Just this past Saturday I had the incredible opportunity to speak at a Sober Living Home. It was an intimate setting which lent itself to great conversation. I was grateful to be there. I met some of the most incredible people. They were people that I wanted to spend more time with. Truly beautiful hearts with a range of different ages. My husband came with me and also shared.
We met a wonderful person who had been on heroin for 22 years. He had a soft heart and kind spirit. He was dedicated to starting a new chapter in his life. I come from a background of drug addiction. I used many different drugs over a span of twenty five years culminating in a three and half year daily usage of meth. Coming back from that was a painful process.
During the workshop I taught about STERBS (short term energy relieving behaviors). These are things that we do when we don’t want to feel. Most of us have gone through some kind of loss (or many losses) in our lifetime. When we experience a loss (whether it be pain in our childhood, changes in our life or health, career changes, moving, death, divorce, etc) we have an emotional response. What we don’t express gets suppressed and most of us learn the art of suppression fairly young. We usually imitate those around us and spend years stuffing. What we have to understand is that emotions are energetic in nature. That unexpressed emotional response will stay with us for a lifetime if we don’t learn tools to express it.
Now that’s where STERBS come in. Carrying around all that unexpressed emotional energy means we usually find ways to avoid it. Again, learned behaviors. That’s why underlying most addictions is unresolved grief/pain. So here I was speaking to people who are considered addicts in our modern day world. And truly they have chosen to relieve their pain with substances that are unarguably harmful. Their choice to stop using those harmful substances is a wonderful choice in the right direction.
Yet, avoidance behaviors come in all forms. Drugs and alcohol are some, yet, others include, food, sleep, work, shopping, Facebook, Internet, daydreaming, movies, television, pornography, working out, sex, gambling, video games, books, relationships, anger, control, cleaning, and even serving others. Obviously, not all of these behaviors are negative, yet, when we do them because we are avoiding our inner pain or emotional energy they become detrimental. We’ve all seen families torn apart by workaholism or people in very serious debt due to a fixation with shopping. Even focusing on others to avoid what’s inside will leave us empty. All of the above and more can become an addiction when motivated by avoidance or distraction. As one person in the workshop put it “these aren’t short term energy relieving behaviors, these are avoidance behaviors”. Very well said.
Sadly, because many of these behaviors are considered acceptable or are more easily hid, we may not realize the price we are paying for not facing what is inside. Also, we will often focus on the behavior and feel defeated when we’re not able to change the hours of television watching or the outbursts of anger. What we don’t realize is that the solution lies in facing what is underneath. It lies in taking those moments to ask ourselves what is it that I don’t want to feel. Then taking the time to write that down and to express it.
Even though I stopped using meth (and any other drugs) in 2005 I still avoided my inner pain. I used the gym, people, television, anger, control, work, sleep and a host of other behaviors to avoid dealing. Now, clearly not using drugs was a wonderful step in the right direction. However, I still had to take action steps to learn how to express and heal what lay within my heart. Many of my hurts had happened over twenty years prior, yet they were still impacting my life on a daily basis. I certainly have not arrived at perfection. However, I am extremely grateful for my healing process because I get the greatest gift of all, the ability to live life in the present moment. Now those behaviors that used to be solutions by creating avoidance become indicators that I’m trying to avoid something and allow me to chose to feel in the moment.
What are ways that you avoid feeling?
