Psychotherapy is a means of coming to terms with the opposites of many of the things we want in our life. For example, we meet our one true love and discover she or he isn’t the god or goddess we had dreamed of and are inevitably fallible in their humanness. Or, we get the job we always wanted, only to find ourselves being line managed by someone we take an instant dislike to.
We play out these stories, in the hope that maybe, this new relationship, new job, or situation, will offer us a sense of the completeness or wholeness we have always sought. However, the reality of our experience often shows us something very different from the fantasy we carried.
Addictive patterns of behaviour often amplify this disconnection from reality. Nobody becomes an addict to become addicted, ruin their life and become profoundly miserable. People fall into addictive patterns; as they are often looking for some kind of certainty and meaning in their lives. However, the adoption of these patterns come at a cost, as a life that is lived without the inclusion of these opposites (e.g. the annoying line manager), undermines our ability and capacity to tolerate difference. We therefore, seek anything that provides some kind of distraction from a reality, unwilling to confirm to our desires or wishes.
Addiction can also be a means of managing underlying trauma in our experience. Here, getting drunk every night, habitually using drugs, or finding ourselves in controlling relationships, maybe become the only means available of managing these areas that feel intolerable and maintaining some semblance of control in our lives. However, the consequences of this denial can be that the internal split, between what can be allowed to be conscious and the trauma of what remains unconscious - though maybe only experienced symptomatically, becomes ever more pronounced.
Our addictions, then become our jailers. On the one, hand offering us a sense of safety, through shielding us from these places of trauma, whilst also keeping us disconnected from the healing that can only come from facing the truth of our own histories.
My experience of working with clients with addiction issues, has been in supporting them to break this cycle of addiction, through facing these places of trauma. In consciously exploring these areas, a space can be created for the unassimilated parts of themselves that have remained buried for so long.
It is then, through this process that these parts, which maybe have brought such chaos and destruction to our lives, become the means by which we find healing. It is only then that we can find a reconciliation of opposites in our life and a real sense of wholeness.