We who enter recovery do not know why we have become addicted

We who enter recovery do not know why we have become addicted, the stages identifies addiction as compulsions and obsessions powered by hidden emotions of the child within. This describes the immediacy and suddenness of being taken over by the need to use. Compulsions  powered by the hidden emotions of childhood rage and fear can be devastating to us, Identifying with our child within in the supermarket who throws a temper tantrum when his favourite toy or food is denied him may sound difficult for an adult to identify. But the sudden denial of sex or a promotion at work, a slight taken against a neighbour may be easier to understand. Remember we are dealing with our emotional responses from childhood not logical response. Emotional responses are just feelings sometimes deeply hidden under layers of children's rationalizations. Childhood rage and fear have childhood roots hidden deeply by our child within.

Opening Pandoras box into our childhood emotions is not difficult, but needs trust, consent and support before the lid snaps shut. The identification of the troubling emotion need not be difficult but a matter of opening the box identifying our childhood traumas our emotional child. Addictions can be seen as being powered by these infantile emotions which can destroy the addict. Its as if a childhood emotions have been frozen in time it has a built in trigger mechanism that is activated by our limited infantile emotion palate in which certain words,feelings emotions attached to trauma detonate into an addictive episode. Certain circumstance that somehow mirror our childhood trauma.

Our fear of being late for a meeting. Our fear of others responses. Our fear of acting co-dependently and sacrificing the self. Slowly will disappear. Giving in to these infantile fears constantly rearms the emotional triggers of relapse into dissociated actions and strengthens the childhood capacity of reward to medicate these hidden emotional fears.