EP.17 - From Addiction to Empowerment
SHOW NOTES:
Addiction can affect anyone, and it can be a difficult and devastating experience.
The road to recovery may be difficult and long, but you can turn it into a personal journey toward a newfound sense of strength and purpose.
So how did I do this?
By practising mindfulness and learning to sit with the discomfort of withdrawal, I discovered the root causes of my addiction and used that understanding to address underlying issues.
I share with you how I broke free from the destructive cycle of addiction and the three main lessons it taught me.
The journey to sobriety and self-discovery can be a transformative experience that leads to a life of empowerment and growth.
By staying true to oneself and remaining accountable, you can find the strength to overcome addiction and find a path to a brighter future.
Here are the key takeaways from this episode:
1:54 - So much of addictive patterns is accepted by society
3:06 - The pattern of consumption can transform into a unconscious pattern of addiction
6:34 - Lean into the discomfort of what you're going through in life
9:22 - Music is a poignant and powerful tool to practise the art of deep listening
11:59 - Your inner voice holds an authority of knowing that is rooted in the generations of life before you
14:22 - Through awareness and curiosity, you can get to know all parts of yourself better
21:47 - By learning who you are not, you will learn how to be more of yourself
22:53 - If you don't know who you are, then you are on the right track
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I help you lead with fearless authenticity by smashing the self-imposed heteronormative stereotypes that keep you playing small through emotional healing inner child and inherited intergenerational trauma. Create a purposeful life of your unique design by disrupting societal norms and expectations of who you should be. Explore mindfulness, fearless curiosity and loving kindness through the lens of Human Design to thrive as the person you are born to be.
Learn more about my coaching method and join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community at melissaindot.com.
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TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00]
Your inner voice, if you can connect with it, holds an authority of knowing that is rooted in the generations of life before you. It is the wisdom of life's experiences of your ancestors that's coded in your DNA. It's connected to the intelligence of life itself. It's more than just what your thoughts are. It's the space within silence, the silence within you that is held through the music that you listen to. It's the gut feeling or the heart's expansion, or that inner sense that we also call the inner inner voice or intuition.
[00:00:43]
Hey there! Welcome to the Fearlessly Curious Podcast, your safe space to listen, lean in, and learn the diversity of human experiences through the lens of fearless curiosity. When we learn more about each other, we also learn more about ourselves. How? Because when we listen to each other's curiosities and experiences, we relate to that which is in common, and that which sets us apart, gives us something to reflect on. We learn through and with each other. I'm grateful to you, the global community, for your curious questions. The Fearlessly Curious Podcast cannot exist without you.
[00:01:30]
Welcome to yet another episode of a Fearlessly Curious podcast. Today I'm gonna be sharing with you three key things that I learned through addiction. I lived in addiction, to be honest, for many, many years, and I wasn't even aware that I was addicted. I was addicted to alcohol, and I was addicted to drugs.
[00:01:51]
Why wasn't I aware I was addicted was because so much of addictive patterns is accepted by society. Alcoholism, at least for me, found its root in social drinking. Having that happy hour drink at the end of a full day of work, but doing it on a regular basis. So much so that when I even stopped working a nine to five job, I would still meet my friends for happy hour.
[00:02:19]
And happy hour would extend to dinnertime. But of course once I'd been drinking a lot, I didn't really feel like eating, so I would just continue drinking. And the same went for taking drugs. It was very much, it started as an activity that was social that primarily existed on big events, big celebratory events.
[00:02:39]
I'm not gonna get into the details of what the drugs were that I took. They were A Class drugs and a big event, a wedding, a birthday, a big celebration. It was seen as a treat, something to indulge in for sure. But what happened was I found a reason to celebrate more and more occasions in life because instead of it becoming something to mark an occasion, I would find an occasion to mark. And so that's how the pattern of consumption transformed into an unconscious pattern of addiction. And I was very high functioning. I could carry on my life as normal. I was very productive. I was very social, dynamic even. And I then developed another addiction, and that was an addiction to working out.
[00:03:26]
We can develop an addiction to anything really. And to be honest, my perspective of addiction, and this is not necessarily scientifically proven, all I can do is share from my personal experience and my own reflections of addiction through my five year sobriety journey. Very much a journey of personal growth, personal development, and personal awareness.
[00:03:47]
So I myself am aware that I have an addictive pattern. My addictions will arise for anything, literally anything. Watching tv, eating chocolate, drinking again, picking my fingers, gaming, anything at all. The minute I lose awareness is where the potential for my addictions will grow, because when I lose awareness, I fall into a pattern and I do things without thinking. And I am a creature of habit.
