Addiction to Suffering
In order to be able to stop trashing your body without it feeling like a deprivation, it is a pre-requisite to drop your addiction to suffering. Oh yes, so many of us are ADDICTED to suffering, to being sick and tired in one way or the other, to feeling unloved and unworthy, or at least to not living the life we secretly dream of.
It is a comfortable place to be. You don’t have to show up with courage, but can keep yourself busy complaining or “working on improving” your health, energy, relationships… (while unconsciously sabotaging them at the same time), always postponing happiness to the future…
This addiction is rooted in the belief that there is no gain without pain, that you do not deserve lasting happiness, that you are unworthy and will always be punished and lose in Life.
In fact, you simply could not tolerate feeling happy and being completely healthy and energetic NOW. Immediately you would feel you don’t deserve it, when there is so much suffering in the world. And immediately you would become afraid, too. Afraid of the pain to lose again what you have. Because you believe it cannot last. What goes up must come down, right? And the higher you climb, the deeper you can fall, right? But even more of falling, you are afraid to lose your identity. If you built all your life around an idea of yourself as the loser in Life (or if not the loser than definitely not the winner), who would you be if suddenly you were proven wrong?
What if you are actually loved, meant to win and be happy? What if suffering (from health problems, toxic relationships, the job you hate) would be taken away from you?
You would have to redefine who you are. You would have to find a worthwhile purpose to spend all that energy on, all that energy that before was locked up in maintaining and taking care of your suffering. You would have to take the reins of your life back in your hands and actually think about what you would want to experience, build, LIVE during your precious time down here, instead of just being consumed by your “poor conditions” that keep you locked in a Life that you do not really enjoy, or a Life that might give you SOME pleasure, but stays far below what you intuit could be possible… until you are eventually allowed to die. Of course, that’s what you claim you WOULD do, IF ONLY you had the energy, time, health, money… But hey, you really do not have a choice, do you? Sick, tired, broken, bills to pay… Poor you…
You have to realize how it is YOU who is keeping yourself down. You have to acknowledge how you are simply more comfortable staying down and spending your life dreaming about the heights. How it is YOU who sabotages the happiness and all the good things that are presented to you NOW. How you keep yourself down by making poor choices when it comes to food, lifestyle, relationships, activities… And yes, acknowledge the satisfaction you secretly get when as a consequence of those poor choices your “beliefs” get confirmed again. When you do indeed suffer again, become sick again, when things are “difficult”… As I pointed out in a previous article: Your results speak louder than your words.
But there’s another way. You can drop your addiction to suffering. You can realize how you are indeed worthy of true love and ecstatic happiness. How you deserve the fulfillment of your hearts’ deepest desires. You can learn to see how EVERYTHING that happens to you is always happening FOR you, is always in your best interest. You can redefine what happiness actually means, that it doesn’t mean that everything will always be ok, but that despite what happens YOU will always be ok. You can learn to be happy even though you have to go through difficult times. You can look for the treasure even in seemingly “negative” events. You can develop unshakable trust in the benevolence of Life and in your capacity to handle whatever comes your way. You can learn equanimity, stopping to judge events into good and bad. You can learn to look at the glass half full rather than half empty. You can realize that while there is indeed no certainty in life and that there will always be ups and downs, you can enjoy the ride and trust that even though forms might change, there will ALWAYS be enough for you and you will always get exactly what you need when you need it. Yes, you can learn to enjoy the ride through emotions: feeling sadness and anger, joy and love, in all its intensity. You can learn to enjoy the aliveness that comes from feeling deeply and living whole-heartedly. You can learn to see through the illusion of fear. Realize how it’s fear that keeps you locked in a prison, but that it’s a prison with a door wide open. And that the fear of the fear is much worse than the actual reality.
Unless you make the conscious choice to drop your addiction to suffering, NOBODY will be able to help you heal and you will stay caught in an endless loop of making an effort and sabotaging it again.
That being said, if you need support during the process, do not hesitate to reach out. I have been there too, and still sometimes find myself in old patterns, but in the meantime I have developed the consciousness to catch myself in “poor me” mode and tools to get myself out of there again. Happy to share them with you, IF you are truly dedicated to taking responsibility and are not just looking for a quick fix and someone to do the work for you…