Oftentimes we’re so focused on the day to day of our addictions, our drugs of choice and how to score our next high, the difficult life circumstances we’re incurring because of our addictions, the effects our addictions are having on our relationships and on our lives overall, that we don’t always realize how much our addictions are actually fueled by fear. Many of us aren’t even conscious that we have these deeply rooted, underlying fears driving our addictive, self-destructive patterns and mental illnesses. When we start doing the inner work of recovery, of really looking at ourselves and our thoughts and emotions, we discover that there are some acute fears we have yet to heal, and we realize that our recovery is contingent upon healing them.
Some of the common fears we experience that drive our addictions are fears of inadequacy, fears of abandonment, fears of loss, and fears of confronting our pain. When we don’t feel good enough, when we lack confidence and a healthy self-esteem, we often will try to drown the pain of our self-hate and insecurity with drugs, alcohol and addictive behaviors. Similarly, when we’re living in fear that we’ll be abandoned or that we’ll lose someone we love, we develop very unhealthy relationship patterns as well as addictions as coping mechanisms. Subconsciously we think we’re protecting ourselves, but really we’re just hurting ourselves more. Many of us are deeply afraid of facing our pain head on. We’ll do anything to avoid having to feel it. We use our drugs of choice to self-medicate, to distract ourselves from our pain and numb ourselves to it.
Our addictions are our form of escapism from our fears. When we’re ready to do the work to heal, we realize we can no longer run from our fears. We see that there really is nowhere to hide from them, because they’re within us, causing us intense pain, and no matter where we go, or what we do, or what kind of relationship we’re using to try and distract ourselves, we’ll still be driven by those fears until we really heal from them. As we recover, we learn that our spirits are in fact stronger than our fears, that we’ve developed the limiting belief that we’re weak and powerless in the face of them, but that we can undo this belief by working to truly believe in ourselves and our strength.
At The Guest House Ocala, we have personal recovery experience and over 12 years in the recovery industry. We have helped countless people recover, and we’re here to help you too. Call 855-483-7800 today for more information.