[00:04:19]
I find comfort being in rituals, being in scheduled activities that don't require me to think. And so when I switch off, I therefore lose awareness of how those activities, those practices are landing in my body. I don't even notice if it's causing me discomfort. I just know that I am now where I'm meant to be, that it's been scheduled and this is the act I take.
[00:04:45]
That's just how I work. I like to switch my mind off scheduled events in a way as a form for me to rest my mind. But the truth is when I was heavily into my addictions, they were a form of escapism. I wanted to escape from the thoughts and the internal struggles that I was navigating because it intensified when my father was diagnosed with cancer back in 2013.
[00:05:13]
He went through his own cancer journey and a cancer journey for anybody, whether it's your personal cancer journey or you are a family member, a friend within the community, and an active part in caregiving or care taking somebody, you get drawn into that incredibly complex and difficult journey. And these practices of drinking and taking drugs became my crutch. It was a way for me to forget the pains and struggles and emotional struggles, especially that I was going through because I needed to be strong. I needed to be there for the people who meant a lot to me, and honestly, I abandoned myself. I abandoned my own needs, and I wasn't even aware I was doing that because I was projecting what was important to me, which was to be seen, to be heard, to be felt, to be accepted, to be loved and validated through service.
[00:06:07]
And so that's what I did. I poured everything into providing, into serving, even if it cost my own mental health and emotional wellbeing, which I wasn't even aware of. So my coping mechanism was to turn to alcohol and drugs. What this highlights in terms of the strength of a quality that can show up as an addict is focus. In the right environment you can pivot this quality, which is a powerful quality to lean into the discomfort of what you're going through in life. So in my journey of sobriety, I paid attention to this. I paid attention to the fact that I was an incredibly effective and efficient addict because I was hyper-focused and being hyper-focused allowed me to be organised with my habits, my addictions.
[00:06:54]
It allowed me to continue life as usual without anybody even noticing. It allowed me to be productive, even though it was at the cost of my own health. How my hyperfocus excelled in an unhealthy environment, I shifted. I pivoted my hyper-focus into focusing on what was uncomfortable, what was uncomfortable about my sobriety journey, what was uncomfortable.
[00:07:20]
Every time I felt that pang, that desire to have another drink, to indulge in my drug addiction because I didn't seek help. In my sobriety, I didn't seek help at all. I decided to do it on my own, not something I recommend for people. And I have my own reasons for why I did that, which I'm not gonna get into.
[00:07:39]
It's not important right now. What's important is what I share with you about my journey of sobriety, out of addiction, leaning into the quality that made me a good addict, hyper-focus. Leaning into that and using it to my benefit. So I hyper-focused. Cause I knew I had the ability and strength to do that.
[00:08:00]
I hyper-focused on what felt uncomfortable. Every time I felt a pang to drink, I hyper-focused on my emotions. I am hyper-focused on my feelings. Every time I was triggered, I hyper-focused on my situation. What happened? That created that trigger within me, that desire within me to break my sobriety journey, to have a drink. Instead of focusing on having a drink, I focused on what had just happened.
[00:08:32]
Who had just spoken, what did they just say? What were the thoughts running through my mind? How was I feeling in my body? Being literally fearlessly curious and asking these questions, writing them down. So journaling was a big practice. But I gotta admit it was painful. Withdrawal is a unique experience for everybody and for me, it expressed itself through frustration.
[00:08:57]
A lot of anger, a lot of violent anger that I internalised. But when I couldn't internalise it, it meant that I caused a lot of harm, especially to the people that I loved. At that time, I was spending a lot of time away from my family so it was a partner I had at the time. and violent thoughts and feelings towards myself.
[00:09:15]
So once again, I hyper-focused on those thoughts and feelings that violence, and I journaled. But one of the more poignant and powerful tools I used as I hyper-focus and as I leaned into these really disturbing thoughts, often destructive, threatening thoughts, self threatening, and powerfully painful emotions was to listen to music.
[00:09:45]
I would ask myself, what song would represent this emotion right now? What song tells the story of my anger right now? What song pulls the signature of the grief that I'm feeling right now, the loss, the void, the fury, the disappointment, the rejection, the abandonment? What songs? And as I lean into these uncomfortable emotions and thoughts, it's a hyper-focus on them.
[00:10:12]
And I held space for the songs to show up. I started to create a playlist. Because what this playlist of songs did was it created a sacred and safe container for me to practise deep listening. The art of deep listening is about holding space for your truth without the influence of your personal filters, your personal filters being your opinions and your judgments about your thoughts.
[00:10:38]
Okay? So by creating this playlist of songs, by allowing myself to create a soundtrack to the uncomfortable emotions and thoughts I was feeling, I was able to practise the art of deep listening. And the thing is, we can't do this for other people unless we can do it for ourselves. So I gave this to myself, and I started to witness my process.
