I believe strongly that to stay in recovery we have to deal with underlying issues like past trauma. We have to talk about it to an enlightened witness. We have to write about it and then feel the pain that we usually try to self-medicate. Then we need to accept what happened to us and move on to our new life in recovery. I have gone through this process myself and it has changed my life.
The trauma of my past began with my childhood. It consisted of neglect, abandonment, peer rejection, covert incest, prolonged illnesses, and the death of my brother. This left me with a lot of anger, anxiety, shame, and fear, as well as low self-esteem and a tremendous hunger for love. As I was growing up, I didn’t understand that I had been traumatized. I just knew that something was wrong with me. I knew that pain and emptiness kept reappearing in my life whenever I wasn’t being distracted by one of my addictions.
As an adult, I became accustomed to the pain and adopted it. In its own way it comforted me. Then, before I knew it, self-pity was my best friend. I was, for all intents and purposes, a misery addict. To keep myself wrapped in this blanket of self-pity, I put myself in situations that caused me, and others, a lot of pain. By others, I mean my parents and my children.
[For more on this story by susanpeabody, go to https://www.thefix.com/living-...past-trauma-recovery]
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