Developing Self Trust within Stopping Addictions

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Marlen
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Developing Self Trust within Stopping Addictions

Post by Marlen »

Here's a blog I wrote that touches on the subject of finding the benefits of stopping certain habits and how this is a decision that supports not only us but everyone else that can be inspired by our examples.

Here's the link to the blog: https://marlenvargasdelrazo.wordpress.c ... o-decides/

Or how I’ve been able to establish a pillar of support for myself from the time I decided to ‘kick a habit’ and get to know who I am as the authority of myself.

Last week there was an interesting discussion in our group chat about self-authority and how many times we believe we ‘don’t have a say’ in opening up something within ourselves or others that we know could be fixed, corrected, changed for the betterment of a situation and everyone involved. However, we concluded how relevant it is to instead of wanting to ‘fix things out there’ first, we have to take things ‘back to self’ where one can instead see ‘who am I’ in relation to this point that I’m wanting to change in others and as such, seeing where one’s authority is in the whole case.

What do I mean by this ‘self-authority’ and how I have neglected my own in my life? I’ve found how I’ve conditioned myself several times in various contexts/situations based on an idea, belief or perception of myself as ‘not having the authority’ to change something in me, and it obviously doesn’t come up with such words as in ‘Oh crap, I don’t have authority over that!’ but it comes in the form of ‘I can’t change this, it’s not coming natural to me, based on my past it’s just not something that I can do, it’s who I’ve always been, that would not be me doing that, it’s just not ‘my thing,’ I would not feel entirely ‘me’ doing/saying/being that, I would feel so fake because I’ve never done that/expressed that before’ and one cool question that I’ve come up whenever these things come up which are a form of disempowerment is saying to myself “Well, Who Decides?”

And this ‘who’ is really then a way to bring myself back to who I decide to be, to realize that I am that authority that is able to decide how I can take the first steps to ‘step into the new,’ to start taking those ‘first steps’ in creating something, to decide to practice and express new things, in new ways, to be the one that makes a decision on what I express, what I choose, what I decide to move towards – it’s entirely up to me and the possibilities of doings so – all things considered of course within the context, possibilities, affordability, time, skills and the rest of practical common sensical things to look at when deciding to do something as a practical assessment of ‘I can’ do it and take reality into consideration – but I no longer give that power to my mind’s limitations as in ‘I can’t’ or ‘It’s gonna take so long that I rather just not do it at all’ or ‘It’s not my thing’ or ‘It’s going to be so difficult’ because I am aware how many times I’ve set such seemingly ‘excusable traps’ to myself as limitations which ultimately have led me to ‘long timeloops’ that I’m sorting out currently in my life and have realized are coming from fears of essentially stepping out of my comfort zone and actually ‘do change’ as it was mentioned in a recent recording on Eqafe.

Interestingly enough, this past week I’ve had conversations with a few individuals and it was cool to see that they all have been looking more intently into quitting a certain day to day habit such as weed, alcohol, smoking or even addiction to self-deprecation and ‘past sorrows’ lol. So I found it quite cool that all of them have been looking beyond the ‘habit’ or ‘addiction’ in itself – meaning going beyond the obvious habit created to experiencing some chemical/stimulation change in their bodies – or certain emotional experience – but more looking at and into what of themselves is being suppressed in those habits, where are they keeping themselves in these Timeloops or recycling of experiences day in and day out without really stepping out of the pattern and questioning ‘who am I’ without this habit/addiction/repetitive experience in my day to day? What’s behind my ‘need’ to do it on a daily basis, at the same times or in the same ‘social contexts’ etc.?

It’s quite interesting because quitting an addiction, stopping it or even taking the first step to question it and test out not ‘giving into it’ for one day is already a huge step for many, even more so for those that are not that aware of the various consequences created at a mind, physical and being level within the relationship created to certain substances/chemicals – but more so in discovering ‘what kind of expressions, words to live have I been suppressing or not developing for myself wherein I then believe I ‘need’ this substance in me to focus, to do things, to let go, to relax, to open up conversations with people, to ‘be me’, to enjoy life, to develop my skills in music/art/creativity’ and the rest of expressions that I can totally understand may not be ‘natural’ to most of us, but sure as hell I can say now that it IS entirely possible to be a ‘socially lubricated’, open, focused, relaxed, joyful, creative individual as one can experience oneself with drugs and being entirely sober and still manage to be all of those expressions that we have given our authority to create and develop for ourselves through needing a certain substance in our bodies/minds.

Here I’m mostly describing some of what I’ve discovered myself as well through having been a person that also had fallen into such habits before for various reasons and contexts, creating a dependency to ‘express myself’ for example creatively relying on a particular substance to ‘do that for me’ or ‘be the catalyst.’ And interestingly enough I was also listening to a person’s vlog this morning on menopause and creating an analogy of the symptoms of it being similar to withdrawal symptoms after being a drug addict, where her expression as a reason to take some ‘herbal stuff’ to calm her down was ‘I can’t deal with this’ and her entire expression was that of fighting back tears, being clearly emotional and believing that yes it’s too bad she can’t walk through it without the use of this ‘herb’ or drug.