[00:11:01]
Creating this playlist allowed me to feel what I was feeling in a way that felt safe. It also created a bridge to my inner voice, to my deepest thoughts and most fragile in a child within. Creating the soundtrack of songs allowed me to give birth to a methodology that I've since trademark called Intuitive Music Programming, a way of listening to music as a portal that gives you the ability to listen to the wise truth that lives within you.
[00:11:35]
An unquestionable truth, not knowledge, not something that comes from the mind that you've learned, that you've read, that you've heard that someone told you, but the wise wisdom of your soul, of your heart, a deep knowing. How do we connect with that? And this is beyond the mind's ability to cognitively comprehend.
[00:11:54]
It's not about something that makes sense. It's an absolute truth that lives within you. Your inner voice, if you can connect with it, holds an authority of knowing that is rooted in the generations of life before you. It is the wisdom of life's experiences of your ancestors that's coded in your DNA.
[00:12:13]
It's connected to the intelligence of life itself. It's more than just what your thoughts are. It's the space within silence, the silence within you that is held through the music that you listen to. It's the gut feeling or the heart's expansion or that inner sense that we also call the inner inner voice or intuition.
[00:12:36]
I started to listen. I realised that previously I used to hear this voice, hear the sense, feel the sense, but I always used to ignore it or numb it or avoid it. And hence, the addictive patterns. Once I started to truly listen, once I hyper-focused and I listened and I used music as my tool, I started to honour the truths within me.
[00:13:02]
I started to assimilate what my needs were. I started to discover that I had been abandoning myself time and time again so that I could be seen and heard and felt and recognized and acknowledged and accepted, and validated and loved. Because I was constantly searching for all of this outside of myself, when really what I needed was first to look in the mirror.
[00:13:32]
You see, once I was able to accept who I am and not measure and compare with the world outside, but create a safe space within me, then I no longer needed to escape me, numb myself. I could learn to get comfortable with being me, but what was even more important, I could learn how to sit with myself even in my discomfort. Not being true to myself, led me to overcommitting.
[00:14:03]
It led me to enabling others. It lent itself to me finding myself in codependent relationships where I couldn't function without the other person. And it definitely led me to burnout because it led me to do things that were not aligned to me, and that required so much energy and effort, and it definitely led me to addiction.
[00:14:22]
Through awareness, through curiosity, you can get to know yourself better, all parts of yourself. The good, the bad, and the ugly, and it's powerful to know all parts of yourself. Not because you can criticise, demonise, or minimise the parts of yourself that you don't like. But because you can hold space for tenderness, vulnerability, and love for those parts of you that maybe are less, maybe are fragile, maybe are a little compromised compared to the other parts of you.
[00:14:58]
Witnessing these narratives that you have on the different parts of yourself and how you try to mask or make up for these parts of you in order to meet expectations and needs of the world around you is powerful. Because we're attempting to change who we are to fit in a world that wasn't made for you.
[00:15:16]
With awareness we learn to discover that the world out there is for you to make according to you. And that the more that you abandon yourself to try and fit in, the more you comply with a world that wasn't built for you. The world was built to make things easier, but in order to make things easy, you might need to abandon yourself.
[00:15:39]
And listen, I'm not here to criticise the world. I'm here to say, be fearlessly curious. Switch on the light of awareness so that at least you have a choice, a conscious choice. Because without consciousness, without awareness, you're still making a choice, which you're making an unconscious choice. You're allowing yourself to be led into a way of living that maybe isn't aligned with you.
[00:16:04]
It's still a choice. A choice to be switched off, a choice to not think, a choice to look for a hack, a choice to do things easier. But easier is only perception. If your idea of ease is not having to think, then be prepared for a life that is mediocre or less than a life that doesn't meet your standards, whatever those standards might be.
[00:16:25]
A life that is created, curated, designed and controlled by someone else. When we unmask through awareness, this is what sobriety led me to. The unmasking provides an opportunity to be accountable. Accountable for your choices. Sometimes our addictions, our strategies to avoid accountability so that we can place blame outside of ourselves.
[00:16:51]
And I'm not here to call you out and blame you for the right or wrong decisions. I'm simply here to prompt. Are you being accountable for your life? Or are you giving your life away to others to lead through the expectations that they have of you? When you are constantly abandoning yourself to meet expectations, then you are allowing other people to create your life for you.
[00:17:15]
You are allowing it as a choice. Complaining about a quality of life where you are constantly in service to others that don't have time for me really comes down to accountability and ownership. You are still making that choice, and you have the choice and capability to make that change. These repeated patterns and cycles of life that you're living are yours.
