One of my favorite authors, the Hungarian Canadian physician Gabor Maté, in explaining the origins of addictions, whether to substances, behaviors or people, challenges the reductionist view of addiction as a chemical dependence and emphasizes the psycho-emotional roots of this complex and, unfortunately, widely shared problem.
With a level of compassion that I deeply admire, he says “let’s not ask why the addiction, let’s ask why the pain.”
In my personal and professional experience, I have found that emotional dependence, my area of expertise, has much more to do with the unhealed wounds of childhood and its recreations in our adult relationship than with the human being in whom our relationship addiction is centered.
My view is that addiction, in any of its forms, is a (failed and ineffective) attempt to soothe our pain.
It is a strategy to anesthetize us, to give us what, at times, we confuse with love.
In the case of emotional dependence, the wounded girl (or boy because this issue affects both genders), seeks to win the lost battle, trying to find in our partners the love, protection and acceptance that we did not receive as children.
How do we begin to heal? You may ask?
Giving that wounded inner child what she or he needs.
Asking “why this pain? and listening to what she has to say through her triggers and compulsions.
Telling her “I was there too” and validating her anger, helplessness, and loneliness.
Giving her (giving us) love, compassion, attention.
It is not an easy or fast path, but it is one we must travel it if we want to return to ourselves, if we want to get to the root of our destructive way of relating.
I will be here, going up and down the rollercoaster of life together with you.
Healing step by step.
Rebuilding ourselves.
Learning to look at ourselves with eyes of love.
Author: Jo Garner
