This article is geared toward those struggling with addiction and trauma, but before you close out of this post because it doesn’t apply to you—
If you’re a human being, I can almost guarantee that some of this information will change your life.
Firstly, addiction doesn’t just look like stoners and alcoholics.
Addiction can take on many forms.If you’re a human being, I can almost guarantee that some of this information will change your life.Addiction can take on many forms.
You might not consider yourself an addict, but ask yourself this:
Do you turn to food when you’re stressed?
Or mindless TV to shut off your brain?
Do you lose hours of your life to doom scrolling, shopping, gaming, or another coping mechanism?
Do you crave validation? To be needed?
Most of us have something we use to escape, and in that sense, we’re all dealing with some form of addiction.
Changing our habits and coping mechanisms starts with shifting how we see ourselves, and that’s what I want to get into today.
Fair warning: this read is on the longer side, but it’s because it’s so important and complex.
I promise the info is worth it.
So grab a coffee or whatever your go-to drink is, and settle in with an open mind.
There’s a high likelihood that the ideas I present here will challenge how you’ve always thought about habits, behavior, and personality.
That’s a good thing.
You need to get uncomfortable if you want to change.
Stick with me.
Whoops, I Did It Again:
I have a confession: I started smoking again.
Probably not surprising.
You’ve heard it before—someone quits, then relapses.
This is probably somewhere around my 956th time.
So I’ll be honest, I’m not too worried about it.
This is pretty familiar territory for me.
But before you jump to conclusions about me and my lack of discipline, give me a chance to explain.
The smoking is not the problem, nor has it ever been.
Because if I’m not smoking, I’m drinking.
And if I’m not drinking, I’m napping.
Or emotional eating.
Or scrolling.
Or rearranging my bookshelf.
Or picking at my face.
Or binge-watching some mindless show I don’t actually like.
If it’s not smoking, I’ll find something else.
I’m not addicted to smoking— I’m addicted to escape.
(I mean, I am addicted to smoking— but it’s because of the intense feelings of escape that it offers me.)
And that need for escape is just one of the many symptoms of an even deeper problem.
So, you see, quitting smoking (or any bad habit) really shouldn’t be the focus.
Because it’s only a symptom of a deeper issue that needs to be addressed.
Basically, I’ve been focusing on the wrong problem, as many of us do…
Treat The Root, Not the Symptoms
Here’s how we can start digging deeper to find the root problem:
Ask yourself,
Why do I smoke/drink/overeat/doom scroll/(insert your vice of choice)/etc..?
I personally smoke when I’m stressed— when I feel overwhelmed, disappointed, or just plain sad.
Which means:
I don’t have a smoking problem— I have a self-regulation problem.
My root problem then is that I keep reaching for something outside myself to distract me from feelings I’m too overwhelmed to face.
This post isn’t about how to quit the habits your struggles manifest as—whether it’s smoking, shopping, social media, or any other addiction, as most articles on addiction are.
It’s about identifying the root issues and reaching a place where we no longer feel the need to escape through coping mechanisms.
Because I don’t know about you, but I want lasting change.
I want to stop feeling the urge to run from myself and my life.
I want the ability to regulate my emotions from within—to feel in control of myself and my life.
Not just to quit or be “sober,”
But to live without constantly seeking a way out.
I don’t want to stop smoking—
I want to stop being the person who needs to.
I’ve quit smoking and drinking hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the last decade.
Clearly,I need to change my approach.
Because would you rather spend your life treating the symptoms, patching them up over and over—only for them to resurface?
Or would you rather spend some focused time healing the wound at its source, so it never needs another bandaid again?
I’m personally gonna go with the latter.
So here’s how we’re going to move from “the addict” who needs an escape to the “self-regulating adult” who feels whole inside:
PHASE 1: You are NOT an Addict (Reframe Your Identity)
Hi, my name is Grace, and I am not an addict.
But if you ask the medical and pharmaceutical industries, they’d probably say otherwise.
Why?
Because it’s easier—and far more lucrative—to medicalize addiction than to address its root causes.
The “disease model” of addiction, while useful in some contexts, conveniently shifts focus away from the systemic failures that breed addiction—like poverty, trauma, overprescription, and social isolation.
People go to rehab for so many different forms of addiction.
But the one thing that the majority of them have in common?
They do all the detoxes and 12-step protocols, only to come out and find themselves in the same environment, surrounded by the same temptations, and fall right back into old patterns.
Why? Because they’re treating the symptom, not the cause.
They’re treating addiction as the disease when it’s actually the symptom.
It’s a flawed system.
