Embrace Your Darkness- Let Go of Addiction and Step Into Self Love
March 23, 2024
Stella Klingerman
As humans we go through a wide set of emotions, feelings and experiences. At some point in your life things will not go as planned. You will lose your job, break up with your partner, get sick or injured, lose a loved one, get evicted and so much more. You will go through phases of self discovery along with phases of self hate. It’s the circle of life. Life brings many challenges along with many positive experiences. One minute you may be on top of the world and at the snap of your fingers it could all come crashing down. The only thing that is promised to us in this world is change. It is bound to happen. Things change, people change, the Earth’s seasons change, it is all we have that is guaranteed.
Many humans struggle with this. They do not want to let go, or surrender. Learning to detach from the world around you and embrace the uncertainty life brings us is hard. It is not easy. The path to coming to terms with this is not a smooth road. It is bumpy, there will be hills or mountains in your way, there may be a few sudden turns and you may even get knocked off of the path. When this happens many turn to outlets to push away the pain and hide from it. They fear the unwanted feelings of fear, stress, anger or sadness.
This is where addictions start and is the gateway to allowing it to take over. This is where people may turn to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling and more. They feel the unwanted pain and instead of sitting with it they immediately jump to numbing it. If that is where you are in your journey that is okay. I am here to tell you that it is a part of the process and a part of growth. It is those who go through the worst pain that come out on the other side with the most beautiful mindset and strength. It is not easy to see the light when you are constantly being covered by clouds. It is hard. These clouds cover up any ounce of hope you once had. I am here to tell you that this is okay and that I was once in this position too. I once did not see any hope or future. It was all clouded by my despair. I am here to tell you my story and I slowly learned to embrace the darkness.
My whole life I had always struggled with body image and had a questionable relationship with food. I believed that if I looked sick and skinny enough that people would actually start to pay attention to me and care about me. It was not the food or even my body that was causing a problem. It was my lack of feeling a part of this world. It was my coping mechanism. I believed that if I reached an external goal I would receive the internal pleasures of self acceptance. But boy was I wrong. After years and years of diets, over exercising and finally achieving the body I had always dreamed of I felt the same. I did not feel even an ounce of a difference internally. My issues were still there. My lack of esteem and self acceptance still showed. Where did I go wrong? Maybe I just need my abs to show a little bit more and then I will feel good.” Wrong. This was the biggest lie I had ever told myself.
After continuously struggling my coping mechanism slowly changed. It wasn’t good enough for me and I needed something to further push my pain away. I needed a new way of suppressing my emotions. And thus, my binge eating disorder was born. This was yet another way of running away from my problems. An uncomfortable emotion or feeling would arise and I was three feet deep into the pantry. If I got stressed or even in an unwanted argument with another person I would eat my emotions away. I spent so long wondering why I was so broken. What was so wrong with me? Why do I do this to myself? I must deserve it.
Nothing worked for me. Therapy did not work, journalling did not work and nor did having a consistent workout routine and structure around my meals. I felt hopeless and fell into an almost half a year episode of being the most cold hearted and angry person to walk this Earth. I was constantly pissed off and in a bad mood. I shut everyone out and was punishing myself for feeling this way. Little did I know that all that was hurting was my inner child. The inner child that did not get what she needed while growing up. I learned to suppress my emotions as a child and had no idea that I was even doing this. I grew up learning that it was not okay to have negative emotions. Getting sent to your room for crying and yelled at for being a sensitive soul.
It took months of time to come to this realization and it was all thanks to yoga and spirituality. I learned about the shadow self and jumped into self discovery. Meditation was one of the first things that helped me flip a switch in my brain. It gave me the time to slow down and sit with my emotions. Instead of eating away my emotions I slowly started to react differently. An unwanted emotion would arise and I would pause. I would physically sit down and pause for a moment. I started to realize that my coping mechanism only brought me more pain after learning negative emotions are okay. As a matter of fact, negative emotions are awesome and play an incredible role in our time on earth.
I learned how to FEEL. Instead of reflecting my pain into physical pain by making myself physically ill I would invite the feeling in and just simply observe it. I embraced it. And as a matter in fact the more I did this the more I grew an appreciation for the shadow self. All the shadow is doing is giving you a sign that you are hurting deep down. Once you realize this you begin to hold yourself with grace, gentleness and ease. I was able to look at everything through the lens of love. And yes, I could even look at the scary and negative aspects of life with love. Because at the end of the day, it is the negative events and experiences that we endure throughout life that open up our mind to love and understand other people. These experiences give you sympathy and kindness to give to others.
So instead of blaming the situation you are going through or blaming your addiction, pause for a moment. You are the writer of your story. No one else but you. You can waste your life away blaming it but the second you flip a switch and realize it is just a cover up for your internal self, you are able to be free. Free of being hard on yourself and free of punishing yourself for something that was never your fault in the first place. Yes, it sucks that bad things have happened to you and it sucks that people did not know how to love you the way you needed. But limiting yourself to that will keep you stuck in the same cycles. To break free, we need to accept. Accept every single damn part of yourself. The good, the bad, the struggles and the good moments. Accept that you are just a soul trying to survive this world and just feel okay. It’s okay that you did not know any better. It is okay that you suppressed and pushed away your feelings. You were just trying to survive. Once we step into self acceptance we notice that it is possible to break out of the cycle and look at our situation with a different outlook.
March 23, 2024
