Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Awaken Together podcast.
I'm Kat.
I'm Jen.
And in today's episode, we are turning to a heavier topic and it's all about escapism,
addiction, and numbing out.
So we're going to have more of a conversation today and share our personal experiences on
these heavy topics with you.
Yeah.
So we're not only going to talk about substance addiction, which I feel like is the very recognized
thing that falls under the umbrella of addiction, but also look at other forms of it, such as
codependency, our cell phone addiction, social media addiction, the stuff that I think we're
all experiencing a lot more collectively too, and dive into those topics.
So one of the first things I wanted to bring up is I held a very high standard for myself
that I was not an addict.
I don't know if anyone relates to this, but I was told growing up that there was a lot
of addiction in my family and that I needed to be very careful on being near substances.
It was kind of always this fear relationship.
So I was so proud of myself for not ever being addicted to a substance when underneath that,
I had a lot of addictions to other things.
So Kat, to start us off, you want to share some of your personal experience with addiction
and escapism, and then I will gladly go into some of mine too.
Sure.
So to take it back to high school, if you have listened to some of our earlier episodes,
you know that I lovingly called my high school days my dark cat days because I was a hot
mess.
You got it done nice and early.
That's right.
I own it now and I lovingly look back on that little girl with, I don't know, just like
compassion, basically, because growing up being a teenager is really hard in society today.
So I started off, I think it was heading into freshman year and I started drinking for the
first time to really fit in.
It seemed like the cool thing to do.
And while I still wouldn't say that I ever had an addiction to it, I definitely abused
it.
I binge drank a lot.
I didn't know any other way but binge drinking.
That was the norm.
Having one drink at a time, like I responsibly do now as a 30-year-old, was a foreign concept.
And just like smoking weed in the school bathroom, there were no boundaries when it came to escaping
for me.
And it was also in a sense of fitting in.
But when it got a little far for me was when I remember buying alcohol from someone and
putting it in the water bottles to hide it from my parents in my room and thinking to
myself, wow, I have such a stockpile.
Now I could just have this whenever I want.
And that's when I kind of recognized that that's probably not a healthy thought.
That's probably toxic and addictive behavior.
And so I did stay away from that.
But yeah, that was kind of how I treated numbing out and escaping from my insecurities, my
low confidence growing up.
And now it manifests in different ways for me.
So I'll touch on that in just a little bit.
But I want to hear for you, Jen, how that is.
Yeah, first to comment on your experience, too.
We were discussing this topic a little bit before we came on.
And I do think that beneath a lot of our turning to substances and things like that is this
uncomfortableness with ourselves.
I really I think this year was the first year that I wasn't in as much of social settings
because I took my year on the road.
And what I was able to see even beyond the healing that I've been doing even more these
past five years, not having necessarily the pressure to show up one way, I really got
to experience that in a bigger depth this year.
And I've realized how much I've used that as a safety blanket.
Like if I have a drink with me or I'm high and I do something a little bit out there,
I can always have like this backup to blame it on.
And I liked that you said the difference between kind of abuse and addiction, because I think
that is like a slight difference.
And yeah, you can abuse a substance and still not fall into that necessarily addiction full
mindset because addiction can definitely get to a point where you do need outside help
because substances can actually be physically addictive.
And I luckily never fell into that physical addiction.
But did I use it to blend, fit in, have like a backup excuse in case I was too authentic,
too silly, too messy?
I could always go, oh, I was just really messed up.
And that felt so safe than to show up authentically and expose and not have something I could blame
it on.
So yeah, I can relate to your story.
And I think a lot of our teenage years, the reason we fall into that is because we need
something to blame it on.
It's very scary when you have no sense of self to show up in the world 100% without
needing a substance to kind of blend into the way we've created our society.
It feels safer in the way we've structured things.
So yeah, my relationship with it, I mean, you guys have heard if you've listened to
the first episode, I definitely took the partying to a point where it was pretty bad.
I was definitely using that as an escape and then I had my DUI, which was my big kind of
catalyst, my giant spiritual awakening that I've shared.
That was a real low point for me and a point where I actually really had to start looking
at the why behind a lot of my actions.
But what I had learned was I was actually a codependency addict and I did a lot of therapy
on this.
And codependency, a lot of times it's recognized in AA as being the group you go to if you're
with an addict because it's a good bonding for people that are in relationships with
people that struggle with substance abuse.
So Elanon is the meetings that you can go to for codependency.
