One of the things we must confront in our recovery is our tendency towards complacence. When struggling with addiction, we often became complacent in our pain, stuck in the comfort zone of ignoring our problems and pretending as though everything was fine. We weren’t yet willing or ready to do the necessary work. We gave up on ourselves. We lost hope. Recovery forces us to confront our issues head on and pushes us, sometimes forcibly, out of that false sense of comfort. We have to sacrifice the comfort, ease and familiarity of the lives we were living, our complacent tendency towards denial and avoidance.
We grow complacent because it’s easier than doing the hard work of facing ourselves. We’re afraid to look at ourselves honestly, to see how we’ve been causing our own pain, to see just how our addictions took root and developed within us. We don’t want to admit the mistakes we’ve made. We’re not ready to face up to our wrongdoings and regrets. We’re afraid of the process of making amends to the people we’ve hurt. It can feel so much better, so much easier and so much safer, to stay complacent. We get lulled by the comforting idea of staying secure in our comfort zone, where we can’t push ourselves or risk judgment, rejection or failure. Our complacence, therefore, keeps us small. It limits and restricts us. Recovery asks us to do the opposite. It asks that we expand ourselves, to try things we’ve never tried before, and to approach our healing with boldness and courage. It asks that we risk everything, our comfort, our sense of security and safety, in order to figure out who we really are.
Underneath our complacence, underneath our addictive patterns, lies the truth of who we are. We’ve been so afraid to discover this person, to do this inner work, that we’ve avoided it all costs. We stop trying to grow and improve ourselves. We give up on learning and self-development. We distance ourselves from the people who challenge us, who confront us on our issues, and who push us to be better. We’re afraid of asking ourselves the tough, important questions. “Who is the best, truest version of myself? What do I have to do in order to grow? Who am I capable of becoming? What am I capable of achieving?”
Our addictions feed off of our complacence, our avoidance, our denial, our escapism and our inaction. Recovery asks that we push ourselves harder, that we rebuild our faith in ourselves, and that we start fighting for ourselves again.
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