You must confront the way you feel.

If your life is about avoiding pain, your life will be about suffering.

Standing in front of the TSA security line trying to decide where to put my heroin to not get caught should have been a sobering moment. I remember looking at the two lines: metal detector or spinning xray machine: 50/50 chance. Heroin isn’t metal, I’ll make it straight through the metal detector - And I did. I used heroin in the bathroom during an airplane ride across the country.

I was going to see my mom. I was trying to split town. I didn’t want to feel the consequences of my actions. So I ran, to Arkansas of all places. I had a certain amount of heroin to “get me through” and I hadn’t thought much beyond that. My life consisted of do I have some to use before I get sick? I never ever thought much beyond that.

 I was raised well. Both of my parents were educated. My father was a criminal defense attorney for 35 years and my mother was an art historian. I always was under some illusion that my life would just work itself out and I’d be successful. Somewhere along the lines I became distracted. Things made me feel good and I’d start chasing them. It wasn’t just drugs. Never once did anyone sit me down and let me know that if I continued to just chase feelings I’d end up in more suffering. The thing was, even if someone did tell me this, and maybe they did, I always thought that would be the point where I’d just stop. I acted as if I knew. That was a real lack of humility. The deeper I got into drugs and alcohol the more I lost things I genuinely cared for: sports, competition, health, relationships, progress etc.. 

When the time did come to stop, I had nothing to sustain me. I was empty, full of pain, shame and guilt. By this point, I reacted to feeling empty and full of pain by doing one thing: changing the way I felt. If I changed the way I felt, I wouldn’t have to change the way I lived, or they way I thought. These weren’t conscious thoughts, they existed on a deeper level and I acted it out as the truth. It was the truth: If I kept putting substances in my body, I wouldn’t have to confront the way I felt. It was just easier..

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men, I must think, have great sadness on earth - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Every program of recovery, every program of therapy requires you to feel the feelings you seem to be running from

 It’s interesting, you know. Addicts know how to confront the way they feel physically. As soon as an addict or alcoholic enters treatment, they begin the process of confronting their withdrawal.  If they stand firm with their commitment to confronting withdrawal, they end up getting through it. This is the very beginning of confronting the way you feel in the recovery process. The issue is many addicts and alcoholics believe their withdrawal is the main source of their behavior. They must drink and use in order to feel okay. This becomes a problem in that they don’t remained focused on confronting the way they feel and anger, or shame leads them to relapse.

Every program of recovery, every program of therapy requires you to feel the feelings you seem to be running from. The Twelve Steps have step four and therapists ask, “and how did that make you feel”? The reason for this is that the reason we use drugs, the reason we sabotage ourselves and our relationships is because we won’t navigate the way we feel appropriately. A famous bank robber Willy Sutton once said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. Well, the “money” in recovery is learning how to deal with the way you feel. If you effectively deal with the way you feel the result is growth.

This is an important lesson for people who don’t struggle with drugs as well.  Many men and women don’t deal with loneliness appropriately. Therefore, they go from relationship to relationship seeking validation for who they are now. This, in the end, keeps them the same because they can always find one other shitty person who can validate them. If they would spend any considerable amount of time actually being alone, their brain would adapt. This would allow them to seek validation from within themselves. When you don’t allow yourself to become distracted, when you feel the way you feel without looking outside of yourself to change it - you’re left with a sense that you must become better. This is Jung’s famous quote: “He who looks outside dreams, he who looks inside awakens”. When you aren’t distracted by a new fling, or by blaming others for your position in life you’re left with the idea that you need to change. After all, that’s all you can control anyway. Blaming others for your position in life makes you the victim. If you are the victim, you always can look outside of yourself to explain why the way you are. In order to become empowered, you must look at yourself. In looking at yourself more and others less you gain the ability to forgive. This is not absolving anyone of any faults they may have made in your life. I’m sure you’ve had wrong done to you. However, if you do not wish to remain the same any longer you must take responsibility. Confronting the way you feel without blaming others only leads to responsibility

By not running from your feelings or blaming others, the more likely you are to change over time. The more you look outside of yourself and the more you become distracted the less likely you are to change. You aren’t feeling the pain that you’ve created.  If you’ve created it, you will be the one who ceases to create it again.

This is, I believe, is why so many people in jail and prison end up “finding God”. They are stripped of their distractions. Once this happens, if they don’t find new distractions (and many prisoners do), they look within and read books, exercise, pray and meditate. Inevitably, however, they are released and often return to old environments with many more distractions available. I am not sure they knew of this process, however. It just kind of happens. Many programs of recovery advise you not to have a relationship for the first year for this reason. New relationships feel good. You may have found a spot where you feel accepted. The problem is the first year of your sobriety should be clearing up wreckage of your past. If you are in a new relationship, you may get distracted from the way you feel, not clean up the wreckage and then recreate it unconsciously when your new relationship gets past the first fun three months.