I didn't think I needed that because I was like, I'm not with an addict.
I don't think I'm like that extreme, but I read a book once that like hit me right in
the gut that she just talked about her own personal experience with codependency.
And I really started seeing that I was using people and other people's problems to escape
my own very chronically.
So you hear people pleasing, which is kind of a little bit of a precursor for codependency.
So you have to be careful, but I was addicted to being around chaos and dealing with people
that needed me for stability.
And I took so much pride in being the friend that was stable, the friend that could give
advice, the friend that was there to support and had it all together.
And it was fully fueling my illusion that I was so much better than them, very subconsciously,
not actively, but I definitely looked and reflected back on it later.
But I was so entitled to think that I was above the addiction when really, if I didn't
have people around me that were needing me, I was actually experiencing withdrawal symptoms
where I felt empty.
I felt scared, like silence scared me.
I would immediately start calling people if I was too alone or in too much stillness.
And I would start having all these behaviors that were coming from a place of really bad
addiction to people, like truly people.
And yeah, learning and taking it as serious as an addiction to a substance was actually
very important for me because it helped me really recognize the urges to seek other people
almost constantly around the clock because I was so scared of facing me.
So that is deep.
And what an incredible realization.
I mean, that is something that takes a lot of therapy and a lot of healing, a lot of
looking at your shadows to even understand.
And this whole process of acknowledging what you're using to escape is a massive step on
your healing journey.
It's a big part of spiritual awakening.
And like we've said it before, we'll say it again.
The path to spiritual awakening is not all butterflies and rainbows.
It's a lot of this kind of work and holding a mirror up to yourself and trying to realize
what are my trauma responses?
What is triggering me?
Why am I this way?
And we all know those people who create their own drama.
It's kind of similar to codependency, but kind of on the other side.
Victim addiction.
You can definitely be addicted to even the attention of having a problem.
It's attention seeking behavior, truly.
And addiction to attention is really, if you peel that back, it's a deeper need to feel
loved and connected and a very poor sense of self that you're equating attention to
love basically.
And that is another big problem.
If you weren't given maybe the tools younger to know how to self soothe or nurture or you
weren't really shown a good example of what love looks like, then attention will feel
very close to it.
And I think a lot of people get addicted to attention as well.
Absolutely.
And we see this, I feel like it's a telltale thing when there's an absent father.
And growing up, maybe a woman will turn to men to fill this void of attention and love
and seek that love that they were so eagerly needing as a child from a father figure in
men in other ways and not finding that there and having a kind of snowball into this just
toxic relationship with themselves at the end of the day.
Yeah.
And I'm glad you use the word void too, because that is what it is.
It's looking at probably where a lot of the absences were from growing up and reflecting
on your childhood.
We brought that up multiple times in different episodes, like looking at what ego identities
you've created based on your wounds, looking at the traumas Kat said, but it's really looking
at where those voids were probably in your life because you're probably filling those
voids with these escapism and addiction type things because you haven't really faced the
pain of what is underneath all of that and it comes down again to facing some of those
emotions, reaching out for help when you need help to even see yourself or being able to
have the support of a community, which is why AA has also been like one of the biggest
programs for addiction and alcoholism.
And it's beautiful because it has built a sense of community.
So I think a lot of the people in Al-Anon meetings or AA meetings are also getting what
they were craving and why they turned to substances in the first place, which was a deep need
to be seen, a deep need to feel held and a deep need to be able to show your shame and
your ugly side and not have it be rejected, which a lot of us will have various stories
of where that's happened to us because maybe the people around us weren't ready to hold
space for that kind of thing, but there is always a community that you can plug into
where you can get that.
And I think that's been why those meetings have been so successful on getting people
out of addictive patterns.
Yeah.
And so part of the struggle of escapism and numbing out is acknowledging when you're in
that cycle to begin with because how do you even stop it if you don't know the problem
is happening?
So I'd love to dig into some signs of escapism so that you can help yourself identify when
this is happening for you.
So Jen, how do you notice when you're in a pattern or a habit of trying to numb out?
Yeah.
Great segue.
Yeah.
I think until I was on this kind of yoga and spiritual journey and really starting to try
to be conscious and mindful of why I was doing everything I was doing, which comes in layers
as you continue to go down the path of it, I really, once I was aware that that was the,
I don't want to say better way to live, but the more conscious way to live, the more aligned
way to live, I could really start to check myself on when I wasn't doing that.
And it would be like, yeah, long periods of I definitely was a TV watcher.
