What is often missing in addiction recovery is deep-feeling (inner child) work. The word addiction can be confusing because most addicts/alcoholics like myself have put the cork in the bottle. We stopped the addiction, but haven’t stopped the addictiveness.
We go to another addiction. The addictiveness is like the “hole” in the soul. The “hole” in the sole is what needs to be grieved.
In order to do that we need to go back to our family of origin (FOO) and grieve our mother’s abandonment, our father’s abuse, our childhoods that were robbed by sexual molestation, violence, growing up in dysfunctional family. Personally, I had to grieve all of this.
It involved feeling the feelings that I had avoided since childhood; the feelings of pain, sorrow, shame and rage. Doing all this work helped me to love and accept myself more fully.
This grief work is psychic work and occurs in several stages, the most important being the deep sorrow (weeping) and the stage of passionate anger. As children we needed to cry and express anger. When we are forced to repress emotions it leaves imprints on our neurological system. These imprints are there in spite of having no memory of them.
Our active addiction(s), and thus our addictiveness (addictive behaviors), in recovery are automatic responses that we use to safeguard us from emotional pain. The addictiveness is the manifestation of our unresolved and frozen state of hurt.
Many of us don’t understand this because it is covert (hidden) and it is freaking difficult.
For example, after we put the cork in the bottle, we feel entitled to everyone’s love and respect, but at the same time our addictiveness prevents us from acting in respectable ways. So if we don’t grieve our addictiveness, we will jump from one addiction to the next.
You and I see this all the time in the halls of recovery and in our family members who are active addicts. We see the low recidivism rate of folks coming out of treatment. They stay sober for a little while, and then they pop back out because they haven’t dealt with their addictiveness.
I remember my mentor Reggie telling me this when I was about 2 years sober and beginning to do my own deep-feeling work. He told me that some of us cannot do deep-feeling work because it’s too frightening. When we think about the emotions and feelings we experienced as children, it is overwhelming and quite scary. We push them down or aside because they terrify us.
However, if you are in recovery you need to know this about feelings: Feelings are distressing, but not dangerous.
I will repeat it because I know that alcoholics and addicts need repetition and also because, when we are afraid ,we can’t hear.
Feelings are distressing, but not dangerous.
A lot of therapists who work with recovering addicts/alcoholics cannot do this deep-feeling work with their clients. They may be psychiatrists … who work with schizophrenia, dual addictions, mental disorders, or cognitive behavioral work. But what is missing in treatment is the deep-feeling (inner child) work, so that when folks leave treatment they have tools for dealing with their addictiveness.
What has been beautiful to watch in my own journey, and I am humbled and grateful to be 30 years sober now, is that I’ve gone through a stage where I needed to go to 12-step meetings, lots of them. I needed to have support; this was very important. I needed to put my sponsor in my pocket and find a competent therapist to do my family of origin (FOO) work.
Then it became extremely important to do some cognitive behavior work, or skill-building which I did in individual and in group therapy. I had to learn how to set boundaries … how to say no … how to express anger … how to ask for what I want, and probably more importantly, I had to get back to my values.
Because when we are active and drinking alcoholics or addicts of any kind, we are neurotic and/or emotionally disturbed and naturally bankrupt. We have lost our sense of values and virtues. We only know how to go from one extreme to the other, all or nothing.
Virtue is the middle.
Aristotle says, “A virtuous life is a fully actualized life.”
Therefore the full healing that comes in recovery is that we truly come to live a virtuous life.
In order to live a virtuous life we have to learn how to find the middle, which has to do with a whole lot more than not using. We can no longer afford to live in these extremes if we want to be healthy.
The most beautiful thing to me in my recovery is that over the last 8 years I have been developing true virtue in my life which is a habituated way of being.
A habituated way of being means I know what is dangerous … and I know what is joyous.
There is a line in a movie about C.S. Lewis that says, “The pain you had then is the joy you have now.” Or … “The joy you had then is the pain you have now.” That’s the deal. That’s life’s deal in recovery. When we’ve suffered a lot and we come to the joy … it’s so much greater.
Joy in Recovery,
Paula M. Smith, M.Div., M.A., MFT
Therapist | Scholar| Seminar Leader | Author
401-782-7899
www.paulasmith-imago.com
