“I exploded on the addicted part and told it it has been lying to me.”
Ruthie writes: “I have done Focusing with my addicted part many times. In and out of formal sessions, I have listened to it tell me how it (and the food and sugar it brings me) is saving my life, keeping me happy enough to want to keep living, numbing my emotions enough to feel some peace. For years, I have explored the reasons for my eating, both in and out of Focusing sessions, with compassion. A couple of weeks ago, though, I just got angry. I was driving and just exploded on the addicted part. I told it that it has been lying to me. That it is not saving me, but killing me. That every health challenge I have would be better if I were NOT overeating and eating a lot of sugar. I said that I don’t really expect it to entirely go away (the addicted part), but that I don’t want to give it the REINS anymore in my life.
“I felt so strong and centered just then. And for a couple of weeks, I cut way back on sugar. And then it began to creep in again. The addicted part is so very subtle. Sometimes it will whisper an excuse to me for eating; other times, it will just take over. It does not bother to argue. The rest of my mind goes into paralysis, as if to say, I feel you there, and I’m abdicating. As if to say, all of me wants this. I know that is not the ultimate truth, but at those times, the addicted part is running its program without resistance.”
Dear Ruthie,
This is a classic picture of the “addiction war” — and the addiction war cannot be won. There will never be a winner, just an endless, exhausting back-and-forth between the “controller” who sometimes speaks with reason and sometimes with anger, but who has no real power over our actions, and the “defender” who has no need to speak, just acts impulsively and without regard to the future.
The only way that an addiction war can change is by going to another level. As long as “you” are caught up in the war, any action you take is just another aspect of the war. (Barbara McGavin and I call this situation a Tangle: a complex stuck situation that cannot be solved by taking action within it.)
This is a huge topic, too big for a short answer, but this much I can say: the addiction process is secondary. There is something underneath it, driving it. It is my experience that the addiction war cannot be shifted at the level it is operating… but a shift is possible by going deeper.
What is deeper? Two things: a stoppage of forward life energy that happened at some point in the past and is still continuing, AND the pain of that. We can call it (another nod to Barbara McGavin) the “unlived life and the uncompleted pain.”
Addictive processes can be viewed as management and avoidance of this “unlived life” (pain and longing) and “uncompleted pain” (which something in you is afraid is unbearable).
What it is Not-Wanting you to have to feel…
You speak of listening compassionately to what the part that does the addictive behavior wants for you. That’s fine, but what’s missing there is listening to what it is Not Wanting for you — what it is trying to keep you from having to feel or experience. In there, in the body experience of the not-wanted feeling, is the pathway down into the deeper process that underlies the addictive one.
A gentle warning: don’t push. Go very slowly, work with a partner who can remind you to go slowly, and be ready to stop if any part of you doesn’t want to go on. Be sure you are Self-in-Presence, and stop to refresh Self-in-Presence any time in the process that you need to. For this kind of deep work, you will need all the Self-in-Presence you can get, in yourself and in your Focusing partner. It takes time… but it is worth it.
