Kathy came to me at the time in her late forties. She had the look of a worn out alcoholic. Her addiction was so old that she had no hope of stopping it. So Kathy did not want to talk about her drinking. To her it was just an accepted part of her life. And even though her life was complicated by and almost destroyed by alcohol, she still refused to acknowledge it affects on her. A major problem with Kathy was her hopelessness. She first learned to feel hopeless when as a child she was rejected by her parents, both of whom were hard core drinkers. As a little girl she would watch them sit around in stupors or fighting each other or yelling at her and her siblings….always with a drink in their hands or near by. To Kathy love, hate, and survival were interwoven with alcohol. The ‘I can’t live with it and I can’t live without it’ attitude was born. So for Kathy to face her addiction and to give up alcohol was on an unconscious level the same as losing love and life. She was not only physically hooked she was emotionally and spiritually hooked. Hopeless. Time and again Kathy would come to a session and then when the session was over drive to a bar and get drunk. It was a seemingly endless cycle of denial and escape. For Kathy to have any hope of saving herself she needed to find a reason to risk facing her addiction. That reason came unexpectedly and quite by surprise. (Please stay tuned. Continued in the next blog submission.)
To learn more about addiction, inner child healing, and core beliefs got to www.wendyhill.com