Are you trapped in a constant cycle of using drugs and/or alcohol to cope with life, or to avoid your feelings? 

Do you tell yourself you’re not going to use/drink again, only to find yourself doing it all over again and wondering why? 

Or perhaps you’re always feeling that who you are, or what you do is never, “good enough”? That you’re not buff enough, good looking enough, funny enough, successful enough, hung enough? Do you think that everyone else is living a fabulous, happy life, and that because you’re not, there’s something terribly “wrong” with you? 

Or are you constantly saying to yourself “I’m a worthless piece of shit” (or words to that effect) and see yourself as a failure or as a “loser”?

Or perhaps you’re stuck in a loop of “chill outs”, finding yourself in riskier and riskier situations, having sex with people you’d never usually have sex with and feeling empty and alone at the end of it all?

I get it, because that used to be me…

I spent years running away from and avoiding the parts of myself that I couldn’t bear, the parts that left me feeling that I was somehow “faulty” and everyone else had their shit together? That if someone saw what lay behind the “perfect” masks I would put on, they’d run away in horror. 

I used to be stuck in a constant anxiety loop, always over-worrying, too often paralysed by indecision. Afraid of making the "wrong" choice, avoiding places and/or people because it felt overwhelming. Putting my head down on the pillow to go to sleep only to find my washing-machine brain whirring around and around over everything that could or would go wrong in the future. I’ve been stuck in periods of low mood, despair, hopelessness. That nothing ever changes, so what’s the point in trying to carry on. Struggling to find my old motivation and unable to connect with any joy in life.

I used to hate myself. I’d constantly talk to myself in ways I’d never talk to my best friend - “stupid”, “ugly”, “worthless”, “unloveable”. And I’d to find ways to judge other people as “less than” in order to bolster my fragile sense of worthiness. And then fall in to traps of judging others as “better than” me, so I’d be back to square one. And I’d look for validation from other people, putting their needs and wants ahead of my own, so that they’d like me, they’d really like me!

My boundaries were either almost non-existent, so that I got taken advantage of too easily, or I lived behind a wall to keep people out, in a “house” of loneliness and isolation, so that they couldn’t see who I “really” was and reject me. I had no notion of what healthy self-care truly is. I had no clue about my wants and needs, and if I did, I could never express them for fear of rejection. Instead, I’d to control everyone and everything around me in order to try, all too often unsuccessfully, to get my needs and wants met.

And to deal with all that, I turned to drugs and alcohol to self-medicate. Which worked, until it no longer did…