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Digging Up Relics From The Oldest Ground Of My Addiction

Writer's picture: 2forrecovery2forrecovery

Updated: Aug 17, 2023

Secrecy and separateness are two of my main proto-addictions, my Ur-addictions, those earliest of tendencies that, like childhood wounds/traumas, created the environment that sheltered the more overt addictive behavior once it later began. They are relics from my past that reveal to me more of the "how and why" behind my addictive self. Or, to shift metaphors, they are part of the "life data" that is recorded in the personal "black box" on the airplane of my life that crashed. To make real recovery progress it is vital to "recover" and understand all the factors to what caused and contributed to the failing and destruction of the Self through addictions. Otherwise, it is unsafe to take off in life again. This insight on secrecy and separateness for me (for others it might be different elements) happened in 12 step group meetings, individual and group therapy, and conversations with Grace. I explore it more below, but first some words on how to "unearth" these findings.


Like many in recovery and therapy for several years, and with an accumulating time of sobriety, I have experienced a progressive clarity on how it all started. It is like an archaeological dig to discover the earliest, most fundamental layer of the Whole Self and its Shadows and Addict Self. These are always intertwined because we are born with inherent strengths of spirit and also struggles that hold the spirit from the growth it seeks. We come to realize the deeper addictions or holes that our addictive behaviors tried to fill but so often only made them deeper. We realize there are some major parts of our lives that fed and nurtured our destructive actions and thoughts so that those parts of our lives could stay alive and also become major unhealthy factors in our lives.


In deep recovery, we search for Ur. Ur is so named for an ancient and supposedly original city. The term Ur has come to mean the most primitive or earliest. You might think of Ur addictions as Root Addictions, but there is a subtle difference between a root addiction and what is also called root causes of addictions. Root causes, for example, are many and are prevalent to different degrees. They populate the “middle circle triggers” such as conflict avoidance or unprocessed emotions. But a Root/Ur Addiction itself is so basic it is like water or sunshine to a garden. The overt addiction to substance or behavior depends on this Ur addiction for its very life. And vice versa as the Ur addiction is fed by the overt addiction. Which comes first--the rush and comfort from sex, drug, drink, gambling, spending, overeating, etc. or the core longings that are among the major causes and results from the addictions? It is a chicken and egg thing. We need to understand both.


It is as important to root around our earliest memories, our speculations now of what we couldn't understand then, and to feel and see our way to how we began to react emotionally, how we began so early on to see and feel ourselves, as it is to look back and face the actions of others for good and of course for ill that left their marks on us. I believe this particular recovery work, like so much else, will be done over time, but can begin immediately and bear fruit and may never fully end. Just as new technologies used in archaeology reveal new facts from old digs; as new ways of interpreting data are applied to help us make sense of old relics.


My Ur in addictions was the longing for secrecy and yet also the feeling of being separate from others that in a way as a child I found both alluring and scary. These appear to be somewhat contradictory, a yen to be by myself and to be a part of others. Maybe that is how you know they are real and important to discern.


The enticing part of feeling apart from others (and somewhat set apart from others) was that it put me in the light of attention, a light that for some of us can blind us. As an only son growing up in the 50s and 60s, and for much of that time being the oldest and one of the few male children in a close extended family that was one of the core community leader families in a small community, I received special attention (and subtle pressures) wherever I was--immediate family, extended family, school, church, ballfield, lodge hall, et al.


The scary part was feeling that this belonging was precarious, conditioned on performing well, and what being cut off would feel like. I have an earliest memory formed before I got my first pair of glasses around age three of being on the edge of the crowd of other children since I couldn’t see what others were doing or how the world around me was a blur. So as the alluring aspect of feeling set apart or special (or spoiled) took more of a hold, I wanted to hang on to that feeling ever tighter and ever longer, for how it rewarded me, and because I still had the early memories of its opposite feeling, a little of being abandoned in the midst of many others and a little the feeling that I was lacking, not whole without the attention and support of others. A case of early FOMO (fear of missing out), a fear of not being seen just as it was hard for me to physically see. And the social media as we have it now that fosters all of this on a mass scale was still decades away. But when it did come it found long fertile soil in my soul.


The longing for a secret life grew in the shade of this early paradoxical struggle to be attached to something, some ones beyond myself, but not confined by the attachments. In family systems theory and therapy it is called being self-differentiated, able to remain self-composed during times of anxiety, fear, and pain in general, of being comfortable with being uncomfortable and letting others be uncomfortable too, not reacting in ways that betray our true self and our core values we aspire to uphold. Because I felt both the constant presence of “too much” family and community, and the pressure to attach to them and be defined by them in order to stay attached, and yet also sought the emotional rush I received by being a part of them and their many events, I did not grow until later in life the authentic self that was not ricocheting between too much attachment or too much separateness.


This insight is also aided and deepened by Attachment Theory itself. I have followed some of the work done by Dr. Diane Poole Heller after Grace and I participated in an online conference on trauma where Dr. Poole Heller was a presenter. You can take the attachment style test and learn more about the theory and attachment styles at www.traumasolutions.com. Of the four major attachment styles (secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized), I currently land more in the Secure quadrant, but not by much. Secure: 28.3 percent, Avoidant 25.7, Ambivalent 23.9 percent, and Disorganized 22.1 percent. I can see why it is common for people to have more than one major attachment style. These forces that affect our adult relationships have roots, she says, in childhood experiences we don't understand and had no control over, but also are not fixed in our lives, just as they are dependent now on the contexts of our lives. I know that my Secure sense now, however weak it may be or mitigated by the other styles, is due in large part to recovery and therapy work and honest conversations with Grace. And that it is lifetime work.


When I did achieve that balance of Self, I sucked at holding on to it whenever conflict emerged. I was not exposed to overt examples of conflict when I was young, of healthy arguing and working things out mutually, so I feared it. I was experiencing the worst kind of conflict, the pretend it does not exist, the manage life so as not to face it kind. In his work on conflict, Speed Leas calls this the most destructive level of conflict. If I had learned conflict as normal in interpersonal ways, in the family system and other institutional systems around me, then I would have been able to do the same for the internal conflicts. If so, then addiction would not have been one of my main reactions in order to keep conflict, i.e. real life, out of my life. Then the “secret life” of addiction would not have grown in order to create the mask of a separate self and world I could turn to in unhealthy ways.


Instead, I would have had my foundation resting on this healthy self-differentiated person capable of remaining in conflict and pain and learning much better to draw on the strengths of being both a separate self and an embedded in others self, both needed aspects of the Whole Self, which is the only one that can truly be in healthy relationship.

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