I care

Zeke - INFP

Shao - ISFP

Mylene - ESFP

Ra-Ra - ENTP

Boo-Boo - ESTP

Annie - ESFJ

Cadillac - ESTP

Dizzee - ISFP

Even if everyone is doing is best, constantly repeating it as a way to avoid feeling guilty is in NOT constructive.

It can become a way to avoid facing the reality of one’s insecurities - by fear of feeling shameful, corruptful, or inadequate.

But in the meantime, these substances are used to numb feelings out, making them way less effective in their aim : to give one important informations about well-being of self and others. Time and space can feel disorted when faced with the object as addiction, as though it was going to be an ever lasting moment or a breakthrough from harshness of reality.

But spoiler : substance abuse can only make the consumer go as far as what he was truly feeling BEFORE it. If you were feeling miserable with your life, it is a trigger. If you were feeling left out without self-esteem, it will make you desperate to reach out and prove your worth. If you were feeling stable though, it might actually only brings even more serenity - but is it possible to be really stable and being out there consumpting triggering substances ? - I don’t have any clue yet about how to answer to this question.

“Question yourself : Do I REALLY want to smoke that cigarette ? before lightening it” : that’s what a coach participitating as a client in a group of personal devlopment I am involved in once said. I have asked myself this quite a few times, before lightening up a cigarette or a joint. But I end up in this thing when the answer doesn’t really matter anymore anyway : I just end up going with the flow, and deem this gesture to be natural. The tricky part about addiction is that it becomes a part of our routines and habits and that we might thus even be prone to subconsciously define ourselves through our addiction, seing it as one’s “characteristics”. I am thinking a insecure/shaky self-concept could trigger such a phenomena. Taking responsabilities for our own limitations and boundaries in order to priorize self-love and empathy seems to be the solution - but it is quite a work to do, and it is also useful to practice being patient and comprehensive of self in the process.

“Everyone is doing is best” finally seems to me to be a somewhat poor excuse, but there might be a point in that raising awarenes on one’s own ego faces a lot of resistances which are managed by everyone the best they can see/think of. But facing one’s “darkness”, emptiness, shame might be the key to start working on adapting wrong beliefs and bring light to unusual potentials in ourselves masked by ego’s awarness resistance.

So, addiction kind of sucks, even if it gives you a satisfying illusion of fullness. Getting one’s life together, basically, would then also mean take the risk of loosing that sense of comfort in wholeness. Radicality seems to be the most efficient way to quit it (at least for “light” addiction like tobacco or weed, but heroine or cocaine for example apparently can’t be eliminated by the organism that “easily). But mourning of one’s addiction seems to be an important part of the process. You are basically giving up of a part of yourselves that once provided you psychological relief on any way. So it could be to me more of a process - which is YOUR shit, but that can also be supported/validated by others.

I ave been drinking myself out at every party until I ended up in the hospital three years ago. I couldn’t drink for almost a year then, and now I have a fairly “normal” consumption. But I started smoking cigarettes at the age of 21 y. o., and it’s been about a year now. I am also doing weed since high school, on a regular basis for a couple of months. I quitted drugs for a while, and considered stopping smoking, but then I got dumped and I immediately went to the only effective way I knew to numb my pain, stop the train of self-depreciative thoughts, and having a place where I could feel safe : I ran right into a tobacco shop and rolled a cigarette that made me feel better for 10 seconds - spoiler : I felt worse two minutes after.

Addiction is complicated. It stems from social imitation, from desperate need to feel emptiness or to numb pain, from escapism and avoidance of reality, and from need to have a ”transitional zone” (I definitely see it as the transitional object of Winicott : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_object).

Things change. Sometimes, the only way to feel secure is a temporary way. You live in a time loop and you feel like you can’t go out. It is always “tomorrow” that you will stop. Because you have grown attached to it. Even if you know that it is only a temporary fix which might eventually cause more harm than good, you can only go through it because it has became a strategy of survival. Sometimes you are not even identified to it. You don’t see yourself as dependant. But you can’t use substances as a regular way to escape reality without having to confront this fact : you are having a issue with it. Guilt is not even the most useful part, because you can be guilty and self-conscious about it but you keep on doing it.

