When it comes to our emotional health and well-being, many of us are holding onto what we refer to as emotional blocks. We experience blockages that prevent us from feeling our emotions fully, from expressing and communicating them, and from processing the challenging thoughts that contribute to our emotions. When we are blocked, we can find ourselves unable to talk about difficult things with other people, and to understand why we’re thinking and feeling the way we are. We can feel confused and overwhelmed, disconnected from our inner selves and from others. We can find it impossible to cry, to open up, and even to feel. Our blocks are a form of emotional and mental resistance. What are we resisting when it comes to our addictions, and how can we clear our resistance so that we can access the power of our emotions in order to heal?
Our addictions are a form of resistance in and of themselves. Through the use of our drugs of choice and addictive behaviors, we’re resisting the difficult feelings we don’t want to face. We’re avoiding, and therefore resisting, the sadness and fear that we find it too hard to come to terms with. We’re trying to forget our traumatic experiences. We deny our feelings, distract ourselves from them, and try to run from them. We numb ourselves, try to mask our pain, and self-medicate. What we come to find out, however, is that whatever we resist festers and worsens with time. Anything we avoid will come back to haunt us until we face it head on.
Clearing our resistance, therefore, takes courage – the courage to look at ourselves and our pain with intention, honesty and mindfulness. We want to be transparent with ourselves and not hold anything back. Ask yourself, “What emotions am I trying to resist, that I’m trying to avoid feeling? What wounds have I yet to heal? What thought patterns have I developed, (such as excessive anxiety or obsessiveness), to distract myself from what’s truly bothering me? How has my relationship with myself become damaged? How have my relationships with other people been affected? How has my daily life been impacted by my resistance?”
Our resistance creates layers of distraction that distance us from our real selves, and that make it harder to uncover the wounds at the core of our pain. We want to cut through those layers and be honest with ourselves. We want to ask ourselves the tough questions so that we can move through our resistance and really get in touch with our feelings. We can only heal when we are being honest and upfront about all of our parts, all our thoughts, feelings, behaviors and patterns. We can only clear our resistance when we get to the root of what it is we’re trying so hard to avoid.
Recovery for us is personal. Seventy-five percent of the Riverside Recovery staff has lived with addiction and successfully gone through the recovery process. Call us today: (800) 871-5440.