Addicted people find themselves repeatedly choosing their addictions over everything else in their lives. This includes families, friends, careers, financial stability, and even mental and emotional health. We consistently choose our addictions over our well-being and everyone we love. We’re often aware of how destructive our addictions are, yet we keep choosing them anyway. What is driving this choice? Why are we unable to choose ourselves and our lives over our addictions?
Subconscious Attachment
While we think it is a conscious choice to keep using our drug of choice, it is actually the result of our subconscious programming. This programming is the sum total of the recurring thoughts and deeply rooted beliefs we’re not even aware of. Our decision to choose our addictions over ourselves is much deeper than the thinking and decision-making we’re conscious of. Subconsciously, we’re telling ourselves that we need our drug of choice to be happy. We’ve convinced ourselves we need it to survive. Our biochemical dependence makes it virtually impossible to detach from it. Our mental and emotional attachment to it makes us terrified to give it up. We’re not consciously choosing our addictions, we’re subconsciously attached to them, and physically and emotionally dependent upon them.
Deeper Self-Reflection
When we continually choose our addictions over everything that matters to us, we tell ourselves it’s because we lack willpower. To the active addict, quitting seems a matter of resolve or resilience. Recovery teaches us that shedding our dependence is much more than having the willpower to make that decision. Getting sober, and remaining sober, requires us to look at everything that’s going on inside of us. This process requires us to go underneath the surface of our conscious choices. What are the underlying factors to this decision we keep making? What traumas have we yet to heal from? What deeper issues have we yet to resolve? Looking at our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, as well the programming of our subconscious minds, will help us to reconnect with ourselves. Through this reconnection, we can get a clearer understanding of who we are and why we keep choosing self-destruction.
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