Addictions – Part 7 – Healing
When I have healed an addiction, this is what has worked for me. First of all, I'm substituting my addiction for something I want and am not getting (or don't want and AM getting); or I am imagining some scary scenario that I have to avoid at all cost. So first step is to discover what I Really Want; or turn around and face the scary scenario … or both. In the case of my sugar addiction, I was constantly hungry for something sweet. What I discovered was that *I* wasn't being 'sweet' to me, so I got 'sweet' from another source. It wasn't satisfactory, of course, because I could never take in enough sugar to fill the hole being dug by my habit of de-valuing myself.
In the case of my phobia of public speaking (and it was a phobia), I faced the "What If" my worst fear came true. To this day, I have butterflies of anxiety in my gut before I do any public speaking. And I've done 100s, if not 1000s of public speaking engagements over the last 3-1/2 decades. But now my phobia doesn't stop me. *I* am stronger than my fear, and it's still there. OK. My fear doesn't have to be gone before I step out. *I* am in charge of whether or not I step out. My vision for doing good in the world is stronger than my fear of having rotten tomatoes thrown at me. If that happens, I will deal.
Once I've done the seminal work, usually with support, and I'm clear about the missing piece or the future catastrophizing, then I'm ready to do the real work of transforming my addiction/fear into living in the Real World. And actually, I can take this step without knowing the formative basis, and it does help to know the truth.
In my journal, daily for 40 days, I record two things:
1. The feelings I felt when I was free of my addiction/fear – sometime or another during the current day, I was free – feeling the rain on my face, interacting with a child, engaged in a conversation with a clerk, etc. The feeling of freedom doesn't have to be associated with the addiction – just any moment of freedom. So I record the lifeshock (the moment) and the feelings, and FEEL the feelings as I re-experience that moment. Then expand the feelings until I feel them even more fully than I did in the original moment. (That strengthens the neural connections associated with my essence – naturally connecting, at home in my body.)
2. Remember a time that day when I was ensnared by my addiction/fear. Go back to the moment just before I got ensnared and record how I imagine I would have behaved had I been free of my addiction/fear. Visualize my senses being alive and addressing the moment as a free woman – open, real, powerful, trusting myself and all that happens .. and FEELING the feelings of being That Alive. (This supplants my old neural network with neural connections that are more congruent and viable.)
3. Share my journey with my support partner … invaluable! The more I share myself this way, the more conscious the pattern becomes, the more I notice when I'm free. When I'm hooked by the addiction/fear, my reactive mind denies all reality contrary to the lies which bind me. So talking about my moments of freedom and the way I transformed my moments of incarceration moves it all into the light – into visibility – into consciousness – and hence more into clarity, which sets me free – free of guilt and/or shame.
NB The mind does not distinguish between images that are pure imagination and images received through our sensory receptors. So the more we visualize being free, the more we notice that we already are … breaking the trance of our negative images.
