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Addictions cover painUncovering the pain opens the door to rediscovering your life...Sometimes the pain is so hidden or from so long ago that we don't even know it's there. Childhood physical or sexual abuse is horrific, traumatic and has long standing consequences, but it doesn't take that kind of overt trauma to cause deep pain. Experiencing unrealistic family expectations, rejection, perfectionism, or criticism on a regular basis are equally effective in delivering the message, "You are not OK as you are." This can lead to a life long pursuit of pleasing others and an inability to recognize and meet personal needs. Early hurtful emotional experiences impact personality development. It is how a child percieves a caregiver's response that determines the child's development of self. Each of us develops roles and responsibilities in response to family stress. For example, an individual may compensate for recurrent feelings of despair resulting from neglect by becoming addicted to sensation-seeking behaviors. In the process one losses the ability to recognize emotional reactions within the self and actually blocks the ability to react on a feeling level. Someone else may respond to family stress that breeds unpredictability, for instance by developing a hypervigilant need to monitor their environment and thus experience a need to control relationships in order to feel safe. In either case, intimacy becomes a causality because closeness with others reawakens those early hurtful experiences. Resulting addictions and unhealthy relationships cause an individual to lose touch with the spirit of the person they were intended to be. Such individuals are robbed of intimacy with self and others. In an effort to avoid pain the creative part of the person gets hidden as well. Things like food, sex, money or relationships attempt to fill the void and emptiness that one desparately is driven to escape from. Rediscovering life involves rebuilding trust with self and others. It's not necessarily what others do to increase one's sense of safety, but what the individual does to develop ways to manage the tension that creates anxiety in the context of hurt, disappointment and/or conflict with the significant people in one's life. Ultimately, the individual comes up and out of hiding where creativity of spirit has freedom of expression. Healthy relationships are marked by self-acceptance and appropriate acceptance of others, whereby mutual acceptance fosters commitment. Healing occurs in the context of relationships with others.For more information call ReLife at 770-858-1755.
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