Addiction
“Underneath every addiction is an illusion/fantasy that sucks you of power/energy until the truth is faced”
Porn
Sugar
Alcohol
Tobacco
Psychedelics
One of the landmarks in naming the demon I’m calling toxic shame is the outline of the control-release dynamics by Fossum and Mason in their book Facing Shame. Figure 4.3 is an adaptation of their work.
Control and release are natural polarities in human activity. You had to learn to hold on and let go as a child learning muscle balance. Later on you learned more sophisticated balance, as in dancing (some of us, that is). In dancing you let go within a learned structure. At first you learned the individual dance steps. They were awkward and you did them with conscious control. Soon you forgot the instructions and just danced. The steps were now unconscious. The control and release fused together in an unconscious two-step or waltz.
Mastery of addiction is the fusing of holding on and letting go by integrating the extremity of two worlds to find a meditating and mediating balance of opposing forces. Where neither side of the equation is avoided or resisted, allowing flow and harmony towards a centre that is not dominated by the edges or ruled the polar extremes. Dancing is the mastery of both forces, where one may see a fighting dynamic, a master would see a beloved and unionised dance between two worlds.
When healthy shame is internalized, it becomes toxic and destroys all balance and boundaries. You become grandiose: either the best, or the “best-worst.” With toxic shame, you are either more than human (superachieving) or less than human (underachieving). You are either extraordinary or you are a worm. It’s all or nothing.
Subhuman is as toxic as superhuman. Both seperate you from spirit, turn you inward to a point of self-obsession and disconnects you from an upward relationship to God and an outward service to others. The moment you don’t super achieve, you are catapulted back to a state of shame. It’s a recipe for never feeling good enough. It’s a pattern of yoyo’ing shame.
You either have total control (compulsivity), or you have no control (addiction). They are interconnected and set each other up. Fossum and Mason write: When shame underlies the control and release it seems to intensify both sides of the tension. . . .
No ejaculation, masturbation or porn use which is vehemently and violently restricted (evangelical circles) is as dangerous as the hyper perverted and grotesque side of pornography which leaves you feeling icky in your stomach. To be an extremist on either side, keeps you bound in the dramatic addiction where you are fighting an unwinnable war.
The heathier alternative to extreme stances that yo-yo shame to is to ask, how do I find presence and practice in a middle ground that doesn’t deny my animal nature (sexual need) or my spiritual nature (relational need)? How can I get both needs met, honour both sides of my nature and integrate a unique practice of my own calling and design that makes me free to express ny unique and sovereign expression.
Shame makes the control dynamic more rigidly demanding and unforgiving and the release more dynamic and self-destructive. The more intensely one controls, the more one requires the balance of release and the more abusingly or self destructively one releases, the more intensely one requires control. Diets follow this control and release cycle.
Diets
Porn
Alcohol
Substances
Social Media
Gambling
An addiction is an addiction. The word means to give oneself up (from Latin addicere). To be addicted is to surrender oneself to something obsessively. The answer for addicts is not trying to control the addiction. The answer is to be aware of powerlessness and unmanageability and surrender. Surrender means facing up to the fact that one can’t control it. That’s why it is an addiction.
A downward acknowledgement, surrendering your arms and dropping your knees to the earth (the mother), in owning your powerlessness in your addiction cycle (one extreme to the other: all or nothing swings from opposite to opposite) allows a portal and gateway to go upward and call in a higher power. The divine mother in your surrender (feminine) is now open to receiving the love and support of the holy father (masculine) where their unity gives eternal spirit and essence to something we cannot fully master on our own.