Now I have no authority there to judge her or consider her as weak for needing that, I have no idea what menopause feels like nor how it is felt if one has been a drug addict, but the point that caught my attention is precisely going into that belief or experience of ‘I can’t deal with this’ where we believe we ‘can’t do it’ or ‘can’t stand’ something, where we in fact believe ourselves to be ‘less than’ such experiences in our minds and bodies – because yep, we have definitely intertwined them to such an extent that any ‘withdrawal’ symptom is not only a psychological but a physical dependency to cut off as well.

And I realized that those are mostly consequential outflows from having created such dependency in the first place – meaning, if one has to quit something, sure there will be withdrawal symptoms at various physical and psychological levels, re-wiring oneself or ‘re-adapting’ to not doing it anymore entails an entire ‘re-alignment’ of one’s day to day experience which has to be in a way ‘re built’ depending on the extent that one has ‘wired’/intertwined one’s life depending on these drugs to do/be/activate certain experiences within us, and that’s where a lot of patience, dedication, perseverance and consistency comes in, as well as being gentle to ourselves because it sure is quite a ‘shock’ to the body that has been conditioned at times for decades to do something as a regular habit. And also, very important, to seek out for support as well!

Having said that, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be an impossible thing where we are kind of already seeing the ‘long road’ and see it as ‘too much to go through’ and immediately create ‘backdoors’ and talk ourselves into this ‘oh no, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be hell, it will be so difficult! I rather just leave things as they are, I’m ok, it would only compound the problems…’ – right there is ourselves speaking as the worst or lesser version of ourselves that is not realizing the authority we truly have to change things. As the saying goes here ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’.

However, I am also aware that it’s entirely up to each one to make this kind of decisions but I personally haven’t talked myself out of my decisions in for example stopping habits I kicked out some 9 and a half years ago when I started this process with Desteni where my starting point was: I want to know who I am without all of these experiences, this ‘neediness’ for something causing me to ‘be’ or ‘express’ in a particular way,’ because I saw it as self-deception, as fooling myself, just like cheating in winning a game type of thing where you know that it’s not you doing the effort or developing the skills as such, but paying off your triumph or bribing someone to change the numbers for you to ‘feel like a winner.’ It’s just a point of self-dishonesty that I decided to stop within me which became a very relevant, sturdy pillar of support for the development of my self-trust – as in realizing ‘I can do this, I can walk through it’ and prove to myself eventually that ‘it wasn’t as hard/bad/tough/difficult as I thought it would be’ and in doing so, kind of debunking this ‘greater than myself’ fear that I had towards leaving these habits, patterns, emotional experiences in my mind, which enabled me to start seeing and realizing what? My self-authority - bingo.

So to me it’s been an interesting week of looking at this word of ‘self-authority’ and questioning where in my life I started first realizing this ‘authority’ that I have within myself, as in living that statement ‘I decide’ and within that decision moving as it, giving it a continuation as in doing something, changing something, stopping participating in something within the understanding of how I want to do this for myself, to get to really know me, to get to really express me instead of having a substance ‘doing the thing for me’ shrinking and wallowing in the back of myself in a position of disempowerment, while allowing a chemical, a substance to ‘kick in’ and be the ‘powerful hero’ one instead of me.

Self authority to me is that strength, that determination that is built not in one single day and within one single decision of ‘changing’ something, but it is something that is daily built and reassured within that continued commitment to myself not only in ‘kicking detrimental habits’ but in the various decisions I make to support myself, to be aware of myself, to ground myself, to work things that come up and ‘knock me off’ from my stability for a moment – I decide who I am in all those bits of moments, and even when there’s ‘nothing happening’ I then focus more into the detail of my physical, what do I have to correct in terms of tightness, tension, tensing up lips, feet, facial muscles, where am I frowning without awareness, where am I again having this undercurrent of ‘rushing’ and there’s in essence always, always something that I can be focusing on in this same context of establishing the authority of myself, my direction, my decision and action in terms of ‘who I decide to be’ in every moment and in the detail of myself as my physical body.

So, I very much enjoy extending the support that I’ve given to myself to these people in my life that I’ve come to know are walking through this ‘stopping the habit’ phase and enjoy making questions and sharing about my own experience as a way to understand ourselves better as ‘creatures of habit’ and how we can open up things for ourselves that can assist us is sticking to these decisions and testing out ‘who we are’ without these addictions/detrimental habits – or more so discovering ‘what of ourselves’ is hiding behind such habits. It’s a very interesting process and an enjoyable one dare I say because to me every single person that decides to ‘stand up’ in their lives is ‘one plus’ to this equation of self-support that will ripple out not only in our own body, but to the lives of many more that we can continue to inspire to consider doing the same in their lives, as what is ‘best for all.’ That’s why I also decided to write this blog and extend these realizations and support for others that may also be deciding to quit stuff recently.

So If you that’s reading this is considering or coming to the realization that it’s time to ‘kick that old habit’ out of your life, all I can say is Go For It! To me that’s been one of the pieces of ‘freedom’ in my life that I’ve been able to create, to be clean and say ‘I don’t depend on this/that to be me in any given context or activity’ in terms of substances/drugs/alcohol etc. It’s truly liberating in many aspects, and to me that’s one piece added to forming the completion of one’s self-authority as in living the statements of I decide, I do change, I live my decision, I walk through the process it takes with its ups and downs, starting overs and mistakes - I stand right back up if I fall, I stick to it, I trust myself, I persevere, I get it done and I see it through.

Thanks for reading!
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