But, more addicts = more money.
And a healed person is a lost customer.
This isn’t to say chemical addiction isn’t real—it very much is is.
But reducing it to a biological disease ignores the psychological, environmental, and social factors that fuel it.
People don’t become addicts because of a genetic defect.
People become addicts because they’re in pain, and our system is designed to profit off that pain rather than heal it.
Society tells us that addiction is something we just have to learn to live with.
Bullshit.
If you continue to identify as an addict—or someone with an addictive personality—you will be that.
Like Henry Ford said,
Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.
You need to let go of your limiting beliefs, or you’ll always be fighting yourself—stuck in the same patterns that hold you back from being the person you want to be.
It’s time to rewrite the narrative.
PHASE 2: Rewrite the Narrative
I used to tell myself, “I have an addictive personality.”
And I’ll be honest, I still struggle to not identify as that.
Unlearning decades worth of training and programming is not easy.
But if I continue to reinforce that narrative, my brain will just keep searching for proof that it’s true.
This is called confirmation bias—the tendency of our brains to focus on information that supports our beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them.
So when I label myself as an addict, my brain will look for evidence to support that identity—moments of failure, loss of control, over-indulgence.
It’s like that exercise Tony Robbins does—I’m honestly not a big fan of his, but I like some things he says, this included—
He tells you to look around the room and find everything that’s red.
You scan the space, locking onto every trace of red—maybe a book, a shirt, a coffee mug.
You even start stretching the definition, noticing things that aren’t quite red but could almost pass—a faded pink, a deep orange.
Then he tells you to close your eyes and list everything in the room that’s brown.
And suddenly, you’re stuck.
You weren’t looking for brown.
You were looking for red.
Even shades that barely qualified, you justified.
The brown was always there—your mind just filtered it out.
Because it wasn’t what you were searching for.
That’s exactly what happens when I fixate on the notion that “I am an addict.”
Or really any limiting belief I have about myself.
My mind zeroes in on all the moments of excessive consumption, loss of control, and any patterns that reinforce the story I keep telling myself—trying its hardest to prove me right—while it filters out all the times I chose differently—because that’s not what it was looking for.
As long as I keep searching for red, I’ll keep finding it.
As long as I let “addict” be my identity, my brain will collect the evidence to uphold it.
The only way to change is to shift what I’m searching for—to stop proving myself right and start seeing the brown that’s been there all along—the resilience, the progress, the moments when I made a different choice, when I proved I was capable of change.
There are so many examples of that, but I don’t tend to notice or give them credit because I’m so focused on the issues- not the solutions.
So, instead of telling myself, “I’m an addict and I need to stop being an addict”
I can rewrite the script to say something like:
“I am healing and learning to self-regulate.”
And suddenly, I can see more of the full picture.
It becomes a bit easier to notice all those moments of strength and resilience I never gave myself credit for.
The self-awareness I overlooked.
The proof that I am not just the sum of my worst habits.
It’s not about ignoring reality—it’s about expanding it.
Instead of just seeing the reds, you can zoom out, and see the browns that have been there the whole time.
You may not have not have really taken note of all of those moments of making the healthier choice, because they weren’t what your subconscious was focusing on.
At the end of the day, you are not just one thing.
You are not your worst habits.
You are not your past mistakes.
And you are not an addict.
Let that shit narrative go.
You cannot shame yourself into changing.
PHASE 3: Stop Trying to Hate Yourself Into Changing (it doesn’t work)
I recently read, You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For, and it completely shifted my perspective on healing, among other things.
I think this book should be required reading, especially if you struggle in personal relationships, and I’ll dedicate a full post to it soon.
But for now, let’s talk about a key takeaway that profoundly impacted my view on healing our identity.
The book explains that we all have different “parts” inside of us.
We often think of ourselves as one unified “self,” but in reality, we are made up of many different parts—fragments of our identity shaped by our experiences, especially childhood wounds.
These parts, unfortunately, can have very conflicting needs:
One might crave adventure and risk, while another desperately wants stability and safety.
One part might be confident and ambitious, while another feels small and unworthy.
One day we show up as one part being more dominant, and the next a different part, and it can make you feel like a walking contradiction.
How can one part of you be desperate to be a mom and stay-at-home wife, while another part longs to ride a motorcycle through Southeast Asia for the next year?
Why do we self-sabotage or act against our best interests?
Maybe the real question is—who within us is making which choice?
The part still clinging to past fears, or the part that feels secure?
Depending on your personal life experience and what you’ve been through, you could have a lot of different parts inside of you.
The parts operating from fear often show up under stress.