[00:17:37]
We cannot blame others for them. They're yours. And the minute you can be accountable for them, that is the moment that you empower yourself to make a different choice. So stop hiding. It's time to unmask whatever your addiction is. Your addiction to your narrative of saying, oh no, I have to take care of other people first.
[00:17:55]
Your addiction, your narrative of saying, I never have time. I'm too busy, I'm exhausted. These are all things I'm guilty of saying. And with awareness, I can calm myself out and hold myself accountable. And some months it's easier than others. I've had years of being really good at being mindful and aware, and I've had months of burnout.
[00:18:16]
Like right now, I'm actually in burnout right now. But with awareness, I don't beat myself up for it. With awareness, I offer myself tenderness. I say, oh, look, there you are again. You're in burnout again, Melissa, how did this happen? Let's have a look and how can we do things? How can we be different next time? So that either this doesn't happen at all, or this experience doesn't have to be quite so painful or exhausting.
[00:18:41]
This experience can happen less often. Because life is about cycles, right? It's not about creating a strategy that works for you and then you switch off from, because the strategies in and of themselves have to change as you change. And only awareness can help you stay on top of your changing strategies for a changing life.
[00:19:04]
With awareness, you can constantly disrupt any patterns that you may fall in that are no longer serving you. There are still moments that I see my addiction and I see my addictive qualities still show up in different areas. Addicted to working is one of them. I work every minute of the day that I have because I don't see it as work.
[00:19:26]
I love what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm not addicted to it. And I can pay attention to it, and I can bring awareness to it. And I can say I'm making a conscious choice and I can still be who I need to be. But I will not use it as an excuse to not be who I'm born to be. In order to be me, I need to live life my way.
[00:19:46]
I need to experience everything that life gives me. I need to be forgiving. I need to be kind. Because I'm always learning. At every juncture, every moment, every day of life, I'm in a new experience to the three things I learned from addiction at circle round. One is my very strengths, my qualities like hyper-focusing, like having the energy to see things right through to the end, like never giving up fierce loyalty.
[00:20:15]
These are three qualities that made me a really effective and efficient addict. Can help me live in a way that is more mindful and more beneficial to my health. I can focus on my awareness. I can be fiercely loyal to my health. And listening to music and journaling my thoughts helps me to be aware of the narratives that are running my life beyond the judgement of the mind when I listen to the music, my playlists. Cause it helps me get outta my thinking mind.
[00:20:48]
To access another level of my thoughts. So that I can allow my thoughts to flow freely onto my journaling notebook. To observe what are the inner narratives and stories that are running in my system right now. And in that practice as I connect more with my body, meaning I take note of my physical sensations, my emotional landscape, and the thoughts in my mind.
[00:21:18]
And I look at them running parallel with each other as an observer, then I get to live my specific design. Cause I'm studying who I am and I'm also discovering who I'm not. All the actions and thoughts that I'm taking and making as a result of who I think I should be and how I think I need to fit in are all the ways that are being revealed to me that I am abandoning.
[00:21:47]
And so by learning who I am not, I learn how to be more of me. I learn who are the right people to be around the greatest love I get to live and experience all of life. The roughened, the smooth, the light in the shade, the darkness and the light, the joy and the discomfort because everything that isn't love is leading me back to.
[00:22:14]
Every addictive thought and quality I have is leading me back to sobriety. Every scarce experience I'm having where I'm in fear is leading me back to abundance. Every time I'm confused is an opportunity for me to lean into curiosity, to find my way back to clarity. Nothing is ever permanent in life. In fact, the one thing in life that is permanent is that it's always changing.
[00:22:43]
So keep your eyes bright, keep your heart open, and keep that mischievous playfulness and curiosity in your life. This life is yours to live. And if you don't know who you are, then you are on the right track. Because we're changing from moment to moment. And through your fearless curiosity, you will constantly discover new things about you, and new things about life, and new ways that you can connect and integrate and contribute to the most incredible adventure of a lifetime. And these are some of the things that, more than three things I believe that addiction has taught me. I hope you found this episode helpful, nourishing, insightful, or at least inspiring, sharing a bit of my personal story with you and what my greatest learnings have been. Thank you for listening.
[00:23:32]
Drop me a comment, don't forget to subscribe, and more importantly, if you really did find this useful, please do give the podcast a rate and a review. I look forward to spending more time with you in the community circle and beyond. Until next time, stay fearlessly curious.
[00:23:57]
If you want more, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode every Friday. And please leave a review if you enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to send me your curious questions and experiences as inspiration for future episodes. Your anonymity will be respected if that's what you prefer. For more guidance and support, join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community over at melissaindot.com. See you next week.
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