I’ve worked in a treatment center for over six years now. I’ve seen roughly 1000-1500 addicts and alcoholics go through a residential program. Every single client I’ve ever seen has the capacity to finish treatment. It starts with the decision to enter treatment. You certainly cannot drink or use drugs. You aren’t allowed your cell phone. You can’t bring your partner in with you. In fact, it’s unhealthy to know anyone in treatment. You’re essentially stripped of your distractions. You’re stripped of the things that take your energy. 

I had a client one time tell me his life was, “falling apart”. He was about 30 years old. I’d asked how long he’d been using for.  “15 years, Dylan. I first used meth at age 14. I had drank and smoked pot before that. For the last 10 years, if I can’t get meth, I use cocaine. If I can’t get cocaine, I use pills. If I can’t get anything, I use alcohol.” This is an incredibly common story. His life wasn’t beginning to fall apart. His life had been falling apart, he just hadn’t allowed himself to feel it. Every time he didn’t like the way he felt he put substances in his body. You cannot expect to stop using drugs after any considerable amount of time and not feel all the feelings you’d been suppressing. The fact that he was feeling these things meant he was growing. He didn’t see it that way, not at the time. This wasn’t surprising. After being addicted to anything, you tend to associate not having that thing with pain. Our brains are association machines. This exchange wasn’t uncommon where I worked. In fact, I’ve probably gone through that exchange with hundreds of clients attempting to see that the fact that they felt pain meant they were progressing.

I graduated rehab September 5, 2013. Thirty-two days clean. I felt amazing.  I really wanted to go get a job, get a girlfriend, and start lifting weights again. I was about to turn twenty-three years old. I left treatment extremely confident. After all, all I had to do was not get high. Within ten minutes of being home my brain was thinking of how to get high. In treatment, I had a community and structure. As soon as I left, my environment changed, and I was alone again. No one was looking over my shoulder and I already had conditioned my brain to think when you’re alone you get high. It was a pattern. So, I went to a meeting. Over the course of the next three months I went to over 200 meetings. I knew to go to meetings. It was drilled in my head for a month straight. At 90 days clean I met my wife. In hindsight, I think I really was going to meetings trying to find someone to help me feel okay about myself. I remember at one point telling my wife, “I’m going to eat as much as I can and lift weights again”. The eating came easy and the lifting came hard. I lasted a month in the gym. One year later I was 298 lbs. I entered treatment at 150 lbs. Once again, unconsciously, I had found something to distract me: food.  Around this time, I was also playing video games for hours every single day. Aha! Another way to distract myself. I thought I was reconnecting with who I was when I was younger. After all, I quit playing video games once I started getting high. The problem was my wife, the food, the video games, all these things distracted me from feeling the way I really felt about myself. Pain originates in the brain; I was busy firing off other areas so that I didn’t have to feel the pain. I didn’t know this at the time. To me, success was not using drugs and drinking. I had an entire community around me telling me how amazing I was doing. Literally, in gaining weight, people told me I looked great simply because it meant I was sober. Relative to my old life, I was doing great. However, I was doing the exact same thing as I was before. The only difference was it was more socially acceptable to eat myself into oblivion. I have an entire life to live. If I plan on remaining sober, I must live so that I wont use drugs ten years from now either. Meaning, I cant ignore my health and eat whatever I want. If I do that, I’ll hate myself.  I can’t ignore my wife and family and just play video games. If I do that, I’ll be alone. If I hate myself and I’m alone? Sounds like a recipe for self-destruction.

“All of the humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Pascal said.  We fear silence. Funny thing, silence. It’s never silent. It’s mental chatter. We dread it and instead choose aimless distractions. Many of us don’t even know we are doing it until it’s too late.

In not running from the way we feel, we have a better chance to reorient our life in every manner possible in order to never feel that again. I lost the weight. And although being sober made me feel good, it was only because I was in a community where that was the KPI. The reality was, I did not quit doing drugs to be out of shape. I did not stop getting high so that I could wonder whether my wife was attracted to me or not. I quit getting high so that I was more able to do all the things I knew I could do. I stopped the self-destructive behavior of getting high so that I could be proud of me, not simply taste a different flavor of self-hatred.  To be true to yourself, you must fight to become that self. You cannot fight to become who you are supposed to be if you continue to distract yourself from yourself.

