The losses we’ve sustained in our lives are some of the most difficult experiences we go through. They cause us tremendous sadness and grief. We live in fear that we’ll undergo the same huge loss we’ve experienced in the past. We fear getting close to people lest we lose them too. We isolate ourselves. We push people away. We have a hard time confiding in people. The impacts of our losses show up in our lives in all kinds of ways. How do our losses contribute to our addictions?
Coping Mechanism For Our Pain
Our struggles with addiction are often our means of trying to escape our emotional pain. When we’ve experienced loss, we often are afraid to feel all of the painful emotions that accompany it. We’re afraid of being overwhelmed by the grief and heartache. We’re afraid of ever having to feel that loss again. We use our drugs of choice, including addictive substances, behaviors and relationships, to numb ourselves from how devastating our losses have been for us. We use our drugs of choice to fill up the voids those losses have created, to feel less empty and alone, to distract ourselves from our persistent sadness, confusion, loneliness and overwhelm. Our addictions become our coping mechanisms for our pain.
Creating More Pain and Loss For Ourselves
When we use our addictions to cope with the pain of our loss, we aren’t actually healing, we’re only compounding and exacerbating our pain. We’re not finding peace within ourselves. We’re not coming to terms with the loss, or finding a way to live with it, or reaching a place of closure around it. We’re running from our pain, which only makes it worse. Many of us find that when we’re living in this way, we ultimately sustain even more losses in our lives, sometimes a string of losses due to our addictions, because our problematic patterns are creating such a powerful energy of loss and pain that we are attracting and manifesting more loss moving forward. We might be so toxic within ourselves and in our relationships that we don’t know how to have healthy relationships, and we wind up losing them because of our toxicity. We might push people away because of our tumultuous addictive patterns. We might be so afraid of loss that we’re holding on to people so tightly that they run from us. Our fear of loss might cause us to attract people who are emotionally unavailable, who eventually make us feel abandoned, since our fearful energy tends to attract more of what we fear most. Our unhealthy relationship with loss can create more loss, and more pain, when we don’t learn healthy ways of grieving and finding peace.
The caring, compassionate staff of The Guest House is here to support you as you start your journey to recovery and healing.
Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488