The body reacts to stress as if it’s in danger, and that feeling of being unsafe triggers those old wounds to surface.
Your brain unfortunately doesn’t know the difference between an argument with your partner and running from a tiger.
Stress is stress.
And if we don’t recognize these internal divisions, we might feel a bit crazy, or think we’re unstable and can’t make up our mind, when really, it’s just different parts of us pulling in opposing directions.
For example, let’s say you grew up feeling misunderstood or unheard:
Now, as an adult, that wound might resurface in moments of conflict—like during an argument with your partner.
Instead of just addressing the issue, you feel an urgent need to explain yourself, to make them see your perspective.
A more mature and conscious part of you might know how to handle this conflict in a more productive way, but that hurt part of you might take over and over-explain, get defensive, or even shut down—in a desperate attempt to feel heard.
You don’t ususally realize when your subconscious mind is running the show.
Maybe you grew up with a sense of unworthiness:
And maybe that developed into a deep need to prove yourself.
Now, in moments of high stress—like struggling to meet a deadline or facing failure—you might hear an inner voice reminding you that you’re not good enough.
To escape that feeling, you might throw yourself into the perfectionism trap, procrastinating out of fear of not measuring up, or numbing out with distractions or unhealthy habits.
To cope, you chase that validation through overachieving, people-pleasing, or even self-sabotage—desperately trying to earn recognition, approval, or proof that you are, in fact, enough.
Or maybe as a kid, you were punished for showing strong emotions:
Told you were being dramatic, overreacting, or too much.
So, you learned to suppress a lot of your feelings.
Maybe after bottling things up for too long, you lash out in an otherwise trivial argument, saying things you don’t mean.
Or maybe, instead of an outburst, you shut down completely, feeling unable to express what’s really wrong.
And when these emotions become too overwhelming to contain, maybe that part of you seeks relief—through distractions, avoidance, or substances that temporarily quiet the chaos inside.
Instead of recognizing these destructive behavior patterns as signals from wounded parts of ourselves that are desperate for love and understanding, we tend to hate them.
We beat ourselves up for procrastinating, lashing out, or falling back into bad habits—without ever asking,
Why do I do this in the first place?
Of course, you should take accountability and apologize for anything harmful you’ve said or done—
But man, repeatedly apologizing for the same shit gets so fucking old.
(regardless of which end of the apology you find yourself on.)
if you know, you know.
We need to realize that these behaviors are not a result of a lack of willpower or discipline or education, but more often than not, they stem from a lack of love and support towards an unmet need (usually originating in our childhood).
I’ve spent years trying to change my behavior by attempting to resist the urges to escape and shut off with discipline.
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
And my friends, by that definition, I am for sure certifiably insane.
I’m done with this quitting and relapsing hamster wheel I keep finding myself on.
I know I need to approach this in a more tactful and intelligent way.
I’m done hating and fighting these parts of myself.
I need to start understanding them.
Healing comes from learning to acknowledge and integrate these parts in your life—not by rejecting or suppressing them, but by understanding them with compassion.
PHASE 4: Face the Hurt Demon Child Living in Your Subconscious
Instead of brutally berating myself for lacking discipline for the 10,000th time, I’m choosing to instead have an open-minded conversation with whatever part of me is acting out/seeking relief.
Here’s a perfect example of how I’ve personally done this:
Once upon a time,
I lashed out on my mom, and she really didn’t deserve it.
I told her about some new business venture I was planning (I had come up with it 30 minutes prior to this) and she was simply telling me some very reasonable doubts she had and gently bringing to light some clear holes in my (lack of a) plan.
She was right, of course, but instead of hearing her, I was focused on myself being heard.
I reacted poorly and told her something along the lines of her opinion didn’t matter.
I find myself apologizing a lot…
I am no stranger to this cycle:
- I am challenged or criticized in some way
- I get frustrated and eventually say or do something I’m not proud of.
- I chill out, and apologize.
- I get mad at myself for being an ungrateful bitch or a terrible daughter or partner or friend or whatever the case may be.
- I stew in my frustration with myself because of how annoyed I am at myself because no matter how much I learn I keep finding myself struggling to handle conflictin an emotionally intelligent way when I feel triggered.
- I feel defeated, and try my best to shut off by smoking, watching TV, or some other distraction.
But this time, instead of ^ this usual cycle, I asked myself:
- Where did that reaction come from?
- What age did that reaction feel like?
- What did I need in that moment that I didn’t receive?
And suddenly, just by asking and observing (with my eyes closed- it helps a lot) without even thinking about it, I saw me at age 12—she was crying dramatically in her bed, as I often did at that pre-teen age.
