Your Addictions Are Keeping Your Old Identity in Place
Your Higher Self is saying you are ready to let go of a false identity that is using the ‘wrong’ energy Source to maintain energetic balance and flow. Through this false identity (role you play for others) you try to garner energy from what is not real. You therefore never have enough energy and keep looking for top-ups from the wrong people and places for what you need. As a result you have entered an addictive cycle (eating, drinking, sexual activity, playing the martyr, rescuing, and so on) looking for energy.
In your attempts to find a Source of energy that will provide balance and flow you pretend to be confident and in control of your life both professionally and personally. You put on a good external face for your children and family, for your friends and colleagues, the face of responsibility, success, happiness and strength, a face that tells the lie, ‘I have it all together’. Or you put on the external mask of victim, martyr or loner to garner the energy you need. Your false external image hides the hole within you – the wounded emotional energy of your inner child. This hole is bottomless and will never be filled until you address the wound. Your emotional growth remains incomplete because you have been unable to set your boundaries of self.
Unconsciously fuelled by this wound you have been unable to create and set the boundaries that your inner child seeks for protection, boundaries that would close the hole and enable you to expand beyond the wound of the child into a new sense of self. Without these boundaries in place, the feelings that were initially created in your youth remain unchanged and charged. These unresolved emotions are providing you with the energy – the Source from which you live – and your attempts to neutralise and rebalance are leading into the addictive cycle of repetitive patterns that keep you in the experience of lack.
For instance, as a child you may have experienced a profound loss through the death of a parent, from parents who were emotionally unavailable or who withdrew because of trauma or illness. In your loss you may have experienced the loss of yourself, your innocence, your freedom as a child, the loss of safety and so on. As an adult you now manage your fear of loss by making sure that you never lose anything ever again. You are the perfectionist constantly focused on details. You organise, make plans, and then – to really make sure nothing goes wrong – you take on more responsibility. Your focus on the avoidance of loss takes up a lot of your energy. Yet instead of avoiding loss you repeat the same experience of loss – feeling overwhelmed, feeling unsupported, etc. You may ask others for help but you do not allow yourself to be vulnerable. You experience their different approach to life as clashing with your desire for control. They will eventually either tire of your need for control or trust you so completely that they stop helping you out. You constantly say to yourself and others, ‘I always have to do it myself ’ or ‘No one is ever there for me’, thereby solidifying your false identity. In the end you always feel the same: alone, burdened, without the support you seek and resentful.
Alternatively, you may manage your fear of loss by being irresponsible in meeting your own needs. You may expect others to meet your needs for you, or in isolation meet your needs through addictive patterns – food, drink, sex, work, etc.
To release this addictive cycle you have to first understand that the basis of your false identity is built upon faulty beliefs about yourself. These recycled thoughts, such as ‘I’m a loser’, ‘I never get what I want’, ‘I’m unlovable’, ‘I can’t pay my bills’, are the beliefs connected to the wound. The crazy thing is you use this identity of competence (or incompetence), of super employee (or victim, etc.) as a shield for protection. Rather than being vulnerable by asking for what you want and need, you are motivated by and living on the false identity and energy of loss (or another such emotion) because it feels safe. Your struggle to maintain this self-image has arisen because you have not understood that the image you present to the world is not real for you at an emotional level.
Maintaining what is false takes energy similar to the energy you expend after telling a lie. Over time the fear that keeps the lie in place demands more and more energy. In the same way, maintaining a past event and its corresponding feelings uses up more and more of your inner resources. In this state you cannot connect to your core self and therefore do not know how to meet your emotional needs (because you have never admitted to them). Your addictive patterns of behaviour will remain in place until you understand their purpose in your life. Only then will you be able to create the energy from your core self to meet your emotional needs.
Part of the difficulty you experience in releasing your false identity is that you have a positive (self )-image associated with it. You might constantly resent being the person who does all the work, but you also enjoy the affirmation of praise, of being special, being seen as a capable, efficient and productive employee. Not only is there pleasure in the affirmation from others, there is also pleasure from your energy top-ups, the glass of wine at the end of the day, the camaraderie of drinking with friends. You may associate drinking alcohol with happiness, joy or a carefree time in your life. You treat yourself (on end) to that piece of chocolate or scoop of ice cream, recalling memories of happy occasions with family and friends. You see food as the friend that is always there for you. Happiness, however temporary, comes with the price of being plump, in debt, or alone, a price you struggle with but are currently willing to accept.
In addictive behaviour there is mindfulness that in that moment you release all the energy of fear and anxiety bottled up within you and avoid the emotion (fuelled by the wound) at the core of your identity. When receiving the praise from your false identity or the pleasure from your energy top-ups your mind temporarily disengages from its role of telling you which of your boundaries has not been set (and signalled through your charged emotions). It is now time to pay attention to those boundaries that were never set (or broken) within you.
The power of this card is the freedom to be you. Your Higher Self says that you are ready to release the old image of yourself (false identity) that needs the energy source from your addictions. When you do this, you will deactivate the outdated energy source (wound) and reconnect to your true core – to Source – and restore flow. It’s time to find the boundaries of your true identity – who you are and what you want. From this core place you become the person who knows themselves and therefore meets their own emotional needs. You are ready to be real, to make new choices guided and tapped into the energy that comes from your core identity. Be true to yourself and you will find a new Source to bring to your life – you.
Don’t be fooled into going back to the old self just because others positively affirm you and you enjoy the temporary rewards of your energy top-ups. Your Higher Self is telling you to identify and connect to this wound (emotional Source) that is fuelling this false sense of self. This connection is your path to healing. Let the emotion at the linchpin of your identity make itself known (fear of loss, abandonment, a lack of acknowledgement, emptiness, and so on). Let this emotion give you the information it holds for you so that you can relax and let go of having to maintain your false identity.
