This week on Empowered Sobriety, Lindsay Fano and Abby Gerber talk about how addictions can be the results of traumas that occurred in early life and how suppression tactics, such as drug use, can help us survive and cope. Listen in as they use their own personal experiences of alcohol addictions and how they each have worked (and currently working) through their traumas and wounding.
Lindsay’s Wisdom:
Because of her father wounding and her mother wounding, she experienced feelings of unworthiness and lack intimacy, love and connection.
***Her alcohol use allowed her to dull and suppress her feelings of unworthiness that she was experiencing but it created unhealthy patterns and behaviors.
***She breaks down what feeling “unworthy” looked like for her and how she behaved and responded around that core wounding.
***Her extreme mixed messages from her father led to her seeking connection, love and intimacy through promiscuity, unhealthy relationships and not feeling aligned within herself and how those behaviors resulted in a lot of shame and guilt.
***She also reveals how she was able to sit with the long suppressed feelings of guilt and shame through her work with life coaches, therapists, support groups and AA. And also the wisdom she learned through her relapse two years into her sobriety.
Abby’s Wisdom:
***She opens up how she felt so uncomfortable and awkward in her own skin growing up and how that led to her wounding of never feeling good enough based on her rigid familial belief systems.
***She talks about using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine in high school to fit in. She discusses how not feeling good enough led her to do whatever she was told but didn’t know how to ask for support, which then led to many college attempts and eventual failing grades and dropping out.
***Her addiction allowed to feel relief from all the pressure she was feeling and tap into her anger when she was drunk but eventually her pain was constant and even alcohol couldn’t suppress it any longer and she sought other ways to find relief, such as cutting.
***She also talks about her early sobriety tools and resources that she picked up along the way.
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