She felt unheard.
She felt like her mom didn’t believe in her or her ability to achieve her dreams.
I knew exactly how she felt.
And instead of getting mad at her, or telling her to be tougher or grow up, I loved her.
I mentally hugged her the way I wish my mom would have hugged me in that moment.
I reassured and encouraged her in ways I wish I would have been.
I told her to dream big- that she can do anything she sets her mind to.
I said all the words that I needed to hear at that time in my life.
And instead of continuing to subconsciously carry the feelings of that hurt child into every moment of tension involving me not feeling supported by her in the future, I worked to heal it at the root—without her involvement.
Instead of looking externally for love, validation, or understanding, I realized I am able to be that for myself.
You learn to ‘parent’ the parts of yourself that were neglected, offering them the care and love they missed so they can heal and grow.
We often seek wholeness in our relationships, jobs, or substances, but the truth is, everything we need is already within us.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Next time you find yourself feeling triggered or the need to shut down or escape, get curious about it.
Go somewhere you can be alone without distractions, close your eyes, and ask yourself:
- What exactly am I feeling right now? (Name the emotion that first comes to mind without judgment—rage, desperation, fear, shame, lonely, etc.)
- When age is this feeling? (Let your mind drift and see what memory or situation or feeling comes up. Don’t try to force it, just let it come up.)
- What did I need in that moment that I didn’t get?” (Trust whatever pops into your mind first when you ask yourself this question. Was it love, safety, validation, protection, support? Identify the unmet need honestly.)
- What is my inner child trying to protect me from right now?” (Fear of rejection, abandonment, failure? Listen for the deeper wound.)
- What can I say or do for my inner child to help them feel safe and loved?” (Offer comfort, reassurance, a new perspective, etc… What did you crave to hear in that moment that came up for you?)
Instead of beating yourself up, like you always have, try giving yourself the love and reassurance you needed back then.
It’s almost like I’m taking that immature and reactive part of me to a little therapy sesh, but I’m the therapist, the child, and the parent…
It’s a bit complicated- I know.
But humans are complicated, man.
Keep in mind, the goal here isn’t to ‘fix’ yourself.
It’s simply to listen with compassion.
To acknowledge the scared, confused, or lonely parts of you that may have been running the show for too long, stuck in that stress and survival mode.
The goal is for them to feel loved and understood, because that’s really all we need to heal.
We need our parts to feel seen enough to chill out a bit so you can show up as self-regulated adult in times of conflict, rather than a version of you that’s re-living the emotions of a traumatic event—
Or just a hurt child fuming, possibly with hormones and pre-pubescent rage.
Neither of which are great candidates for being in the driver’s seat of what you say and do during conflict…
PHASE 5: Be A Self-Regulating Adult
The real transformation isn’t about quitting smoking, drinking, binge eating, or any other habit.
It’s about cultivating confidence- an identity rooted in self-worth so that I’m no longer feeling that constant need for escape.
When I change my identity, I change my behavior.
I learn to handle my emotions internally rather than constantly looking outside of myself for remedies.
Self-regulation isn’t about cultivating some insane willpower.
It’s about working smarter, not harder.
Rather than tirelessly pruning dying leaves and rotten fruit with your oh-so-strong discipline, you could just nourish the roots (your identity) and the rest will take care of itself.
A tree with deep, healthy roots, needs a whole lot less pruning, my friends.
But let’s be real: this isn’t an overnight fix.
There’s no magic habit or routine that will instantly make you whole and healed, so let that perfect healed image of yourself go.
Give the death of that perfect version of you a moment of silence, and move on.
Getting well is messy, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s difficult.
Confronting childhood trauma, of any kind, is. not. easy.
And it requires a lot of self-awareness and honesty to find and confront the wounds that keep you stuck in cycles of escapism.
So yeah, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
It’s not a pretty process.
Once you start unraveling your patterns, coping mechanisms, and the deeper reasons behind your behavior, you can’t unsee it.
Processing all those suppressed feelings and emotions can be, and usually is, painful.
But it is a necessary step in the healing process.
Clarity is the first step to freedom.
Ignorance may feel easier, but awareness is what will actually change your life.
You need to be aware of what the root issues are if you ever want to truly get well.
It’s hard, but the reward is a life and identity that you no longer need to run away from.
A life where I don’t feel like I’m constantly fighting myself?
Yeah, I’d say that’s worth it.
Thank you for being here,
—Grace
Disclaimer:
This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice.
If you’re struggling, please seek support from a licensed therapist or healthcare provider.