Like that's definitely how I even grew up was a lot of always having the TV on.
Definitely going on my phone and checking out.
But it's when a bunch of periods of time has passed and you like completely lost time,
which I do want to say too, can feel so good because life is so tough that it feels really
good to lose time sometimes.
Being conscious all the time can be exhausting, especially in a world that we've structured
with so many rules, so many social norms and obligations.
It feels great to check out.
But it also, it goes back to that line we said once before.
It's like life living you, are you living your life?
It's this balance.
But yeah, when I've lost a lot of time and I look up and I'm like, where did the time
go of the day?
And I know I've just been really mindless in what I've been doing.
That's a big thing to recognize for me.
And I also use, I look at the way I withdraw from stuff.
I think it's very important to view the phone as an addiction because you actually have
withdraw symptoms from being addicted to something.
And I think that's important to recognize that when I don't have my phone with me, I
actually go through withdraw symptoms.
I get nervous.
And when I realized that I had that strong of a tie to my devices, that's when I also
started being better at putting boundaries on how much I was using it.
What about you?
Yeah, yeah, I resonate with a lot of that.
For me, I can recognize when I'm in a habit of escapism and numbing out when I am moving
super fast in my life.
I just imagine myself as a little top that spun and hasn't stopped.
And I can recognize this in my sleeping patterns because I will wake up like this is like clockwork
every night at 3am when I'm overstimulized throughout the day because there's something
to with Ayurveda and that time of day that links with your mental health.
And yeah, so I'll wake up like I actually did this last night because the home buying
process has been so crazy.
Caps moving into a house.
So cool.
It's wild.
So yeah, it's been a lot, a lot, a lot, and we're under contract and there's just deadlines
happening every day and all the what ifs of like, wow, is this actually a good financial
commitment and not actually taking the time to sit with those feelings and just trying
to check things off the list?
That's a big habit of mine is I go into planner mode because it makes me feel purposeful and
it makes me feel like I'm being productive and we're taught that those are really important
qualities to have.
And so that's how it manifests for me.
My lifelong challenge will always be to rest and to check in with myself.
I know this about myself and whereas other people might go the other way and they're
just like they go to states of checking out completely and just like watching TV nonstop
and kind of going into sloth mode, whereas I need to do that in order to break this cycle
for myself sometimes.
Yeah, but this is going to be such a good segue one day into our Enneagram conversation.
That so fits your Enneagram archetype too with that wing three.
So good.
Yeah, you brought up another good point of looking at how you are coping with stress
and what your responses are because that is always going to usually be a precursor before
escapism behavior comes on where your threshold is, what you are experiencing and knowing
that when you're in a stressful mode that you probably are going to need a way to regulate
yourself down and whatever way that looks like for you.
Some it's like more busy work, some it'll be rest, but that is where you have to be
careful because if you're choosing the same way to respond to stress every time, that's
when I think escapism can start to fall into addiction.
I think we have to be really careful at continuing to let ourselves be uncomfortable sometimes.
Another thing that popped into my head while you were talking was I try to not use the
same stuff to cope with things because I think that's when it can become a problem when you
have I think there is like sacredness to rituals and having the same, but if you get too used
to being comfortable in the same thing to wind down from, that's when I think it can
start to turn habitual and then it gets really hard to break it.
Can you give an example?
Yeah, yeah.
So I think for me, if I were to say every time I came home from work, then I was going
to wind down with TV, then TV is going to be like that precursor of what I want to go
to whenever I'm overwhelmed because I've gotten used to it.
What I started doing when I was more kind of on the path of trying to be more aware
of my habits was trying to choose different things to settle myself down.
I started getting into the mindset, I guess, that I need to practice being uncomfortable
sometimes instead of always going to comfort to feel better, if that makes some sense.
And so I started making myself choose different things.
One day it would be a bath, one day it would be a book, one day it would be going outside.
I started trying to make myself, I guess, diversify my responses to being uncomfortable,
which maybe there's no backing behind that.
That's just been kind of my own experience.
But I know the second I turn to the same thing over and over again, then I start craving
that same thing chronically.
If I were to go to my phone to wind myself down every time, I'm going to start choosing
my phone again because our brain is always looking for habits.
It's always looking for the same.
And I think we have to be conscious on what we're choosing, why we're choosing it.
Could I maybe diversify my responses to things?
Because it lets you be uncomfortable and maybe more curious than habitual and maybe stuck
in the same responses.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does.
