Shame Is the Root of All Addictions
Addiction as a Defense Mechanism
In an Instagram reel, spiritual author Gabrielle Bernstein says to see your addiction “as a firefighter just trying to put out the fire.” In that same reel, spiritual author Deepak Chopra says, “It may be your responsibility to deal with it, but it’s not your fault that it happened. You were just a human being who was in so much pain that you tried to escape from it the only way you knew how. That makes you very normal.” They are both saying that addiction is merely a human defense mechanism.
When I Realized Shame Was at the Root
I have never struggled with substance addiction. However, as the daughter of an alcoholic and a member of a dysfunctional family with many other addicted individuals, I sure as hell struggled with codependency and addictions to anger, control, lying, and fear. These are what I like to call “inner drugs.”
I got into recovery from a codependency problem to a drug-addicted cousin when I was 19. As someone knowledgeable about addiction from reading books and watching documentaries from when she was 11 and even seriously considered becoming an addictions counselor, I knew I had to talk about my trauma in therapy to recover. I spent the next four and a half years with about seven therapists discussing my trauma and blaming the people involved. However, they did not tell me how to heal from the trauma through acceptance, forgiveness, and gratitude.
I ended up unlocking the door to my emotional sobriety when I realized I had to accept human imperfection and not allow it to hurt me anymore. In other words, I had to stop wishing that the past and the people involved were different. Once I experienced that miracle (a shift in perception), I forgave the people involved and healed from my traumatic experiences.
However, once I accomplished this, I was forced to confront the issues and emotions I suppressed through my addictions. One morning, I was journaling about an issue that I carried a lot of shame about. When I came to this insight that shame was the root of my pain surrounding this issue, I felt like a stone was being rolled away inside my chest. I had a literal panic attack and ended up in the emergency room when I realized that shame was the underlying cause of my addictions. I became addicted because being myself was just too unbearable.
Shame: The Need to Escape Ourselves
There is a huge difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is the feeling that we did something bad. When we do something bad, we can rectify it. However, shame is the feeling that we are bad. When we feel we are inherently bad, wrong, or flawed, nothing can be done about that. We cannot escape from ourselves, but we try to escape through our addictions.
People feel shame for many reasons, such as:
· Experiencing physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in childhood
· Having a physically or emotionally neglectful parent or caregiver
· Having a parent or caregiver who struggled with addiction
· Having an overly critical parent or caregiver
· Being a marginalized group member (e.g., racial minority, LGBTQ+, disabled, neurodivergent, etc.)
· Being a victim of sexual assault
· Being given up for adoption
· Religious trauma
Actress Minka Kelly talks about the shame that stems from childhood trauma in her book Tell Me Everything:
“Children whose emotional needs are not met by their parents end up blaming themselves. It’s the root of shame, a sense of wrongness that can be hard to shake. Childhood trauma is so tricky because the kid doesn’t know any better or different. This is the only story they have and they have to draw their own conclusions. That’s why I think it is so important to do the work as an adult to see once passed with adult eyes and not through the frightened eyes of the child, while also honoring and loving and tending to the frightened child that is still alive within us- and often making decisions for us!” (pg. 221)
A lot of the pain we experience from trauma is because of shame. The traumatic event makes us feel ashamed. Once we address shame, we can heal from the trauma. When we realize that there is nothing inherently wrong with or flawed about us, we can grow in self-love and not feel the need to escape from ourselves. We are all fearfully and wonderfully made!
