By Ryan D.
Anyone who has come to grips with their own addictive behavior
will confront new questions: What do I do now? Do I join a group somewhere? Can
I fix it on my own?
Chances are, you’ll be begging for the last answer to be yes.
Yet, the chances favor the reality that on your own, you will flounder. Support
groups places where people who struggle with similar addictions can express
their frustrations, successes, and fears safely.
But common road signs have been sitting in your mind to keep you
isolated, blocking your transit to recovery:
1) I’m ashamed. The biggest barrier to
joining a support group is shame. Almost everyone presented with the avenue of
support groups fights this feeling at the start, even those who believe they
have been “walking in the light” for some time by telling others about their
struggles.
When the secrets of your life whisper from the crevices of your
mind, you feel as if you’re in a ghost story: no one will believe how
terrifying the secrets are, and no one will want to be around you when you
admit them truly.
Another largely subconscious barrier to joining support groups is
the hard reality that if you commit to a group that meets solely over
addiction, you will have to regularly think about “the problem.” You’ll have to
give your addiction its due credit for the hold it has in your life and---worse
yet---you will have to become serious about getting rid of addictive behavior.
2) God is supposed to deliver me from this;
why should I go to people? This
can sound at first like a good, Christian solution. After all, if we live life
to bring glory to God, why let other people steal it away by being the keys to
finally overcoming our addiction?
The problem is that God has unmistakably laid out a plan to
achieve his purposes through people. The
redemption of a soul comes through a relationship, a spoken word, or some other
human intersection. Why should addiction recovery be any different?
Here is where the glory of God shines: you have a plan for how to
fix your life, and he brings you down an entirely different path. In the end,
you are much, much more usable for his glory than you would have been if you
had privately beaten addiction and never had your burdens carried by another.
3) Support groups are weird; everyone says
their name and stuff. They’re not weird, though people sometimes are.
Formality is necessary for vastly different personalities to coexist in the
same group. This isn’t the beginning of
Fight Club; this is a room of people who empathize with your pain and are
ready to help you do something about it.
Do something about it. Make the terrifying leap in order to
actually be seen and heard as you are. Search for a L.I.F.E. Recovery Group inyour area
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