Our minds want to go to the easy, quick fix that we know.
It reminds me of a sugar addiction.
You're going to crave more sugar the more sugar you eat.
And it's the same thing with numbing out, checking out.
You'll just automatically divert to those habits that maybe at first were a really positive
thing and then they just become second nature to the point where it just checks you out
and you're less present through it because you're doing it so often and it provides
that ease for your brain.
Yeah, and looking beyond, we were just talking more in the physical, you also have those
patterns in how you respond to things.
So making sure you're looking at your responses too.
If you always respond with anger and you're becoming addictive to that anger response
or you always respond with that why me mentality, you can get addicted to that why me mentality.
It really is just choosing to respond to things differently.
I really do think that is an underlying great principle to get used to is what if I tried
on a different pair of shoes and tried to step into this differently?
And I remember getting curious about that at the beginning of my journey.
I know what I want to say to this, but what if I tried responding differently?
And when you do something differently, it physically almost can hurt your body.
You'll feel it because it feels uncomfortable and uncomfortable is not what our ego wants.
It wants similarity, but I think in that you really can start to recognize where you're
getting stuck and why you're getting stuck is choosing that, yeah, choosing maybe the
opposite of what you would normally choose and feeling the I guess it helps to trigger
your shadows, I guess, is what is happening.
Getting uncomfortable is stretchy and when we push our boundaries in that way and force
ourselves to do what is an automatic, that's where real growth happens because that's where
you show yourself that, hey, we're going to do something different this time.
And you change your habits, you shift your life, and that's where the big changes happen.
It's a culmination of those small baby steps.
And yeah, I mean, there's so much to that.
Yeah.
And I think the important thing to note if you are working on unwinding from an addiction
to anything, underneath that is going to be some pain.
It is shadow, it's the shadow that chooses to escape and numb out and check out anyway.
So underneath that is going to be a lot of pain surfacing.
And so to remember that you don't have to manage that pain by yourself, like find your
people, but also know that pain gets a really bad rep for being bad.
It's just not always bad.
It hurts, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing.
And so I think that knowing your pain and facing the underlying emotions can be the
most freedom.
And yeah, the best steps on your journey can be those moments that you're in pain, feeling
it.
Pain is aliveness.
It's aliveness that maybe we don't crave, but it is the opposite of being dead and numb.
So remembering to honor some of the pain that comes up as you start to face some of this
stuff, because it's another level of deeper healing.
And you don't have those distractions that's in your face and you're forced to deal with
it.
It's hard.
So you can set yourself up for success in a number of different ways to make this process
easier for you.
You can reach out to a friend.
Maybe it's the same person, maybe it's your partner.
As you're switching up your habits and you can even hold each other accountable.
You can say you're trying to shift your habit from watching TV automatically when you get
home or even just having it up in the background while you're eating or doing things.
Double screening is something that I get super guilty of being on my laptop in front of the
TV screen, but it is comforting.
So sometimes I let myself.
But if you want to try to crack that habit, setting yourself up for success could look
like having a book that you've been wanting to read right in the place where you'd normally
sit down to watch TV.
So it's in your face and it becomes like a next automatic way where you're kind of thinking
about your future self and ways where you won't just kind of sink back into those old
habits.
I love helping my future self.
It's like one of my favorite things to do.
I love it.
Set yourself up for success.
Yeah, great advice.
And yeah, find your community.
And I seriously, I really do recommend like the Elanon meetings.
It's really beautiful if you don't have a community.
Our awakened together family is getting bigger and it's been so nice to see that too.
But tap in with people that can hold that space for you because it's really scary to
unveil all that stuff if you don't have a support system because part of the reason
some of the addictions might have been started in the first place is because maybe your environment
hasn't been a very safe space to expose your authentic self.
So yeah, find your community.
Really find your people.
I've said it a couple times, but that is so significant.
And as they say in AA, there's a surrendering to kind of a higher power too.
And I do think if you put energy towards consciousness, you get a lot more than you're expecting
to get.
I really do believe in that higher power being there and helping too.
And that is my spiritual side.
Yes, when you put the intention out there, you're met with everything that will help
align you to get there.
So go through that little rocky patch, but know there is a big system that'll help when
you have a form of surrendering and trust and you show up and do the work.
Just ask and you shall receive.
Yes.
So this was a great talk.
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Yes.
Thank you so much.
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I hope you have a wonderful week and we'll see you next time.
Bye.