The Midlife Revolution
Shame on me!
January 7, 2023
Physical and behavioral additions are commonly talked about, but let’s talk about emotional addictions.
Since our thoughts generate our emotions and our emotions activate chemical reactions in our bodies, guess what happens when your body gets a regular dose of certain chemicals for a while?
It gets addicted to them and it starts to crave them, just like it does when it gets addicted to any external substance we might be feeding it with.
And since the mind – body, body – mind connection is so strong, if your body is addicted to a chemical your mind and body will work together to make sure they get their daily ‘fix’.
And since this is a regular process, over time you stop noticing the emotions you get addicted to because they become part of you and it just ‘feels like you’.
Similarly to years of feeling unworthy that I wrote about a few days ago, for years I was completely unaware that I was addicted to frustration and anger. It felt so ‘like me’ on a daily basis, I had no idea of my addiction. And not only that, but when I realized it, I was quite shocked to be honest.
How could someone like me, who considered themselves to be a very happy, enthusiastic and positive person, be addicted to anger and frustration?
Yet, I was.
And I was spending quite a lot of my time feeling angry and frustrated, but because it was my way of being every single day, I didn’t notice it.
Just like over time you stop noticing some of the imperfections of your house.
When you first move in, your ‘fresh pair of eyes’ makes every little imperfection stand out, but over time they become less and less ‘in your face’ and years later (often when moving out) you realize that there are still some bits that you wanted to fix when you first moved in.
Learning about my addiction gave me the power to take control and change it.
Have I eliminated anger and frustration from my life?
No and I never will as those emotions are part of being human and play a role in my experience, but unlike before, I now spend very little time feeling angry or frustrated.
I was pleased with the discovery of my addiction and the way I learnt to manage it. Yet, something else was bothering me. Something else was making me feel uneasy. Something else was behind it. So I kept digging. Kept observing my thoughts, emotions, behaviors. Kept analyzing.
Until I discovered that my anger and frustration were just a cover up…
It was easier to use anger and frustration than to face the real feelings hiding behind them.
It was easier to face the world displaying anger and frustration than to be exposed for how I really felt.
It was easier to convince myself that anger and frustration are just who I am and how I express myself than to face what was really sitting deep within me.
And the real feeling was shame.
From a young age, I developed an addiction to shame.
When I was young I was ashamed of my father being an alcoholic and everyone knowing about it. I was ashamed of the fact that when other kids were creating great memories with their dads, my dad had taken me to the pub and I had come back on my own, walking 2 km whilst dragging my sleigh behind me at the age of 6 because he was too drunk to take me back home.
When I grew up and stopped caring about not having great memories with my dad, I found another reason to get my daily fix of shame.
I was now ashamed of the fact that my mum and I had so little money we couldn’t afford to heat up the whole flat during our first winter in it and I had to put a winter jacket on to go to the bathroom.
When I started earning, moved to the UK and life got much better, I always found another reason to feel shame. I even felt ashamed when I was going through cancer a few years ago. I was ashamed not only because I had cervical cancer which was often associated with being a slut, but also because despite my case being complex – I didn’t have to lose my hair and go through some of the stages commonly associated with cancer.
It made me feel like a cheat and I was ashamed of it because I clearly wasn’t worthy of the survival I got, since I didn’t suffer as much as other people experiencing the same illness.
As years progressed I continued to find new reasons to feed my addiction to shame that I didn’t know I had.
I am not sharing this to get you to feel sorry for me.
I believe that we all have to face challenges, obstacles and sometimes get taken to hell and back as part of our human experience so I never felt or feel sorry for myself. In fact, I am grateful for all my experiences as they either shaped me into who I am today or provided me with lessons that I needed in order to become who I am.
I don’t ever think ‘why me’? Because why not me?
Every single one of us deals with something and the few examples I shared happened to have been dealt to me.
The reason I am sharing this is because I believe that those feelings, additions to them and our unawareness of them make our lives more difficult than they need to be.
They make us feel not good enough, inadequate and unworthy (which leads to imposter syndrome).
And this also not only contributes to the sad statistics: of ‘nearly one billion people worldwide suffering from some form of mental disorder’, (UN data, UN News 2022), but it also makes us an easy prey of marketing as we continue to look for solutions, for the next product or experience that will help us to get our ‘fix’.
Nothing outside of us can ever provide us with a sustainable/permanent fix/solution.
In fact, like with all addictions, with time we continue to need higher and higher doses.
The only way to come out is by going in.
Looking within might seem scary and truth can be difficult to face, especially when we buried it so deep within, we don’t even know it’s there, but without it the feelings of wholeness, worthiness and true freedom can never be reached.
My wish for you is to not have to dig as deep and do as much work as I did on my way to freedom and worthiness, but if you do, know that this journey is worth the effort.
May you know the true power of your 
& 
.
Love, Nina x
Get better, not bitter
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Lead with love and kindness.