As an addict, whether my addiction was expressing itself through chemical dependency... codependency... process addictions such as food, work, porn, sex and love, approval seeking, toxic guilt and shame, being distant and aloof, shopping, or social media... no matter what it was... I could relate to it as willfully holding onto a piece of barbwire or razor wire. There's no glory in that. The only thing that's accessible is bleeding and suffering on a spectrum.
In terms of getting into recovery AKA feeling, dealing, assimilating, integrating, that allows for healing, instead of logging "clean-time".. growing from "being in strategic retreat into actual surrender," As the AA Big-Book puts it... “We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.”
In the NA Basic-Text, we paraphrase this vital insight in chapter five saying, “when we fully concede to our innermost selves that we are powerless over our addiction, we have taken a big step in our recovery.” In other words... no holding back or skimping on my healing process. If I was going to be free, I resolved I was gonna be free like my predecessors taught me I could be. They followed it up by seeing and treating me far more generously than the disease allowed me to treat myself.
Who or what is it in me that needed to be"fully convinced" and "fully concede" over the mind chatter wallowing in its own negativity that wasn't the authentic "Me"? That still and small voice within that craved connection... belonging... and love... that had settled for fragmented moments of soothing because it no longer believed that authentic love was possible... until it was... as a matter of being active rather than passively engaged in the Team effort of Recovery.
一Thanks For Letting Me Share, I Pass...