Emotions & Addiction ~ Serenity Wellness Podcast E63

Hello,

Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast.

My name is Nicole White,

And I'm here to help you build your wellness toolbox for mental,

Emotional,

Physical,

And spiritual health.

Welcome to episode 63,

Emotions and Addiction.

As I move into today's episode,

Please know that I come from a place of complete non-judgment in sharing this information.

As a therapist,

I specialize in co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders.

Honestly,

It creates some confusion for me when they're screening questions for substance abuse treatment centers and they ask if the individual is also struggling with mental health.

The two go hand in hand.

Anyone who is struggling with addiction is also struggling with mental health.

I'll also share that through my early 20s,

I had my own struggles with addiction and I have a strong family lineage of addiction.

Addiction has a hold on the community I live in now,

The community that I grew up in,

And communities across the world.

You might even find it in the community that you live in right now.

It hits our loved ones and the loved ones of those we love.

Some have lost their lives,

Some are still caught up in the battle,

And some have broken free from those heavy,

Heavy chains.

Addiction has no barriers.

It can get a grip on anyone,

Regardless of where you come from.

I share all this to reassure anyone listening that what I'm going to talk about today is something I'm deeply familiar with in all facets of my life.

The societal struggles with addiction continue to increase at alarming rates.

We know so much about the dangers and hazards of addiction,

But at the same time,

The deaths from substances like alcohol,

Opiates,

And meth are skyrocketing.

It's truly heartbreaking to absorb the reality of what is happening around us.

When in an addictive relationship with a substance,

It can be easy to numb out to this reality,

Or to minimize any potential hazards.

And for those who are watching someone else trapped in the battle with addiction,

It can feel really powerless as you watch it impact their life.

Keep in mind also,

As I talk through this information,

There's also behavior addictions.

Eating disorders,

Self-injury,

Sex,

Porn,

Gambling,

Gaming,

Those are some common ones.

But it's this continual act of a behavior or an action that's causing harm and disruption,

And the behavior continues.

Although on the surface,

When you hear some of those behavior addictions,

You might notate that the harm levels vary a lot depending on the addiction of choice.

But when a behavior lands in addiction,

There's harm.

Not all harm is seen by the eye.

It's like we know not all mental illness is seen by the eye.

Not all those who are struggling with addiction show us that on the surface.

Even work can become an addiction,

An escape.

Sometimes people explain to me that they're addicted to escaping,

That they'll bounce around between a few different choice addictions,

Finding anything just to escape from the now.

One large area to have consideration around when thinking about addiction is emotion.

Many of us weren't taught about emotional readiness when we were growing up.

No blame,

Just facts.

We didn't gain proper understanding or tools to process or even know how to communicate our emotional experiences.

We might find that we have a primary emotion that we're comfortable with.

It's often the emotion that we were shown the most,

Things like worry or anger,

Depression.

If we were shown how to worry,

You know,

Maybe you had a caregiver or a parent who worried a good bit,

You might find that you're really great at coming up with some creative scenarios in terms of worry.

Or if someone was prone to anger when we were growing up,

We might know all about the emotion of anger,

Except we might not really know all about the emotion of anger.

Maybe we only know about those higher levels of anger,

Like rage,

And we don't realize that anger is a healthy emotion,

But it can come through in a balanced way.

Or depression,

We might have learned about depression,

But maybe it was only shown in a really kind of deep way of depression where lots of escaping from life or real challenges in everyday functioning because the depression was shown to kind of swallow up the person.

We gather information on how to process emotions,

And sometimes the gathering is a little limited,

Or sometimes we're not shown all the emotions or even taught that they're all important.

You know,

Sometimes we're even taught messages to get over it or we're too sensitive or our emotions are wrong.

We can be told all kind of things.

And at times we might even have a hard time identifying what certain emotions feel like.

Sometimes people just don't even know what emotions feel like,

So they don't even know that they're experiencing them,

Or they jump over the emotion into the one that they're more familiar with or find themselves working extra hard to avoid the emotion altogether.

We can get looped into these learned cycles of how to process and handle emotions.

We continue driving in a broken down car on the same crumbling highway.

Our emotional comfort level also contributes to our comfort with body awareness and the experience of our body.

With each emotion,

Our body's participating.

Our heart rate,

Our breathing,

Cortisol,

Adrenals,

That participation of our thoughts,

The mind engagement,

All the different ways our muscles engage with holding all that tension all over the place,

Just to name a few.

But when we have this desire to disengage from our emotion,

We also have a desire to disengage from the body and that experience the body's having with the emotion.

We might not want to feel the elevated heart rate or that fuzzy kind of body feeling we can get with anxiety or deep pit in our stomach that comes along sometimes with depression.

We can train ourselves in many different ways to get away from these experiences of emotion and body.

And it can also lead to having a life riddled with addiction.

Connecting to our body can certainly be challenging at times and it can even lead to these resistance cycles or this kind of internal desire almost to continue to disconnect or to grip on to our muscle tension.

I've mentioned before how with progressive relaxation,

Sometimes I won't work with a client on that technique of connecting with muscle tension and release for a little while until they gain safety,

Trust and comfort in their body because there's this cling or this grip to the tension that the release almost makes them want to hold it more.

So we can have all these different ways of trying to disconnect or trying to escape and then this internal response system to try to drive us or to hold on to things and then how addiction can easily get looped in there to numb us out and to escape.