I don’t demonize it, I totally get it. We need to avoid reality, it is often too hard to face. And others’ influence on us can be a big deal too. We want to think that these objects can bring solutions to our problems, that it can help us belong in a certain way.

The whole point isn’t even about stopping doing it. It’s about admitting that this is a weakness, that is something everyone can have. You don’t have to be too hard on yourself for that. Simply, when I ask myself “does it make me more good or more bad at the end ?”, I definitely don’t know the answer. Weed gets me high and chill and helps me calm my hard feelings down, but I am on the hedge of panick half of the time I smoke. Cigarettes help me feel at ease and give me a sort of confidence and serenity, but I also end up feeling numb, kind dirty and weak. I am not saying there is an easy solution. I might actually go buy tobacco tomorrow, because my body wants it and I consider that everyone just does what they can to face life’s hardnesses. Not everyone has access to stable, safe emotional zones, an on top of that modern life trigger a lot of insecurity. I get it. But we always have to look to the future. We can’t be defined by something else than ourselves. We have to be responsible for our choices, and I do feel that no true freedom can be associated with addiction. Let’s be soft to us, but let’s also be real. Weakness is nothing but temporary. Overcoming it can come - and I don’t want nicotine or THC leave me out of hope, which might be the only thing that I want to attach to. Let’s take a look at what kind of person we want to be guys. The road is long, but self-honesty might be our better car.

In care I trust.

Social psychologists talk about “self-handiccapped strategies” as this coping mechanism one can use in order to manage the impressions he makes on others, by preparing oneself to fail and to have excuses ready for that failure. It consists on putting oneself in difficulties in order to avoid having to engage fully in the process of fully engaging into a given work. It often pertains in self-esteem issues, as the person is unconsciously motivated to fail as an attempt to “prove” one’s constructed weaknesses.

I feel like these kind of strategies are actually really common, and as a practicer of them myself, it raises quite a few questions.

First, I feel like these strategies are a really convenient way to avoid directly facing one’s poor self-esteem, as it is often not encouraged, or stigmatized. People generally don’t like to be seen as weak or clingy, because of fear of judgmental feedback. It often takes courage to admit to one’s own shortcomings without shame, even though shame is not a correct reaction, as it is an emotion originally designed to account for moral dilemnas, not social ones. Lack of acknowledgment of one’s self-esteem issues should be thought as a social problem, not a moral problem, in order to put feelings of shame in perspective. The problem should ideally be objectified, as there is nothing morally wrong with having poor self-esteem, in an attempt to honestly adress the roots of it and working incrementally to build more self-acceptance on it.

Here comes another point : even when one recognize his self-esteem issues, it can seem to be a never-ending issue, and it is quite difficult to find strategies to conquer these feelings without putting oneself at risk of simply suppress them (which will utlimately result in them coming back in unexpected ways). I feel like the pressure to perform can be a trigger for that problem, as the individual is prompted not to dwell for too long in these feelings (accusations of self-pity), which mean that they are not adressed properly, neither considered as valid enough facts to focus one’s attention about. It is thus really important to find outlets to adress these feelings without feeling pressured to have them all quickly figured out, but with a mindset of improving self-love and self-empathy. As long as these elements are not considered as an entirely valid and secure go-to-zone for the individual, the individual is at risks of constantly rushing from his poor self-esteem issues, feeling as though something is “wrong” with him/her.

To nurture self-esteem and help develop self-empathy and self-niceness instead of self-inflicted hopelessness and despair, I think of the importance of creativity, self-consciousness (journalling, meditation), emotional shareness (in any context of emotional safety), displays of altruistic care (acts of service) and a genuine willingness to grow. This is NOT a moral problem, but the reason why it can seem to be a moral problem is also because I think we have very biased ideas about what “morality” and “moral behaviors” are, thus leading us to expect from ourselves unrealistic standards of “goodness” that we can’t live by. I recommend that you check out this Ted Talk on this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2cixaL9H3U.