Pain is telling us something. Any resistance to doing something is telling you something. Don’t want to look at the credit card bill? You probably should. After all, the reason you don’t want to look is because you know you haven’t paid it in a couple months. Don’t want to step on the scale? You probably should because you’re fat.  If you weren’t, then stepping on the scale would be easy. Real anxious about the presentation coming up? You need to prepare more. Many alcoholics and addicts don’t like to look themselves in the mirror. You need to look.

In Doctor Paul Thomas’ book, “The Addiction Spectrum” he discusses the importance of accepting and feeling your pain. Accepting your pain, and feeling your pain are the same. To accept your pain is to feel your pain. Accept your pain as a guide. Thomas goes on to say, “Getting off drugs requires a change in our mindset about pain.” This mindset shift is entirely within control. Our entire life we have held onto our story about pain. It is our choice to see pain as a guide.

On the “spiritual” side of it there’s a Buddhist saying about “walking with mirrors”. This means, when you are struggling with things, look at yourself in order to solve it. Usually, you aren’t mad at that guy for that thing he did. You are mad because that triggered something in you. You may be mad at your father. After all, you don’t give a shit about this guy so why did it bother you so much? Jung mentioned this as well, “Our loudest accusations reveal our deepest insecurities”. You struggling through life is about you, no one else. Other’s may make the journey harder, but you can’t change others, only yourself.  Also, you allow them to be in your life. Therefore, its also your decision to remove them.

Confronting how you feel, walking with mirrors, feeling the pain in order to not have to feel it again. This is a shift in behavior, and it takes time. It’s not simply a decision. It is a practice. This is what meditation is. You vs. You.

Go ahead, sit still. Can you do it? Start practicing.

This practice opens doors in our psyche. It gives us the ability to take back our power. It gives us the ability to remove the toxic people from our life, so they no longer pull the strings of our mind. Life is a single player game, and we lose when we pretend someone else has the controller when we are the ones in control.

No matter the program you choose, you will be confronting the way you feel if you want to have any success in changing the way you live your life. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to change the way you spend money, eat food, use drugs, exercise, or treat your spouse. To be successful in our endeavors of growth we need to feel our pain and discomfort because the way you spend money is emotional. The way you eat food is emotional, the reason you don’t exercise is emotional and the way you treat your spouse is emotional. I’ve heard before that emotion is energy in motion. If you continue to distract yourself from the way you feel you are stopping that energy from being in motion and you will have to relearn the lessons you’ve already learned before. Think about it, if you aren’t dealing with distraction then you gain traction. Traction means you can move forward.

Understand how different living a life of structure and routine feels than living the sort of life you’ve been living. You’re adapted to your way of living, that’s okay. What needs to be understood is that is exactly why you feel so uncomfortable and full of anxiety. Not using drugs and alcohol early on is at the edge of your capability. That’s where you need to be living in order to grow. Eventually, you become capable of not using drugs regularly and you need to be on the edge of your capability with something else, reading, writing or exercising. This why so many people don’t reach their potential and its certainly why alcoholics and addicts become worse over time. You value comfort over growth. Let’s be clear: your brain does not care if your happy. Your brain wants comfort. Comfort signifies survival. 99.99% of human evolution involved struggling all day long in order to survive. Comfort and survival are intertwined so deeply into us.

It’s okay to feel the way you feel. Don’t run from the way you feel, discuss it. If you can’t discuss it(which you can, it’s just hard and there is a difference between hard and impossible) then at the very least understand it means you’re growing. Normally, your pain would be silenced by a substance.

In moving forward, you will feel compelled to act the way you’ve always acted. You will blame. You will make excuses. You will look outside of yourself to solve internal problems. That’s okay. However, you must exert effort and try not to. There is a great quote: “You’re not responsible for your first thought. You are responsible for your second thought and your first action”. Pay attention to your mind. It will blame. Follow blame up with responsibility, and then act responsible for what is within your control. That person may be an asshole, but you have chosen time and time again to put yourself around them. That’s your problem. You’d be amazed how much better life can be when you cut out one loser.

Keep in mind, in confronting the way you feel you will also have to confront the way you act. In doing so, you will learn that you act according to certain beliefs you’ve always held onto. This is key in taking back control of your life.

As philosopher Rene Descartes said: We must examine everything we do, everything we feel, and why we hold fast to certain beliefs.

Where do you refuse to confront the way you feel? In examining what you do, you may find you act according to the way you feel. In examining the way you feel, you may find you have certain beliefs that hold you back.