When dealing with addiction, whether you’re addicted to alcohol, drugs, porn, food, or whatever it is, one of the most effective ways to achieve recovery is by going all the way back to your inner child and figuring out what triggers your pain points so you can eventually take mindful action.
Author and licensed professional counselor, Eddie Capparucci, who specializes in the treatment of sex and pornography addiction, created the inner child recovery process to help people struggling with addiction.
A Vicious Cycle
When you start to feel that ugliness within you and you start to say how disgusting you are, that just keeps you in the cycle. You go back to your addiction in order to forget and not feel. And that’s the biggest problem.
One of the keys to dealing with sexual pornography addiction, or any addiction for that matter, is learning how to sit with that emotional pain, feel it, and understand that it’s not going to kill you no matter how uncomfortable it is.
The Impact of Childhood on Trauma
For instance, when you have a sense of abandonment, there’s fear that people or whoever you bring into your life, are not going to wind up staying, whether they discovered there’s something about you that’s unlovable, or they’re just not reliable people.
There is fear that lives underneath the surface that you try to protect yourself against that fear by keeping people at a distance. And so, you begin to build a wall even with people you become involved with romantically.
You’re not going to let them get close to you because if you do, you give them the power to hurt you by leaving. But then if you have a wall up and you don’t let them get that close to you, and if in the event they leave you, then it’s okay because you can always replace them.
The Inner Child Process
The inner child process allows people to go deeper so they can identify the emotional childhood pain points that are still being activated today. It provides insight and it helps men understand why they engage in their addictive behaviors. Then they’re able to stay one step ahead of their addiction by identifying the core emotional triggers that activate their inner child.
What are the nine different kinds of the inner child?
- The Bored Child
- The Unaffirmed Child
- The Unnoticed Child
- The Emotionally Void Child
- The Lack-of-Control Child
- The Entitled Child
- The Inferior-Weak Child
- The Stressed Child
- The Sexually Early/Stimulated/Abused Child
In the inner child recovery process, they look at each kind to see which ones they identify with. By recognizing the childhood pain points, they would now understand the triggers that activate those pain points. Then the next step is mindfulness.
Supporting Resources:
NovusMindfulLife.com
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The Addicted Mind Podcast