addicted to... control?
I am fascinated and unsettled by addiction, firstly my own and then how others experience and express it differently.
I have given up drinking more times than I can count. Drinking used to be a fun thing which made good times better but now it simply doesn't work for me. Ultimately impacting on my self-worth, which reverberates through my life and leaves dirty footprints in my subconscious mind!
“If I wanted to stop drinking, I could do it”
In my experience, my truth reveals itself in stress testing these hypotheses!
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I now have instagram, linkedIn and facebook back on my phone again, after having taken it off a year ago.
Shannon, my business development support and social media creative, is encouraging me to be more interactive on the platforms to support my business growth.
Uncomfortably, I find myself looking at these social media platforms on rising in the morning and before bed at night. Enough research is out there to prove it is exceptionally bad for us and for our oncoming ADHD diagnosis (and over-identification) when we frequent these platforms, in the first 60 minutes of waking.
It hits our mental health and habitually creates and sets up an insatiable appetite for stimulation resulting in a deep lack in being present.
Am I addicted again to these fun and interesting accounts I follow?
Filling my in-between moments with entertaining and fascinating messaging, from what feels like “see me”! I too am human and like a bucket of likes ;-)
Feels a little like the statement I used to say about alcohol, but with alcohol I know the effects from hangover to the seeds of dis-ease (read it how it resonates). And if you are a fan of Andrew Huberman, his most recent research doesn’t leave much gray, its much closer to black and white!
Is my return to social media, a feeder for ADHD with click bait susceptibility driving my lack of presence with people, as I pick up my phone at dinner when my wife heads to the toilet?
I experience and observe addiction as blurry with many shades of gray rather than the black and white I saw it as, just a decade back.
Then there is what I see, rising in tension in a world that's changing underneath the feet of a species that fundamentally are uncomfortable with change. Or change that is not expected, welcome or wished for…
If I can control something, someone or an outcome - I am safe
This seems to be what I am seeing in myself, in my friends, family and expressed in so many situations in life.
I have friends who I see and courageously speak into deep discomfort in not being able to control or have agency or influence over another person they love, who is deep in suffering.
They cannot control, save or fix!
I have family who when a simple task cannot be completed, their mental safety begins to shake and they over identify with the task as something key to their survival.
No agency over a TV remote, can lead to no agency over health & life?
I resonate with both people and their scenarios! I have been there before, many times.
Control, certainty and order seem synonymous with safety.
Chaos, the unknown and a lack of control seems to unravel us “sophisticated” mammals!
If I look at my susceptibility to alcohol at a deeper level. It fundamentally is about control!
DRINKING - if I drink, I can't control my self image, the confidence in myself to have true agency over my life and my choices.
SOCIAL MEDIA - if I allow myself any opportunity to troll social media, I could lose control of my focus and mind, and aspects of myself which are now so important to me - where I put my attention and intention!
There is a place in a cancer journey that is the most scared and out of control I have ever been! I see it with every client, family member and friend who sadly “caught” cancer!
It’s the space between knowing you have cancer and not having yet decided and begun the type of treatment to pursue.
This is where I experienced a lack of control that shook the very fabric of life, within me!
And ironically it’s also the experience that seeded an obsession with my own growth and awareness.
The deepest fear I ever experience is balanced by the deepest appreciation for life and the people/love in my life. Two sides to the same coin - I have learned that you cannot have only one side of this coin! It's a package deal! Pain is deeply connected to Purpose in my lived experience!
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A year ago I hiked the Imfolozi primitive trail. You hike past lions and rhinos and sleep under the stars in the open - on night shift rotation, where you are responsible for everyone’s life, for an hours night shift.
It’s not play play, it's very real, and had moments that were life threatening at one point where we had no control. ZERO!
It was an unbelievable trip filled with incredible experiences and a situation that nearly had a friend of mine being taken out by a Rhino! It was close - one inch in fact!
I have rarely felt so afraid/alive, so connected to life as I was in the chaos of nature in her rawest expression!
Funny that ;-)
I have come across this term in meditations, in the “woke” movement and in my therapy - surrender, just surrender!
I think I get it now - surrender perceived control! Thats it!
Good talk - thanks for reading ;-)