The Emotional
Dimension of Recovery - Part One
| A. |
The
importance of emotional self-awareness
In a 1992 SRI Gallup
study,
commissioned by the Knox Area Rescue Ministry, six critical
"life themes" were identified in the lives of people who
recovered from homelessness. Among the most important was the “Self-Awareness
“ theme, which they described in this manner:
Persons who are high on the
Self-Awareness theme are in touch with their own emotions. They
can name the feelings that are surging through themselves… As
they grow, they can discuss their emotions with other people and
they will tend to express them to other people rather than keep
them inside. Then, they can talk about how they feel about their
own life and its hurts; they can say that and then ask for help
in making the corrections. They can own the bad things that have
happened to them in their life, and they can know the good
feelings that they want to achieve.
Those lacking emotional self-awareness tended to be patently
unmotivated. They have little that excites them either
positively or negatively. If they have feelings, they are
confusing rather than something that drive them to action.”
(1)
|
| B. |
The
affect of troubled families on emotional health
A large percentage of homeless
addicts grew up with an addicted or dysfunctional parent. As
children they experienced inconsistency, chaos, fear, abandonment,
denial, and real or potential violence. In this environment they
learned to survive by suppressing their emotions. They were told
that their perceptions were wrong and that their feelings are not
acceptable. The rules of troubled families, according to Claudia
Black in her book It Will Never Happen to Me are
"don't trust, don't feel, don't talk." The result is
constricted emotions, especially in the areas of intimacy,
tenderness, and sexuality. It is no surprise that these children
are eight times more likely become addicts themselves. |
| C. |
The impact of addiction on emotional health
The first step down the road to addiction is the use of mood-altering
chemicals to manage one’s emotions --- especially the heavy ones like
self-doubt, anger guilt, fear, and grief. Emotions cannot be “compartmentalized.”
If undesirable feelings are suppressed by drinking or drugging, addicts
also lose touch with the desirable ones as. This condition has sometimes
been called“ “living life from the neck up.” When an individual
has lost touch with his or her emotional life, all of life becomes a
frustrating endeavor to figure things out without the vital signals that
come from our feelings.
|
| D. |
Emotional dysfunction and the development of
denial
The abuse of alcohol or drugs always leads to painful consequences like
being fired from a job because of failure to show up after drinking
binges. Marriages break up and relationships with other loved ones are
destroyed. They experience car wrecks and health problems. Such
consequences normally cause people with healthy emotions to take stock
of their lives --and to make changes in their behavior to avoid
experiencing them in the future. But, for addicts, instead of changing
their behavior, they use drugs and alcohol even more to dull the
uncomfortable feelings they produce! They intellectualize and
rationalize their behavior and shift the blame off themselves and on to
other people.
When God created man in His own image, He created us with intellectual
capacity, a free will, and emotions. These three, together,
constitute what the Bible calls “the soul.” As we exercise our free
will in day to day decisions, what we end up doing is usually based more
upon our emotional perceptions than upon our intellect. Even
the less desirable feelings, like anger, fear, and guilt are necessary
for an accurate view of reality - and are intended by God to spur us to
action. Suppressing them with alcohol and drugs is a big part of the
addict’s distorted perception of reality we call “denial.”
|
|
E.
|
The journey toward emotional well being
For addicts, discontinuing the use
of alcohol and/or drugs to manage their emotions is the first step. They
need to start feeling the feelings. This can be an extremely painful
experience for people who have been working overtime to avoid them.
Still this is no guarantee that they will recover emotionally. Too
often, addicts compulsively engage in other activities, like work, to
continue avoiding and managing their feelings.
The next installment of this column will deal
with strategies for helping the addict to move into emotion health.
~ * ~
Copyright 1996-2012 by Michael Liimatta. All Rights Reserved.
Mr. Liimatta is the past President of Christians in Recovery®
and currently serves on its Advisory Counsel. He is a Social Entrepreneur, Consultant
to Nonprofit Organizations with OneAccord, Chief Academic Officer at City Vision College
and has been involved with drug and alcohol counseling and recovery education for 30 years.
Visit his web site |
|
