Finding the Roots of Addiction
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Photo by James Wheeler at https://www.pexels.com/ |
In the summer before my freshman year of high school my family moved to a new town, and I started in a new school.
To this day, I feel awkward coming into a new location, or a
new job. It takes me a while to feel comfortable and confident in a new
situation. When I was a gangly, weird teenager, it was much worse.
I had difficulty fitting in and finding new friends and was
subject to some bullying. I felt isolated and lonely at times. After that
freshman year, my sister went off to college, and I had to ride my bike to
school because she had a driver's license and would drive us. For some reason,
my mom did not want to drive me. I made a few friends during that year and had
some connections at school, but then I would ride my bike home, and the house
would basically be empty.
Eventually my mom would come downstairs to cook dinner for
when my dad would come home from work.
I know now my mom had struggled with depression for a long
time. So many times, she was not available to me emotionally.
I had looked at porn from time to time before this, but
during this time it became an engrained habit. An unhealthy coping mechanism. An
addiction. It was a way for me to deal with the loneliness, the boredom, the
emptiness I felt in that empty house.
In the previous post we discussed the idea that at the core
of our addiction is some sort of wound. This wound - usually some form of
trauma - causes us to believe certain lies, false beliefs, and those false
beliefs lead us into the acting out behaviors of our addiction.
How do we identify those wounds? How do we discover the
trauma that has led us into addiction?
This has been tricky for me; I can't really trace back any
significant trauma in my childhood. So, it has puzzled me why the addiction has
been so stubborn for me to deal with.
Fundamentally, these wounds are about abandonment in one
form or another. We all need a loving connection, especially as children, and
if that loving connection is severed in some way, that creates a wound. We then
turn to porn or other mechanisms as a form of false loving connection.
Patrick Carnes, one of the leading sex addiction
researchers, likes to describe all addictions as intimacy disorders.
We need close, loving relationships, our brain chemistry
demands it. If that intimacy is missing, or if there is abuse in its place, we
may turn to substances or to porn as a substitute.
The feel-good brain chemicals that flood our brain when we
are embraced by a loved one are essentially the same that flood our brain when
we look at porn, use drugs, or act out in other ways.
We turn to porn because we need love.
It is essentially a lack of love in our childhood that leads
us to begin using porn as a substitute.
We can think back to when we first began to masturbate or
use porn, we can ask ourselves some questions:
What was going on in my life?
What was my relationship like with my mom and dad?
Did I feel loved and connected with one or both of them?
Did I feel unloved or abandoned at times?
Was I abused?
Did I feel like my parent's or other caregiver's love was
conditional, like I had to earn it?
For many, we understand why we are addicted, the trauma in
our childhood is obvious and we do not have to wonder why we use porn to deal
with the daily pain we faced.
For others, we may need to probe a little deeper. We basically
had good childhoods, intact families filled with nurturing and care. Still,
there is some pain we can find that we have used porn to numb.
Many times, we face questions like this and begin to feel
guilty. Most of our parents did their best, maybe we had a single mom, and she
had to work a lot to make sure we were fed. Certainly, her love and efforts
were genuine, but we can still be left feeling abandoned. We are not doing this
to assign blame to anyone, but to understand ourselves so that we can find
healing and wholeness.
Once we know something of our story, the next step is to
share it with somebody. My first recommendation would be to find a good
therapist who knows how to address and deal with these issues. Or you can try
talking to a pastor or a trustworthy friend who can keep things in confidence. For
me, I have always found a good forum for discussing these things in Twelve Step
groups. We can find a sponsor there who is usually happy to hear about our
story, and can offer us support and encouragement, and the connection we need.
Our pain has its roots in broken relationships, our healing
comes when we begin to establish healthy, whole-hearted relationships. When we
stop hiding, and connect with people on a real, intimate level then the wound
in our souls can begin to close.
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