Addiction can often start as just that desire to numb out and escape for a bit,

To escape from emotions or escape from the body response.

No one starts a substance or a behavior with a desire to become addicted.

The addiction center in our brain is so tiny.

It's about the size of the tip of a pen,

Even if that.

But despite its tiny size,

It can be really powerful.

It can release this instant cloud of haze over our rational decision making,

Our connection to the hazards,

Even make the individual lose sight of just personal care in their everyday.

Not even caring about eating or personal hygiene.

It just can completely cloud over and fog the rational being or part of the person.

As someone starts to engage in addiction,

The highway centers start to break down in the brain,

Keeping in mind neuroplasticity.

These things can get repaired.

They can get reworked.

But in the process of the addiction,

This breakdown starts to happen in these highways in the brain that lead to the empathy,

Impulse control and mindfulness centers.

This further then impacts the communication with the amygdala,

That emotion control center.

It starts this whole continual process of escapism through the addictive patterns,

Keeping them on repeat.

The repeat is this toxic or harmful thread.

And toxic and harmful thread,

It just keeps the person looped into self-sabotage and destruction.

In the throes of an addiction,

The substance or behavior can become attached to any emotion,

Even happiness.

You know,

Maybe first it starts as a way to numb out a bit from stress or overwhelm or well I'm really angry today or kind of worried or I'm feeling sad or let me celebrate,

I'm feeling really happy today.

It just starts kind of connecting to anything,

Any reason and then suddenly we don't even need a reason,

It's just there.

When struggling with addiction,

A sense of personal value and worth can kind of feel lost or disconnected.

The shame and guilt that individuals experience around talking about their addiction or getting help,

It can lead them to instead stay in the cycle.

A fear of being judged or abandonment is something that weighs very heavily on individuals.

And this can especially ring true for individuals who were raised around love that had lots of conditions.

But our fundamental nature,

Our being is love.

Beyond the darkness,

Beyond the weights and heaviness of addiction,

Of toxic decision-making or behavior patterns,

Our internal self knows we're worthy of something different.

Our addiction cycle can have such a stronghold that it starts to take over the mind and body quickly.

It starts to feel comfortable there.

And we don't even recognize the things that we're denying ourselves in the process.

The repetitive crises and further darkness that we bring in instead.

Those aspects of our core self that we just give up on.

Even our passions.

They'll just get thrown aside to instead offer more time for whatever addictive path that we're connecting to.

Those very things that we love and enjoy that feed our soul will be the things that we let go of as part of our sabotage.

Breaking free from addiction is not easy,

But it is absolutely 100% possible for everyone.

Everyone's path is different on how they get there.

And it does absolutely take a commitment to love yourself,

To not give up,

To know that it's going to be hard,

But that you are worthy of the challenge.

Nothing is harder than living in an addiction.

Yeah,

Breaking out of it is hard,

But man,

The darkness,

The destruction,

The lies,

The manipulation,

The broken sense of self,

The broken connections.

I mean,

That's hard.

The loneliness.

Yeah,

Breaking it is difficult,

But it is 100% possible.

And what's on the other side is way less difficult than the struggles of the darkness of an addiction.

Surround yourself with people who are in alignment with the path of recovery.

Those who support you and do so with non-judgment,

Compassion,

And empathy.

So often in society,

People lose sight that many are just one decision away from living in their own addiction or homelessness.

Imagine if everyone had love and compassion for individuals suffering through chronic cycles of self-sabotage with addiction and escapism behaviors.

The power the collective has in building strength and reassurance,

In lifting those around us who need a helping hand to see the light of hope,

It can save a life,

Guys.

There's an abundance of support and resources to develop these tools and to offer guidance in the process of healing.

No one has to do this alone.

Even when we don't have family that we feel we're connected with or who support us,

Or maybe we find our friend list is really limited because those we used to associate with are part of our addiction.

Perhaps we've looped into self-judgment and self-sabotage as part of our addictive cycle so far that we isolated ourselves from others.

Today is an opportunity to begin to shift.

All of the Serenity Wellness Podcast episodes have free mental health information and tools.

Also try to find a connection to a therapist,

A spiritual advisor,

Or a support group near you or virtually.

There's so much available virtually now.

Listen to podcasts,

Read books,

Absorb all that you can to assist yourself in creating the life that you deserve.

You're worthy of this commitment to a healthy you.

Showing yourself unconditional love and positive regard,

It will create this internal vibration of wellness and love that starts to bring in all the external abundance.

Find the right fit for you.

There's many different types of therapy and support groups.

My style of therapy doesn't fit everyone.

There are many different types of support avenues.

12-step programs,

Non-secular based recovery networks,

Online support groups,

Churches and spiritual centers.

Find your connection.

Find what feels right for you and know that you're worthy of getting the help that's there.

There's also the Substance Abuse and Mental Health National Hotline and that's available 24 hours a day,

7 days a week,

Every day of the year.

It's going to connect you or someone you love to someone who is there to help,

To help get into services,

To help get into support,

To give them an ear,

A listener who's there to listen with non-judgment and to help to start to formulate a plan.

That number is 1-800-662-HELP.

So that's 1-800-662-4357.

Find your connection.

Find your support.

Please share this with others you think might benefit.

Many are working through some heavy times in life right now.

Let's support one another.

Thank you for sharing space with me.

Stay tuned,

Stay well and thank you my friends.

Talk to you soon.