We’re taught to look at addiction like a negative thing that happens to us.
But that’s not really what it is at all, and to think of it that way is to misunderstand an addiction’s true function.
Addiction, at its most fundamental, is a primitive reaction to trauma — or, essentially, a coping mechanism for your life. Your addiction is a human predicament that is programmed within you as a child. It has nothing to do with who you are.
We have to reframe the narrative around addiction. Instead of perceiving addictions as monsters that are out to get us and ruin our lives, try to see them for what they are: your very human strategies for surviving trauma.
You didn’t choose that trauma, and you didn’t choose your addiction. But you can choose to see your addiction as a challenge that makes you a victim or empowers you to live a fuller, richer life.
What is Addiction, Really?
Let’s back up for a moment and address the fundamental question here: What is addiction, really? When I say addiction, most people think of drugs or alcohol. But in reality, this issue is much larger than any one group or addiction that develops in reaction to trauma.
You can be addicted to anything — belief systems, thought patterns, emotions, depression… The object of your addiction isn’t itself necessarily bad. It’s your relationship to that thing that can become problematic. The key to overcoming your addiction is to heal the pieces inside of you that are driving your addictive behavior.
Often, trauma comes from the belief that we’ve done something wrong and need a way to deal with it — it usually starts in childhood. As children, we blame ourselves for the things that cause us distress. As children we are supposed to be self-centered.
All too often, the trauma of this shame imprints us and creates certain negative beliefs within us that are deeply painful. So, we find dependencies to help us cope.
Our brains instinctively come up with this survival strategy. It starts out at the most primitive level — it’s not a thought process, but a primitive, ingrained response. The good news is that, as long as you’re still here, that strategy has worked!
But if addictions are survival strategies, why are they bad?
First of all, we need to move away from these rigid ideas of good and bad, black or white, all or nothing. Addictions are survival strategies, yes, but there are better ways to cope with your pain — ones that can guide you back to your joyful, happy, and free inner nature.
This is why things that don’t seem objectively bad can still be harmful addictions. Think of someone who is a compulsive reader. You may think, “What’s wrong with that? They aren’t hurting anyone by spending time inside reading books.”
They may not be hurting other people, but they’re using fantasy as a way to cope with pain. Disappearing into books and spending all your time absorbed in fantasy worlds is a very limited way to live your life.
Survival strategies take up a lot of space in your life. You depend so much on the thing that keeps you going that you have less and less room for anything else. If I smoke five packs of cigarettes a day, I’m dependent on a system. Because that system is working, it keeps me stuck, because it brings me comfort — and I think that’s the best I can expect.
We have to realize that none of those things that imprinted us as children were ever our fault, or anyone else’s. Children can only do the best they can with what they have to survive. We have to forgive ourselves. We have to do the work to reprogram the blame and the way it has made us feel about ourselves.
Addiction doesn’t give us what we need for courage or confidence. It doesn’t allow us to have experiences that require self-reliance, courage, or a sense of responsibility
Open your life to something bigger. Addicts tend to be very black-or-white with no in between. Everything is either intense or boring. All or nothing. There’s a resistance to the middle way. But, if you look at a rainbow, every color exists between black and white. There’s richness in the middle — you just have to be open to the wonder.
How Reframing the Narrative of Addiction Can Transform Your Life
Our addictions got us this far, and for that we should be thankful. Try saying thank you: “Today, I’m here because of you, and I appreciate you. But today, I’m ready to make room for other things.”
Yes, you should be concerned about bad habits detrimental to your health and wellbeing. But this survival mechanism comes down to two things: either you’re going to die or stay alive.
Instead of thinking what we are traditionally led to think, reframe it this way: if you have an addiction, no matter the damage it’s done, the addiction did what it was intended to do – keep you alive! You survived. You are a survivor. You are surviving.
Get Unstuck
The neural pathways you developed in response to trauma as a child can be reprogrammed. But you have to be willing to walk through the muck of those old traumas and hurts. You don’t have to look at your addiction as the enemy.
Doing that work is not easy. It will, however, reveal the richness that exists between the existing black-and-white ideas about addiction and healing. It can take you from simply surviving to living a rich, full life beyond your imagination.
Confronting Your Trauma
There is a way to move from survival mode to living a rich, full life beyond your imagination. But you have to do the work. All the scary, painful things in your life… you have to confront them.
Think about going through a breakup. Maybe you used alcohol or food or gambling to numb the pain before. What about this time? The goal is to mindfully and deliberately move through the pain as if walking through a fire. No excuses. No search for sympathy.
You’re going to move through the pain so you can get to the other side. You have to matter enough to yourself to walk through the most painful experiences so you can access the full richness of life.
You are the only one who can do the internal work that is necessary for me to move forward and create change.
Building Trust and Connection
You have to do the work yourself, but you don’t have to — and shouldn’t — do it without support.
Generally speaking, people who get into addictive habits have learned not to trust others along the way. Most of us grew up without proper connections with the people we relied on most. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or how much money you had — even some of the richest people in the world grew up without emotional connections to their families.
But it’s those connections — or lack thereof — that define our ability to love ourselves, feel worthy, and develop healthy habits. We develop neural pathways that give off vibrations that make us drawn to what we grew up around. Whether they’re good for us or not, their energy is familiar, and that prompts a sense of belonging.
We have to break this pattern by bringing people together. When you develop a recovery system of bringing trustworthy people together, you create a collective network of people who have a common goal and develop real, supportive relationships.
Building trust with people helps us to create new neural pathways that allows us to go out into the expanded population and open ourselves to all the languages of life that we’ve previously kept silent.
Is it Time for You to Get Unstuck?
If you want to step outside the patterns of your addiction, you have to do the internal work. But to even start that work, we had to recognize a problem. Our addictions are big red flags that help us recognize the deepest challenges within us — and every challenge in life is an opportunity to move through it.
To your addiction, you can say, “Yes, thank you for helping me survive. No, thank you, to this as a way of life.”
The Get Unstuck program can teach you powerful, practical techniques to heal your inner trauma, and you’ll be able to implement what you learned within a community of support that will help you rebuild your trust in human connection — and in yourself.