable’ an addict. Don’t clean up after them, bail them out, lie or make excuses for them. Don’t try to protect them by rescuing. They need to face the consequences of their actions if they are to heal and take responsibility. Yes, it is hard to watch them suffer but if they create the mess they need to deal with it. You can simply be there to support them emotionally as they pick themselves back up, offering love, forgiveness, acceptance – this is what they need.
Rescuing and the drama triangle
Some ‘do-gooders’ think they are helping but they actually have their own form of addiction called ‘rescuing’. They get to escape the dissatisfaction they have in their own life – be that with themselves, their relationships, their job, their family, etc – by focussing on whoever they are rescuing. They feel good about themselves, righteous even, and this is their fix. But their love and support is not real, it is conditional. They will be there for the addict for a length of time, appearing so saintly and wonderful, but eventually when they get frustrated enough, they will snap, moving from ‘rescuer’ to ‘persecutor’ telling the addict off, judging them as a hopeless case. The rescuer didn’t get what they wanted – to feel like they saved the addict and the addict owed them, was grateful to them. That doesn’t happen so they move into the persecution role, which does not help the addict at all.
The other role that gets played is that of ‘victim’. When the rescuer knows the addict is lying to them, using, stealing or in some other way being irresponsible the rescuer may accept this for a while, until they again move into the persecutor role. Upon which the addict becomes victim to their tyranny of judgement and imposed shame, blame and guilt.
This is the drama triangle and each person moves through the roles of victim, persecutor, rescuer until someone steps into the centre of the triangle, speaks the truth and stops the game. This triangle happens all the time in life – at work, in families, with friends. It is a pattern that repeats until people become aware of it and no longer allow the game to proceed. Choosing instead to feel, to heal, to speak your truth. This is one of the first steps in healing.
So the seeds of addiction are planted from a very young age, especially if there is a family history of addiction that is repeated generation after generation. This may partly be a genetic predisposition, but it is also simply learnt behaviour. If you grow up in an active addiction filled home – you learn that is the way life is lived. You simply see that as normal as you know no other way. This is how it repeats. Also you will tend to subconsciously play out the pattern attempting to heal the issues with your parents. So many ‘Adult Children of Alcoholics’ marry an alcoholic. They either become an alcoholic themselves or they marry one or work with one. They attract it into their lives so they face their pain and heal.
Again this happens naturally enough – if they were raised in an alcoholic home that is what feels normal to them, so they accept partners behaving that way too. They may believe deep inside that they don’t deserve better, that this is how relationships are. Their beliefs affect their actions and their experiences in life. It is these beliefs that need to be changed to break the pattern and cycle of addiction and pain. Getting to the point where you do believe that you are okay, lovable, acceptable, that you deserve to be treated well, that you are a good person, and that good things can happen to you. These and many other positive subconscious (deep) beliefs form the foundation of health and recovery. “I cope easily with my life”. “I love and accept all that occurs”. “I forgive those that hurt me and let go of the past”. “I live in the now and focus day by day”. “I’m doing okay”. “I’m proud of how far I’ve come”. “I know I will make it”.
The use of affirmations can be very powerful. This can be done for free wherever you are. Have them written up where you will see them and read them regularly. Say them out loud. Write them and notice what negative comments occur within you. Repeat this – writing the affirmation and then listening for the internal reaction, writing that, then the affirmation again. Do it about 20 times in a sitting. This will give you insight into what your resistance to healing is, to what negative beliefs you have that need changing. This is a powerful process to do. You can use affirmations many times throughout the day when you feel yourself tempted to use your addictive substance or behaviour.
You can also use ‘Thought Field Therapy (TFT)’ or ‘Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)’ – energetic tapping processes that helps to relieve the build-up of energy encouraging you to use. With TFT there is a sequence to use for addictive urge. There are also tapping sequences for releasing the underlying emotions and problems leading to the urge. This helps to release the pent up energy and emotion. It is similar to acupuncture but without needles, just tapping on the meridian points. There are many different treatments that can be used. Some cost, some don’t.
Affirmations is a good place to start as it is free and it works. At first you may feel stupid saying to yourself “I love and accept myself” over and over. You know you don’t believe it. But repeating it regularly plants the seed in your subconscious and it slowly sprouts and grows, till one day you find you do actually believe it. The strength of affirmations is increased if you say them while looking at yourself in the mirror. You stare into your own eyes while saying “I love and accept myself” or “I choose health and happiness now” or whatever affirmation you use.
The process can be sped up by using techniques like ‘Psych-K’ or ‘The Lifeline Technique’ which reprogram the desired belief into your subconscious mind. It literally replaces the old one so that your dominant, underlying thought is the new one. These techniques are part of the new energy psychology tools that have evolved from split brain research. They help to get both sides of the brain communicating which makes subconscious belief change possible – quickly and easily.
There are many different ways to health, for some they will start with swapping from a less desirable addiction to one less dangerous – so the heroin user may become a sugar junkie or a gym junkie and push themself that way. Notice that word ‘pushing’ – that is a key challenge. Most people do not spend enough time ‘being’ – time spent being still, meditating, listening to their thoughts and feelings, dealing with whatever arises within them in the silence. It can feel uncomfortable, unnatural, a waste of time at first, but this is all just resistance to actually being with yourself and feeling everything that you feel inside. Persevere with it and you will find relief.
Whether you choose to meditate, sit in nature, use guided visualisation CDs, or do exercise then rest. Whatever method you use to help your body relax, de-stress and find peace is an important part of the healing process. Some embrace reiki, energetic healing, chakra balancing, massage or other body-work, which helps soothe your body and release the buried emotions and trauma from your cells. It all takes times and you move forward step by step, day by day, removing layer by layer the buried emotions, trauma and debris accumulated within your body. Be kind to yourself.
Surround yourself with others committed to healing so that you can encourage and support each other. This is why 12 step groups work. They provide a safe, accepting environment and community to be a part of. Clearly hanging out with active Addicts is not going to be helpful, so sometimes you do need to change friendship circles, disassociate from family members or others who encourage addictive behaviour. This can be very saddening and challenging, especially as some people will try to make you feel bad for doing so. They don’t want to face their own stuff and you choosing to do so reminds them that they should. Rather than feel that, they may choose to lash out at you. Don’t fall for the ploy. Be strong. Be loving and kind to yourself as much as you can. It is your life and you can choose to live it however you wish.
Remember there is a lot of support out there – from 12 step groups, counsellors and other therapists, to call lines and much more. If you truly want to heal and break free you can. Here are some good places to start if you want to find out more.
