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When Love and Compassion Compound Our Guilt and Shame

Our experiences with addiction can come with some very complex interpersonal relationship dynamics that can be very hard for us to understand. One of these dynamics is our resistance to the compassion and support of our loved ones. Most of us would probably assume that anyone would want to be helped while struggling with something as difficult as addiction. We might think it would be stubborn and prideful of them not to. When we haven’t experienced this particular dynamic for ourselves in our own lives, it can be confusing and perplexing, and hard for us to wrap our brains around. It can be painful for us to see the addicts in our lives rejecting our giving, loving nature. Why someone would want to refuse the love and support of people who care for them is beyond us. For those of us who have been in this position, the answer can be clear. When people are loving towards us, when they are compassionate and patient as we struggle with our addictions, we can feel even more guilty and ashamed. We can feel even worse about ourselves.

Limiting Beliefs of Unworthiness

Our addictions feed off of, and create within us, limiting beliefs that we’re bad people, that we’re shameful and immoral, that we’re inadequate and unworthy. We compare ourselves to non-addicts and feel inferior to them. We feel as though we can’t possibly measure up. We see our self-destructiveness, all the mistakes we’ve made, all the wrong we’ve done as further evidence that we’re unworthy and undeserving of love. When people do love us, especially those people in our lives who love us unconditionally, subconsciously we feel confused, ashamed of ourselves and overwhelmed, and our instinct is to reject their love. We resist their offers for support. We push them away. We close ourselves off and isolate ourselves. We have a hard time opening up to them and allowing them to help us. We don’t believe they should forgive us for the things we’ve done wrong.

Subconscious Responses

Consciously we know our family members and friends love us, but subconsciously we believe we don’t deserve their love. These feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy have been major players in our addictions. We use to escape how lonely we feel, how badly we feel about ourselves, how much we believe we deserve to be alone. We use our drugs of choice as substitutes for the love we crave but reject from other people. We feel guilty when our loved ones still love us after everything wrong we’ve done. We feel ashamed of ourselves when their love is consistent and unconditional because we believe we don’t deserve that kind of pure love.

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