Hi Friends!

Welcome to this edition of The Beare Truth Newsletter. This edition is on how we can heal our addictions/dependencies and trauma. The processes are not the same. In fact, they can even work against each other if not handled well.

Which of these are true for you?

• “It doesn’t apply to me”

• “I don’t have any trauma”

• “I don’t have any addictions”

• “Maybe, but I can handle this alone”

• “I have trauma and am trying to stay sober”

• “12-step recovery didn’t work for me”

• “My trauma caused my addiction”

• “I’ll just tough it out, no problem”

• “I need my self-medicating”

• “I need some change”

• “I hate this topic”

• “I love this topic”

Or maybe you had a different response?

We all have self-medicating behaviors and trauma - mild or severe.

The ways in which these personality-adjusting intrusions affect us are different and must be approached differently.

Stay with me here, it’s a juicy subject.

And, we love hearing from you. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Just reply to this email.

Of course, the answer is yes to both. For sustainable healing, we have to look at the full range of our history and behaviors.

I was a big mess when I came into the work, but had a massive amount of community and professional support. If we’re going to try the full immersion thing, extensive support is required so we don’t go off the rails on the recovery side, or on the trauma work side which inevitably evokes deep pain.

It’s not always recommended to dive into trauma work and sobriety work at the same time, but with quality support, it can work. Here’s why it’s tricky:

There are some competing dynamics between dependency recovery and trauma recovery. Firstly, we can’t blame our addictions on trauma. It doesn’t work. But when we first begin our trauma recovery, we tend to find our anger. It’s one of many paradoxes we must hold.

Anger is a necessary stage in trauma work because it wakes us up and gives us the energy to make some changes. The blaming phase eventually has to turn more toward looking at what happened, feeling the pain beneath the anger, and starting the grief process. And there is no need to rush past this phase.

The challenge for many of us is that there is another important aspect of healing which involves addressing our self-medicating behaviors. It is difficult to heal our deeply lodged pain while medicating or detoxing from our medication.

Brace yourselves! - By self-medicating, I don’t just mean drugs and alcohol. I mean any of the following: Obsessive love, compulsive sex, codependency, work addiction, compulsive overeating, and more. Anything that 1) Adjusts our chemistry, and 2) We have unsuccessfully or unsustainably tried to cut down or stop - is an addiction…or a dependency if you prefer.

Trying to do trauma healing work while still high or in withdrawal, is like crying about our problems to the bartender - there may be emotions, but no healing.

So, it is important to identify how we’ve been hurt, but for the recovering addict, blaming the addiction on people from the past is not viable. In order to recover, we must own our side of the street without blaming. This is why it is tricky but not impossible for people early in addiction recovery to dive directly into trauma work.

Addictions are lethal and there is a significant danger of not owning our shit and blaming someone for our problems. Intensive recovery work must take precedence over trauma work in the early days for this reason.

Resentment is the number one offender for people in recovery and it causes relapse. After some sober time, and with our nervous system calmed down a bit, the grief and anger work will stick.

We can look at how we were medicating our old pain with our addictions without necessarily blaming the addiction on the people who caused our trauma. It becomes data vs. something to grind away about. This may seem like a minor distinction, but it has proven to be significant for recovery.

Again, it can all happen at once if the level of support is deeply addiction-informed, and trauma-informed. This is pretty rare.

Note: It is important to know that we are run by our unconscious mind. 95% of all our functioning is subconscious. The part of us that is holding on to our addictions will tell us a mountain of bullshit to keep us continuing the behavior. The part of us that is afraid to touch our pain will convince us to stay away from trauma healing.

Sometimes we unconsciously choose people who we can manipulate in order to avoid letting go of the addiction. Most therapists are not in recovery, know very little about addiction, and are wary of all those “bad addicts.” They might warn someone away from the program and say “12-step recovery is not trauma-informed.”

On the other hand, many recovering people are ignorant of trauma work and think that it will pull people away from the program. They say “Therapists have no clue about addiction.” Both are completely correct and completely wrong. This work is full of paradoxes.

Again, I was deeply immersed in recovery programs and quality body-focused healing work which has continued for many years and has become a lifestyle. These worlds can live together well.

Therapists: Get to a meeting and actively work the steps.

12-step people: Get a quality therapist.

Then we’ll talk.

An Affirmation: Today I am working on my dependencies with support. I am owning my side of the street. I am working on my trauma. I am accessing my anger and grief. I am allowing true joy to emerge.

1. Getting Sober: There are so many ways we adjust our chemistry - not just drugs and alcohol. Find a support group to let go of the ways we self-medicate and maintain a chaotic life. The process involves attendance at meetings, getting a sponsor, and actively writing out the step work. Here is a list of Recovery and Trauma Resources.

2. Start Your Trauma Healing: Find a somatic therapist in your area or online. Join ACA, a 12-group for people from dysfunctional families. Go to an intensive trauma healing weekend like The Deep Waters Experience. Here is a list of other Recovery and Trauma Resources.

3. Read the Literature: For info on the disease of addiction read The Big Book of AA. Each of the 12-step groups has its own texts. There are chapters devoted to all of these topics in this newsletter in my book: Stop Doing Sh*t You Don’t Want to Do: A Straightforward Guide to Letting Go of Unresolved Trauma

1. How are you self-medicating?

2. How much resistance do you have to 12-step recovery?

3. Do you know you have trauma?

4. How much resistance do you have to deep healing work?

5. How free do you want to be?

After we get support and start to get our chemistry cleaned up (stop self-medicating) and begin to heal our trauma, there is only one challenge left: Start living our bold and creative life.

In time, this all becomes a lifestyle. The “weirdness” of all the touchy-feely stuff disappears. We are living authentically, with our own chemistry, and with full access to our personal power to love and be loved.

It is worth it friends.

I give very specific guidance for all of this in both books  Stop Doing Sh*t You Don’t Want to Do: A Straightforward Guide to Letting Go of Unresolved Trauma and The Creative Fire: 10 Weeks to Emotional and Creative Fitness

So glad to be on the healing path with you. Please reply to this email with your comments.

With warmth,

Bob

P.S. Share your process of authenticity with us! We'd love to hear your stories and insights. Connect on social media (see links above and below), and please reply to this email with your comments! Your participation helps us all connect in this community. And let us know if you don’t want it published - otherwise, we sure will.

P.P.S. I need your help. The new book STOP DOING SH*T YOU DON’T WANT TO DO is out now! Get it here. Browse the book and write a great review here. And please forward these links to your peeps! We are still in the promo period and sales and reviews are extremely important to stay on the top of Amazon’s list. And, the Audiobook version is coming soon. You’ll be the first to get the promo edition. THANK YOU!!!

From our last The Beare Truth Newsletter on The Power of Language. Here are some of your great comments:

Mary shares how her environment has improved along with her health