Our Strong Attachments
Many of us struggling with addictions and mental health issues have a relationship to our emotions that is based on strong attachments to them. We feel strongly attached to our pain and our trauma. We feel defined by our emotions, and we self-identify with them. We hold our fear close to us, thinking we’re protecting ourselves with the coping strategies and defense mechanisms we’ve developed. We have a hard time letting go of the past. We grieve for long periods of time without ever feeling our pain ease up at all. We struggle to forgive ourselves and others, and we hold grudges, holding onto bitterness, resentment, guilt and shame. Our emotional attachment causes us a great deal of inner turmoil and conflict. We tell ourselves we want to get better, we want to let things go, we want to be happy, but we can’t seem to detach from our emotions enough to allow ourselves to.
Finding Relief in Being High
As addicts, many of us we find that using our drugs of choice helps give us the feelings of detachment, nonchalance and relief we’re desperately seeking. When we’re high, we feel more detached from our emotions. We feel as though we can release them a little more easily, or at the very least, live with them without quite as much pain involved. When we don’t want to feel our sadness, our grief, our fear, anger and shame, our drugs of choice give us a way to escape them. We can begin to feel better about ourselves, less insecure and self-hating as we detach from the confidence issues we’ve had for much of our lives. Being high can make everything in our lives feel a little less difficult, stressful and painful. We can find ourselves feeling less worried, anxious, depressed and overwhelmed in our daily lives. We love how it feels to get high because it’s providing us with the emotional detachment we need to not feel our pain as acutely.
Healthy Emotional Detachment
Detaching from our emotions is not an inherently bad thing, provided we’re still examining them and learning everything they have to teach us. Emotional detachment doesn’t mean avoidance, suppression or resistance, common emotional patterns we often fall into when living with addiction. It simply means we don’t hold onto our emotions so tightly causing ourselves more pain. It means we allow ourselves, and our emotions, some space and some breathing room, to allow ourselves to observe them, investigate them, sit with them, meditate on them, and move through them with more grace and ease. We can use things like creative self-expression and energy healing, as well as yoga and meditation, to help ourselves practice this concept of emotional detachment in our recovery.
At The Guest House Ocala, our recovery programs include many experiential modalities including traditional therapy, conscious connected breathwork, equine therapy, somatic experiencing, art in healing, grief therapy, mindfulness and other forms of therapy.
Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488