In the last blog post we looked at diminishing accountability—the first sign that we’re moving toward a relapse. If you missed that post, you’ll find it here. The second red flag correlates closely to that initial sign.
Learning to reach out and trust people is one of the key components of recovery. God’s original intent was always for us to be in community and gain support, encouragement and clarity of thought from those he placed around us. Unfortunately, early in our lives many of us encountered people that couldn’t be trusted—people that actually hurt us either physically or emotionally. We quickly decided that we had to protect ourselves from that ever happening again, so we quit letting people get close to us. We began to build walls around our hearts. More and more we hid the vulnerable parts of ourselves. We reasoned that if we didn’t let people know the real us there would be less of a chance of getting re-wounded.
The problem with that thinking was that the walls we built kept EVERYONE out—even those that could have been supportive and helpful in our lives. With no one to walk alongside and encourage us, we had to figure out how to get the nurture we needed from other sources. Many of us relied on activities or substances to help us avoid the deep loneliness that our self-exile created.
Part of the recovery process is tearing down those walls and letting a few safe people back into our lives. When, for whatever reason, we lose their support, we often don’t feel confident in our ability to find other safe people, so we turn inward once again. We go back to the “safety” of shallow, unfulfilling relationships and again start keeping our thoughts and fears secret. These new secrets encourage lies and create shame that further walls us off from the people that care about us. The more isolated we become, the more our minds begin to crave the old behaviors that helped us survive before.
Addiction thrives in isolation and secrets encourage us to isolate even more. It’s a destructive cycle that usually leads straight to the most dangerous warning sign of all—entitlement.
“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place . . .”—Ephesians 6:14
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