Addiction feeds on deceit, distrust, and dishonesty. We are driven to go to any lengths to get high or act out. We often violate personal values – no matter how strong or good they are – but not without consequences. For most of us, intense remorse, guilt and shame are common underlying emotions. These feelings exacerbate the problem and make us drink, act out, or use more. At a deep level, we feel shame for who we are, and what we have become.
Most of us have been highly selective about what we are willing to share with others. False-pride filters our self-disclosures. What typically happens before we disclose something personal, painful, or important is that it must pass through our censoring committee. The members of this group include self-hatred, false-pride, and the false-self. The committee won’t let anything be disclosed that could jeopardize our false-image that must be maintained at all costs. We won’t share much about our weaknesses when shame and self-doubt are telling us that we are less than other people because of our shortcomings. We are a prisoner of the false-self, and most of the time, we don’t even realize it.
We can think of the process of recovery as a salvage operation. We are recovering our lost-selves and sometimes discovering our true-self. What we recover is our ability to be human. We have tried to be perfect and hold ourselves to an inhuman set of expectations. Recovery is about salvaging our humanity. We replace unreasonable expectations of perfectionism with an understanding of what it means to be human. We are not perfect; we are human beings.
Self-deception in all its various forms and manifestations is deadly because it undermines our ability to be honest with ourselves and attain humility. The capacity to be honest with ourselves is a necessary condition for recovery. We must get honest with ourselves, if we are going to recover from our fatal disease.
As children many of us had been subjected to injuries to our self-esteem from often well-intentioned parents, teachers, relatives, and other caregivers. In fact, some behavioural scientists have argued that addictions are self-disorders: using or acting out fills the hole in our soul, covering up an emptiness caused by wounds to our self-esteem, which gnaw at us. If our parents didn’t celebrate our existence, if they didn’t authentically enjoy our spirit and energy, if they didn’t see worth in us, then we suffered a self-worth injury. Our self-worth became fragile, unstable and shaky. We have trouble telling others what we really think or how we really feel because we don’t feel worthy. We have placed the needs of others in front of our own. Deep inside the person who has a self-worth wound is the belief that no one really cares and that he/she must manipulate others to get what he/she needs.
In recovery, we must be rigorously honest with ourselves if we are to recover. We can’t be partially honest or selectively honest; we must be entirely honest. It is not easy to change a lifetime of deception which may be the product of lack of self-worth and low self-esteem. Until we can honestly look at ourselves, we cannot begin to change. The psychic change necessary requires total honesty. This is me; the real me. I am human. I have made mistakes. But I am trying to be better one day at a time.
(Based on the writing of Allen Berger, 12 Stupid Things that Mess Up Recovery, pp. 39-46)